A well-traveled field guide

I’m a bird watcher. Have been since late grade school.

I’m not as devoted to it now as I once was, but it’s still a worthy challenge to try to identify a particular percher by the length of its tail or whether it has wingbars, or a bird overhead by its flight pattern or the angle of its wings.

Some birds have so distinctive a call that they’re easily recognized before they’re seen.

For some species, the call is their most identifiable characteristic, particularly among some small flycatchers or sparrows. Not that I can always distinguish one from another just by listening, but some similar species can be eliminated from the potential list just by sound.

When I was in high school, Bob Faaborg and I would drive out to Goose Lake, Spring Lake or Dunbar Slough, and walk the paths or slog through the marshes to see what we could scare up.

Bird hikes are especially fruitful in the spring and fall, when migratory species stop through for a few days.

Most birders maintain a “life list,” on which they check off new birds as they spot them.

The first 50 or so are easy. They’re the ones you see in the alley or the front yard, or flying above your house — a robin, house sparrow, crow, pigeon (rock dove), blue jay, starling, turkey vulture, etc.

But the list of birds seen in Iowa numbers over 400, and some of them appear only rarely.

A few are “accidental” or “occasional” visitors, sometimes wandering far from their normal range.

To spot one of those is cause for celebration for a serious birder (which I’m not). It’s sort of like bagging a rare animal would be for a serious hunter.

Over the years, I’ve not limited my birding to Iowa, though. When we think of it (which isn’t always the case), we carry binoculars with us on trips, especially to destinations outside the Midwest, and particularly to places west of mid-Nebraska, mid-Kansas and mid-Dakotas.

That’s because, as nature works its magic, the majority of bird species west of about the 100th meridian or so are significantly different from those east of that line. It has to do with rainfall, and therefore vegetation and other habitat.

Greene County lies about the 94th meridian, and most of our birds are similar to those in other states in the eastern half of the country. Not so from about Wichita, North Platte and Pierre on west.

A seashore, of course, is a mother lode for finding birds you don’t see in Greene County.

An ocean beach is rife with dozens of species alien to Greene County, and the challenge is to spot one you don’t recognize, then find it in your field guide.

A good field guide, like a good set of binoculars, is indispensable for worthwhile birding.
“Birds of North America” is the one I’ve used for 60 years or so.

It’s pretty dog-eared, but the pages are still intact, and I’m familiar enough with it that I can speedily turn to the section where an unknown bird is likely to appear. It’s organized by related groups of birds rather than alphabetically, and that’s a huge benefit.

My copy of the book has my life list in the back. The index (where birds ARE listed alphabetically) has a little box adjacent to each listing, in which you can make an “X” beside a bird you’ve identified.

My copy, therefore, is priceless to me, since it records decades of my bird watching history.

It’s accompanied me to both coasts, to bird sanctuaries off Nova Scotia, along the Rio Grande, through central Florida and many other habitats.

So when it turned up missing on a trip through Wyoming about 45 years ago, it was a major crisis.

We were on a vacation trip to the Black Hills and then down to Rocky Mountain National Park in northern Colorado, west of Denver.

After a few days in the Black Hills, we ventured a few miles across the state line into Wyoming to see Devil’s Tower, then a few more miles across a pass east of Gillette, Wyo., in the northeast part of the state, before we were to turn south to Colorado.

We had decided to forego Yellowstone Park in northwestern Wyoming — it was farther than we could comfortably handle in our schedule.

Our motel was just west of the pass near Gillette. The next morning, we decided to go back up to the pass to catch sight of some early-rising birds, then come back to our room and pack before heading south.

Up at the pass we met an older couple who were also bird watchers. They were pulling a vacation trailer, and we had coffee with them in the trailer before saying goodbye and going back to our motel room to pack.

At the room, as we finished packing, we looked around for the bird book. No book — it had disappeared.

We mentally retraced our steps that morning and realized the book had to be in our new acquaintances’ trailer. They were headed west, they had told us, for Yellowstone.

The decision was obvious.

We took off west across Wyoming to try to recover the book.

It was Sunday morning, and we thought they might stop for church, so we checked every church parking lot we came to.

Hours went by, and we were about to give up hope. But we caught up with them, at Cody, Wyo., about 60 miles east of Yellowstone.

We pulled alongside, waved them down and after they parked along the shoulder, we found our bird book in their trailer. Everyone had a good laugh.

By then, we were so close to Yellowstone we decided to visit it after all.

It was spectacular, of course, and we cut short our time in Colorado on the way back to get back on schedule.

Everything came out all right after all, and I still have my “Birds of North America” — with a few check marks next to some Yellowstone species in the index.

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Jefferson Bee & Herald
Address: 200 N. Wilson St.
Jefferson, IA 50129

Phone:(515) 386-4161