Sunshine in my heart

No sun here in Georgia or in Duluth today--it's supposed to be rainy and blustery on Hawk Ridge, at least this morning. But those lovely people brought plenty of sunshine to me by taking their photos with my book! Really famous people! Above are this year's counters, Karl Bardon (the one who called out my first Boreal Chickadees of the season, putting his sharp ears as well as eyes to the task!) and Eileen Muller, literally a migrant worker from Mexico, who's seen and tallied some of the amazing hawk counts in Veracruz! I was in Veracruz a year ago at the Ornithological Conference, and got to see some of that amazing spectacle. As soon as I heard Eileen was going to be on the job this year, I knew it would be in good hands--or, should I say?, eyes. Below is the effervescent Volunteer Coordinator and Naturalist Julie O'Connor, who doesn't know how NOT to smile and who spends her summers showing everyone who passes by Duluth's downtown Peregrine Falcons; Hawk Ridge's brand new Executive Director Janelle Long (who I haven't had much chance to get to know, but she's got a smile in her voice as well as on her face and has the knowledge, experience, and ability to work with people to get the job done); and the ever-wise, warm and wonderful Education Director Debbie Waters. Thanks SO much, everyone!
It's not too late for YOU to send in a photo showing you and/or Stephen Colbert reading my book!

Cartersville, Georgia

Wow I'm tired. I left Chicago at 7 am CDT, and got to Cartersville, Georgia at 9 EDT. I'd have gotten past Atlanta except for two accidents that put traffic at a standstill for quite a while--they both looked really bad. Plus there was a horrific accident going the opposite way outside Chicago. I've reached a point where I don't even mind going at a snail's pace in these situations--it hardly seems an inconvenience in light of what the poor people IN the accident are going through.

How did I occupy my mind during the long, lonely drive? I always watch for birds, of course--lots of Turkey Vultures and a couple of Black Vultures, lots of Red-tailed Hawks, a kestrel and a Broad-wing, plenty of Blue Jays and crows, a few blackbird flocks, some robins, bazillions of starlings and pigeons. My favorite bird of the day was the Pileated Woodpecker that flew over the highway in southern Indiana. I tossed out a few crumbs at a rest stop for the House Sparrows. I did my first ornithology class paper about House Sparrow foraging behavior where people toss them food, back in 1975. Today's House Sparrows follow the same pattern, with the female investigating first, and males coming in after it's clear she has a suitable meal. Reminds me of Betty the New Caledonian Crow, who makes tools to pull food out of a tube. Her mate gets food the easy way--he waits for Betty to pull it out, and then he "shares."

While on the road, I played "the odometer game." This is a game of my own devising. It is impossible to play with a brand new car--you need at least 3 digits on the odometer, and it gets easier when you have 4 or 5 digits and easiest when you have 6, which is what I had today. You have to make an equation using those numbers, in order, adding whatever symbols you need to make both sides equal. For example, if the odometer reads 113709, you could write 1x(-1+3) = -7+0+9, or 1=1x(3+7)+0-9 The trick is, if you're going exactly 60 mph, you have exactly one minute at most from the time you notice the numbers till you have to have a workable equation--then the odometer clicks to the next number. It's a quintessentially geeky game, but it keeps the extra spaces of my brain occupied while I'm tooling along singing to my iPod, watching birds, blinking my lights at passing trucks who need to get in in front of me, and overall trying to drive safely. I love how Birdchick tries and succeeds at "show[ing] the world that you can be a birder without being a geek." We NEED non-geeky role models in birding. But just because you can be a birder without being a geek doesn't mean you CAN'T be a geek, and I am living proof.

I'm getting shockingly good mileage. From Duluth to Rocky Rococo's in Arlington, WI, I got 50 mpg. From Rocky's to somewhere in Indiana, I got 54. From there to close to Chattanooga, Tennessee, I got 57. The first ten miles after that fill-up, I got 99.9! Well, that was all downhill. But I'm 120 miles past that fill up now and still averaging 60 mpg. Not bad, Toyota. I do wish the company was supporting efforts to raise the American auto fleet's overall mileage. Oh, well.

Where are the truckers of yesteryear?

I made it as far as Chicago, and while I was driving my mind wandered to the Greyhound bus trips I used to take back and forth to college. On Sunday nights when I rode from home in Chicago back to Urbana, Illinois, I used to sit up front by the driver. I went home often enough that he recognized me and we used to have long conversations. That was back in the days when bus drivers were allowed to have conversations with passengers, and I think it helped him stay wide awake. Anyway, I'd observe how he flashed his headlights when a truck or another bus had passed him, signaling the other driver that all was clear to pull ahead of him. My bus driver said it could be really stressful to be pulling a big rig and trying to keep track of little cars that might pull to the right to pass just before you were trying to get into the right lane, and it was also tricky to gauge whether you'd truly passed a vehicle and that the driver knew you wanted to pull in. So this little "all clear" was appreciated, and when a truck pulled in front of us, that driver would flash his tail lights back at my driver in a little sign of thanks.

