I draw the line at raptors perching atop my bird feeder. He knows this; he's no slouch, this sharp-shinned hawk.

After a momentary stare-down that's become habit in recent weeks, he offers an apparently defiant waggle of his feathered rump, and departs. He'll get his, though. Sharp-shinned hawks are the Ma and Pa Kettle of the bird world -- his nested mate waiting expectantly in the woods 20 yards beyond the back door hulks over him, twice as large.

Such a deepening interest in birds, by choice or by circumstance, doesn't rise to the pastime sexiness levels of say, ice-climbing or wingsuit flying. Red Bull doesn't sponsor birding expeditions. Which leads, then, to one of those grim imponderables: Am I a nerd?

That is the dilemma that author Luke Dempsey describes in the opening pages of his riotously funny, utterly enthralling debut book, "A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See it All."

Dempsey deliciously describes how he was sucked -- first reluctantly, then enthusiastically, like any self-respecting addict -- into the chirping, tweeting, ruffled-feathered vortex of hard-core birding.

That's birding, Dempsey points out, not to be confused with mere bird-watching. He happily acknowledges the tweedy image, then lightly dismisses it.

His coming-out begins innocently enough. Dempsey invites a couple, whose eccentricities often test the limits of their friendship, to his weekend home. The next morning, he awakes to find them missing, out on a birding jaunt. Dempsey is drawn into the web when he is dumbstruck by the beauty of a common yellowthroat. "Love swelled in my pancreas," he writes, "and I madly wanted to see more."

Such moments of transforming epiphany are something with which we can all identify. I recall my own experience when, working as a reporter in Red Wing, I accompanied a woman from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources as she conducted the annual midwinter bald eagle survey along the Mississippi River.

Against the clear, ice-blue sky, I spied a silhouette in a limb overhanging Highway 61. "Oh! Oh! There's one!"

"Umm. Hmm. I think that's actually a crow," she replied, demonstrating obvious experience dealing with overexcited first-graders. Just as I admired her restraint in not chortling, I silently congratulated myself for not choosing that particular moment to remind her that, as a taxpayer, technically I was her boss.

An otherwise wonderful, brisk day of watching and counting eagles in their full natural glory concluded with a thud: me running over my tape recorder, which held hours of insightful conversation in the parking lot where she dropped me off.

You don't have to be a digressing, dull-witted journalist to have your own Dempsey moment. There are many of them in the book, as the intrepid trio first make forays around Central Park, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As the cheery mania deepens, we follow the adventure to Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Florida, Washington state and Colorado "to see it all."

The frustrations, the elation and the sometimes-frayed relations along the way have the brilliant feel of Bill Bryson, mixing humorous observation, pathos and insight.

Along with the laugh-out-loud moments, woven into the tapestry is British-born Dempsey's deepening love and wonderment at his adopted land. He endures the pain of a divorce and entailing struggles to remain a good father, and despairs over the effects of global warming on birds and our interconnected well-being.

But the birds always bring him back, swelling the pancreas, as certain as the swallows return to Capistrano.

Might as well say it: Dempsey's a hoot.

Jim Anderson is a copy editor for the Star Tribune.