Getting up at 4am the last few days is catching up to me. This morning I was on Ian Punnett's Balanced Breakfast at 5:45am on fm107. His producer Darcy is always so nice when she calls me on the phone and says, "Hello, dear." it's very sweet. It's fun and challenging doing this segment. Whenever I'm on his show I do harbor a tiny bit of guilt (curse my two years of Catholic School).

As many of you know I'm a stickler for bird accuracy. Watching a movie is no fun for me if the cowboy posse is resting at night in the Arizona desert and all of a sudden an eerie cry of a loon can be heard in the distance--LOONS AREN'T GOING TO BE FOUND ALIVE IN THE ARIZONA DESERT.

Ian's family crest is a pelican piercing it's breast so it's blood spills into the mouths of it's young and reads "We die for our own". It's based on the story that in times of famine, pelicans will cut themselves so that they bleed to death and the blood serves as nourishment for the young and they can survive. This isn't true. I even double checked with a couple of ornithologists. Ian one day asked me on the air if this was true and I fudged a little and said that North American pelicans don't do that, but the truth is, no pelican on the earth does that. Bill said that I just should have bit the bullet and told him that, but I felt that I couldn't tell a nice guy that his family crest is based on a myth. Bill said I was being ridiculous since many family crests feature unicorns and dragons.

I've never knowingly given out false birding information...well, except for the time my mom and one of my sisters started asking questions about when Bill and I are going to have any kids and I pointed out the window, "Look, it's a blue gray gnatcatcher." Sure, one could have been out there based on location and time of year, but I just used it shift their short attention spans elsewhere.