Over the last few months, Lulu’s attention has turned to birds. The bright red Cardinals caught her attention this winter and she watched the early Robins hunt in the lawn from the living room window this spring. Since then she’s spotted Goldfinch, Red-winged Blackbirds, Orioles, and told everyone who would listen about a couple of turkey vultures she saw while riding in the car. So, I wasn’t surprised when she recently asked me for a name of a bird she saw out the window earlier that day. She told me it was a black bird with an orange beak.

I started with a picture of a Robin, figuring she had forgotten the bird’s name…

But, I was immediately set in my place with “No, Dad! That’s a Robin. This bird was all black with an orange beak.”

OK, she remembered the Robin. I should have known better than to guess my four year old couldn’t ID a bird. Next I pulled up a picture of a Starling…

The response: “Nope. The beak is orange, not yellow. And bigger!” The girl has a thing for detail. So, a quick search for a Common Blackbird and I pulled up this…

A blackbird with an orange beak. I had to be golden, right? Nope. “Well, yeah, it’s black with an orange beak… but, this one was bigger.” Bigger? At this point we were scrolling through Google images of “black birds with orange beaks” when Lulu points to this…

“That’s It!”

Before I could tell Lulu that Toucan’s didn’t live around here, she squealed with delight ran off to tell the DW that I had found the bird she had seen earlier. Honestly, I’m not sure if I should suspect she was dreaming, or if I should be watching the newspaper for a story of an escaped Toucan roaming Eastern Iowa. For some reason, I don’t think I’d be surprised to see the latter.