{"id":261,"date":"2009-01-17T15:31:41","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T13:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/with-birding-possible-is-everything\/"},"modified":"2009-01-17T15:34:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-17T13:34:29","slug":"with-birding-possible-is-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/general\/with-birding-possible-is-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"With birding, possible is everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Possible is everything<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was driving my car in the sierras of Tarragona<\/strong> the other day, on the way home after a bird census<\/strong>. It was then that I came up with this catch phrase \u201cPossible is everything\u201d. Attention now \u2013 that is not the same as \u201cEverything is possible\u201d. For one thing, I don\u2019t believe that the Dodo will ever fly<\/strong>, for example.<\/p>\n

The Pine Bunting<\/strong> that has been kicking around with the wintering Yellowhammers<\/strong> at Aspa (near Lleida) since early in the New Year was the catalyst for this far-reaching reflection. I said to myself,
\n\u201cIf a visiting birder came across a Pine Bunting<\/strong> near Aspa (which is in the middle of nowhere in particular), why couldn\u2019t that bunting I\u2019ve just passed while in my car be a Rustic Bunting<\/strong>, and not a Cirl Bunting<\/strong>? I\u2019ve just told myself that it was a Cirl Bunting even though I haven\u2019t really seen the bird well enough to know for sure. However unlikely it may seem, couldn\u2019t that bird be a Rustic Bunting<\/strong>?\u201d<\/p>\n

The thought rang out so loud that I had to stop the car and back around a sharp bend (Hey! It\u2019s a very quiet road!), to come to a halt opposite the bush where the bunting in question had landed. I groped for my binoculars<\/strong> on the passenger seat and I clinched the<\/strong> identification<\/strong> \u2013 Cirl Bunting.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not the fact that it was indeed a Cirl Bunting that matters. After all the Cirl Bunting is the bunting one is most likely to see in these parts. No, what carries real weight is that I actually stopped, reversed and took a good look at the bird in the bush<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Because it could have been something else.<\/p>\n

It could have been a Rustic Bunting, for example.<\/p>\n

Where birds and birders<\/strong> meet \u201cpossible\u201d is everything<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Personally, I feel closer to the possibility of finding Spain’s first Radde’s Accentor than scaling the vertical rock faces of Riglos.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Possible is everything\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was driving my car in the sierras of Tarragona the other day, on the way home after a bird census. It was then that I came up with this catch phrase \u201cPossible is everything\u201d. Attention now \u2013 that is not the same as \u201cEverything is possible\u201d. For one thing, I don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7I752-4d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.birdinginspain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}