I'm catching the bird watching disease?

A Cacique just outside the window of Rancho Primavera,

 eating away at a hole  the local birds have punctured in a ripe papaya. I'm only three feet away from him. What a thrill!

I've always loved observing the beauty of the birds that catch my eye. I've also sometimes felt that the bird watchers I encountered were just a little over the edge.  If you know what I mean. Skip wrote a few engaging stories about birders he had known —That was then.

Since I met Art I began to take more notice of both birders and birds and their endlessly confusing names. The birds, that is. Regarding birders — I've come to feel that they are among the smartest people I've ever met. They're special in a way I find it hard to describe. So I won't even try. But, bit by bit, over the last two years I find myself more and more glued to the view of my feeders on the back porch and to the birds that fly over my car as I'm driving along, and to the movements in the high trees that surround my bedroom. I am in Oaxaca now and my bedroom has a wonderful courtyard, trees, bushes and an awesome wall of volcanic rock with ferns growing out of it and water trickling down from the top. Could you imagine a more heavenly spot for some birds, big and tiny, to hang out? Especially in the early morning and at dusk around 6:30.

I have fallen in love with the calling of a particular bird that shows up each evening and sometimes in the morning around 7:30. He is so elusive, diving between the palm fronds and over to a neighboring yard that, until the last few days I've not been able to get more than a "just before dark" profile sight of him. Our friend Fernando, an active birder, finally began narrowing him down to the Thrush family. If we go by the books, he could be a Rufous collared (my choice) Thrush or a Rufous backed Thrush. A local bird banding expert at the Botanical Gardens told  Jim, another birder friend from the hotel, that he is probably a Rufous Backed Thrush. I thought he had told me that he might be a kind of Robin, American or Mexican but he tells me that is not what he said.The bird has a glorious range of calls from single level, long plaintiff pleas to much more lyrical trills and acrobatic sounds. I almost got a photo of him last night just before dark, but when I looked at what I had, it was not anything like proof of being.

So I guess the question is, am I becoming a hopeless enthusiast of what I used to think was "a little out there" or not?