I loved how courteous the highways seemed back then. I didn't learn to drive until I was 22 or so, but as soon as I took to the open road in my trusty Ford Pinto, I started flashing my lights whenever trucks passed me, when it was safe for them to pull in. And 90% of them flashed their tail lights back at me. It made the highways as friendly for me as Baltimore was to Tracy Turnblad.

Hardly any truckers nowadays seem aware of this friendly tradition. Few of them flash to give each other the all clear, and even fewer expect auto drivers to do this. Last time I drove home from the Twin Cities, three truckers blinked their tail lights at me, but today, even with all the trucks passing me near Tomah and on the Illinois tollway, only one driver blinked. I bet if it were possible to get reliable statistics for each year from the 1950s through this decade, one would find a perfect inverse correlation between the number of auto drivers signaling truckers that it was safe to pull ahead of them and the number of auto drivers giving truckers and other drivers the finger. Something has been lost. Does anyone but me miss it?

Florida, here I come!

I'm headed to Florida today--well, I'll only get as far as Chicago, then will go another 800 miles or so tomorrow, and make it to Orlando on Saturday. I'm bringing our lovely "old" Prius to our son Joe, and flying home on Tuesday. Joe doesn't have any time off from his job at Disney World on Sunday and Monday, the two days I'll be there all day. I'll spend one of them at Disney World, working on my Checklist of (Wild) Birds of Walt Disney World (which used to be on my old blog--I have to figure out how to get it back because it was a pretty useful thing for birders who were stuck going to Disney World with their families but wanted to see real birds), and the other day I'll probably drive off to Merritt Island by myself to see what I can see. I'll post whenever I get Internet.

Final ghost story in the trilogy

He missed his wife. It was a year ago exactly that she had collapsed, dead, in the snow.

Those damned bird feeders! He shouldn’t have gone to work that morning, not when she was so sick, the cancer eating away at her breasts and bones and lungs. It wasn’t the cancer that killed her, though. The doctor said it was her heart. He came home to find her lying there, spilled sunflower seeds scattered around her, the bucket on its side, one of those stupid birds actually sitting on her face, not flying off until he stooped to pick her up. She was dead, of course, stiff and cold as ice. She must have been there the entire day.

It was all his fault. Why hadn’t he filled the feeders himself? Of course, it was her fault, too. Why was it so important to keep those damned feeders filled? He never filled them again, and every time the chickadees came to the window, staring at him, he stared back emptily. So the hell what if you’re hungry? My wife is dead.

The chickadees should have disappeared as soon as they’d finished the seeds. But a year later, they were still coming. Damn them! Every time he looked at one, its eyes sparkling with life, he thought of his wife’s dead eyes, open and glazed, staring out. She had a smile on her lips but her eyes were dead.

This morning when the chickadees came, they seemed especially annoying. One actually tapped on the window, staring him down insistently. He wanted to grab it and crush it and throw it in the snow. And suddenly he stood up and headed down into the basement and grabbed a fistful of seeds and was standing on the porch before he knew what was happening. And without a moment’s hesitation, in flew that windowsill chickadee, straight to his hand. As if in slow motion he watched his fingers curl as the chickadee looked up at him. His fingertips touched the chickadee’s wings, and still it gazed up at him. And a spark flew from the chickadee’s eyes and pierced his heart and there she was, smiling at him, telling him in all but words that she was okay. The cancer didn’t kill her. She had triumphed over it, dying in a burst of joy, diamonds of snow sparkling all around her, chickadees filling her eyes and ears and fingertips with happiness that infused every cell of her body.

He loosened his fingers. The chickadee looked into his weary eyes, and in the chickadee’s eye sparkle he saw his wife. She was in heaven, right here on earth.

Another ghost story

She sat in the marsh at dawn, gazing at delicate tendrils of fog rising from the water or, maybe, descending from the heavens. A large raft of Wood Ducks materialized in the growing light, swimming peaceably. Suddenly the rising sun's brilliant beams caught an old, spent shotgun shell on the ground beside her. She idly picked it up, and at that moment an icy gust--the wind?--passed through her. And in that instant she felt her brother’s presence beside her. Or, rather, within her. In this marsh, one year ago today, he and his dog had disappeared on opening day of duck season, never to be found.

One of the ducks looked into her eyes with a level gaze, its red eyes glowing. She looked through the flock, realizing that every one of the birds was staring at her with that same menacing gaze. Suddenly she felt icy water and the weird, rubbery feel of fleshy yellow and black webs with irritating claws relentlessly patting on her face and body, holding her down, down as she gasped for air, swallowing water, water filling her lungs. The dog beside her struggled desperately, too. And then all was black.

As she fainted, the shotgun shell flew from her hands and dropped into the water. Her mind cleared and she shuddered. She knew. But who would ever believe her?

