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These Roseate Spoonbills gather year after year on a small pond hidden deep inside Georgia’s Jekyll Island. It’s where they like it.

Over the past few years, the birds have been leading me to a new lexicon of personal slogans. One of my favorites is, “They Like It Where They Like It.”

This phrase captures a lot I’ve been contemplating about birding. What it means, more or less, is this:

No matter where I hope a bird might be found, and even if I am absolutely convinced I’ve glimpsed a particular species, there’s a pretty good chance I’m wrong. This is because, as any birding guidebook will tell you, birds are creatures of habit. Or more accurately, they are creatures of habitat — as in, “They like it where they like it.”

For the first time in anyone’s recollection, this Vermillion Flycatcher turned up in a preserve near Tallahassee, Florida — far from where it was supposed to be.

Every now and then a lucky birder discovers a “vagrant,” official lingo for a bird that’s somehow veered off course and outside its preferred territory. One made national news this fall — the Mandarin Duck that turned up in New York’s Central Park.

But for the most part, birds are unfailingly consistent.

Even so, when I’m deep in the woods — oblivious to time or temperature or when I last ate a meal – magical thinking can be the result. It’s like I’m convinced that a Rose-breasted Grosbeak, (or whatever bird I’m determined to find), will magically appear if I just keep hoping hard enough. Or maybe I just dreamed I saw one — 19 weeks of nonstop birding is enough to cause hallucinations.

George Armistead tells the story of the winter morning when he was standing in a landfill while on a birding walk. He got a call from

George Armistead is chief networking officer at Rockjumpers, an international wildlife tours company.

a girl he’d just started dating. “She asked me what I was doing.’’

Then he grinned. “Do I tell her I’m at a dump looking for birds? That it’s 10 degrees outside? And that it’s one of the highlights of my year?’’

Armistead, who started birding at age 9 and went on to become a research  ornithologist at Drexel University and now leads birding trips all over the world, was delivering the keynote speech at the annual Wings over Water birding festival on North Carolina’s Outer

Banks. The roomful of birders from around the country smiled with him as he took up one of the quandaries of our pastime.

Why do birders do what they do? How do they explain it to others? Why do they walk for miles in the rain, wind and sometimes snow in search of a glimpse of a bird?

He had one of the best explanations we’ve heard.