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You are a birder if .......
(Part 1)

Someone yells "Duck!", and you look up and shout "Where?"

Your kids are named Buteo and Accipiter.

Your spouse says, "Its either me or the birds," and you have to think about it.

You pay a neighborhood kid $20 to roll on a roadkill, and lay still while you search the sky for vultures.

You try to talk your kid into going to college in Belize so that you have an excuse to go and bird there.

After finding a second Boreal Owl, you refer to it as a trash bird.

You get up earlier on weekends to go birding than you do during the week to go to work.

Clouds take on the shape of birds, and you can distinguish male from female, and adult from immature plumage.

You are sure that in Heaven there are six months of May and six months of September.

A machine squeaks at work and you describe it to maintenance as sounding like a Black-and-white Warbler.

Your children have not had new shoes in two years but you own a Swarovski.

You spend fifteen minutes preparing dinner for your family, and thirty minutes mixing and placing seed for your birds.

You consider your car, computer, and most other possessions as birding accessories or gear.

When it comes to birds you regularly, walk the very thin line between courage and plain old stupidity

You spent most of the day on Saturday, after getting up at 4 AM and making a five-hour drive, in near-zero degree weather in snow and sleet with wet feet and inadequate clothing looking for an unusual bird, and then say "Yes" on Monday morning when someone at work asks you if you had a good weekend.

You often call your four children by each other's names but you never miss-identify Lesser or Greater Yellowlegs.

After a six inch snowfall, you won't shovel out the driveway, or the front steps, or the sidewalk, or the back steps, but you shovel off half the patio in your bathrobe and boots in subzero windchill to spread seed on the cleared space because your juncos are hungry

The most prevalent feature of your wardrobe is bird tee shirts

News that a species has split (and you have already seen both forms!) is cause for a three-day drunk.

You keep a list of birds seen out the bathroom window while on the toilet.

You have a trip list from your honeymoon.

You have a list of lists.

When you stay at a Bed and Breakfast you don’t stay long enough to eat

You have a callous on your finger from the focus knob.

You go to the beach only during nor'easters or after strong cold fronts

You welcome the prospect of below-zero temperatures and piles of snow on the theory that it will drive northern species farther south. So, when everyone else huddles indoors you head out looking for Snowy Owls, Crossbills, and Redpolls.

Last but not least, you know you are a birder when you did not laugh at any of these because they are true.