She stood up and started to walk away, but before she reached the rise and the pond disappeared from view, she turned for one last look at the Wood Ducks, again feeding peacefully. One looked up at her and winked.

Chicken rescue

It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it.

Charles Durning: My hero

I love Charles Durning. Handsome and sweet, and in some of my favorite movies, such as The Sting, Tootsie, and The Muppet Movie, and the number one reason I kept tuning into one lovely TV show, Evening Shade. But I didn't know until last week that Durning was not only a veteran of World War II, but a genuine hero, awarded a Silver Star, three Purple Heart medals, and a Good Conduct Medal. And he was one of the few survivors of the infamous Malmedy massacre of American POWs. That massacre was discussed on tonight's edition of The War, though no mention was made of Durning's role. So I'm posting this just so's you know.

I wish I could get a photo of HIM holding my book!

By the way, Durning was in Duluth in the late 1980s filming Far North, which had one of the best movie soundtracks EVER in terms of bird songs. Of course, that's because the technical adviser for the bird songs in the soundtrack was Bill Evans, a noted night-sound authority and the man who created towerkill.com I have strange, tiny connections to both the movie and to Bill Evans. The film actor Donald Moffat honest to goodness went into KUMD to ask for a tape of MY PROGRAM!!!!! And he wrote the station a very kind letter about how much he enjoyed it.

And also in the late 80s, Bill Evans spent a few days keeping me company when I was doing "Dawn Dickey Duty" at the Lakewood Pumping Station. This was after I'd successfully fought US West's plan to build a 300-foot guyed, lighted cell phone tower on Moose Mountain, just north of Hawk Ridge, directly on the path where many of our raptors and nocturnal songbirds migrate. On the strength of my arguments about the potential for such a tower built precisely on the migration pathway, Lakewood Township's Zoning Board and Planning Board both voted unanimously to deny the permits to build the tower. After the 3-member Town Board reversed the vote (honest to goodness, one of them got right in my face and said "No damn bitch is gonna tell me a bird with eagle eyes is gonna fly into no guy wire!"), I filed in District Court and US West gave up and put up a 100-foot wooden pole cemented in the ground. The new "tower" is short enough to not need FAA lighting and lacking the guy wires which are so lethal to birds. I pointed out the wooden tower to Bill Evans, and it got him really interested in the issue. And boy did he run with it!

A little ghost story

She sat shivering in the Congaree Swamp for days, waiting and watching until she grew too cold to even shiver, her fingertips ready on her ice-cold camera, moving only when the battery light went out and she put in fresh batteries. When her lungs felt too cold to function anymore and her vision grew blurred, she took out her only book of matches. One by one she burned them, holding them close to her face, mesmerized by the glow as she breathed in the warmth, trying to remember why she was here, who she was waiting for. But her mind was growing as numb as her body.

Just as the last match’s flame shrunk and died out, along with all hope, the earth itself grew bright. And emerging not so much from the glowing forest as from the sky itself, in flew the specter she had been longing to see, on ethereal wingbeats, black and white and red, substantial yet somehow... She pulled her stiff and heavy arms up and followed the bird with her camera, clicking over and over and over. Photo after photo, until as the bird winged past her with a soft breath of feathers against her face, everything disappeared in a strange burst of brilliant white and red.

The Forest Service helicopter pilot was jolted to see white and red sparks flying above the trees over the wilderness. Fire! But the red sparks looked more crimson than orange, and he’d never seen a forest fire spurt white sparks. And there was no smoke. The response team was shocked—despite the fading but still unearthly glow, the forest was quiet and empty. All they found was a pile of burnt-out matches and a digital camera which was never claimed at the Forest Service office. Months later, in Minnesota, the search for Amanda Campephilus, a little-known ornithologist, was ended. Her husband was arrested for her murder, but no body was ever found and no motive ever noted, and eventually he was released.

Holy crap! I'm a "wordinista" or "the literati"!!

My fantasy photo

Wow--I made it into the No Fact Zone, the Stephen Colbert and ‘The Colbert Report’ News Blog and Fan Site, for my comments last week informing Stephen Colbert that the loon on Canadian dollar coins is not a duck!

I'm going to have to put together some sort of contest challenging people to take a REAL-LIFE photo of Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart holding my book. I have absolutely no money (right now I'm afraid I just barely qualify as a thousandaire--not even a ten-thousandaire), but as a prize for the first person to get a photo to me, I could offer a complete set of the 3.52 books I've written (I wrote 100% of "For the Birds: an Uncommon Guide, Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids, and 101 Ways to Help Birds, 50% of Earth's Chemical Clues: The Story of Geochemistry [I am not making this up, oddly enough], and 2% of Good Birders Don't Wear White: Fifty Tips from North America's Top Birders), or I could bring Archimedes anywhere within the lower-48 to do an owl program for the classroom or organization of your choice.