Frequently Seen Birds

One of the things I like about my job is being in close proximity to Dulles Airport, where I can watch planes take off. Here are the highlights of a typical week:

• Tuesday around 12:30 p.m. or so: a robin's egg blue Korean Airlines 747 roars over our office off of what must be runway 19-right.
• Periodically, around closing time, a United Airlines 747 takes off.
• Around closing time, I'm usually chasing a Lufthansa 747 up Rt. 28, but for some reason, he always wins.
• Numerous 777s and 757s head northward (if it's a northward day and not a westward one) and then bank off to the east for their transatlantic trips.
• On occasion, I catch a South African Airways Airbus A340 (has four engines like a 747) heading north.
• Numerous small jets coming inbound in the morning (sometimes from the north, sometimes from the south).

It's all part of the fun of big metal birdwatching. Can you imagine having a banding session for this type of species? I think they call it the annual plane pull, held at Dulles....