Birding: It happens to the best of us eventually

 

A male Attwater Prairie Chicken in full boom.

It happens to the best of us eventually. One minute you don’t give a flying flip about birds and then one day you look up and realize the bird feeder is empty and you miss seeing the colorful winged creatures in your yard.

For the record, I’m not a birder, although I’m probably in denial about that. The birds I’m most concerned about are the 26 chickens, eight ducklings and the gosling we are raising on our little farm. That doesn’t mean that the flash of red when a cardinal flies by won’t turn my head. It doesn't stop me from looking around when I hear an owl hoot. I even keep a bird feeder full of seed in a tree outside our back door. Sometimes the squirrels will leave some for the birds!

Whenever I think of birders, I think of people in safari outfits with binoculars and notebooks who hang out in wilderness areas getting wet-your-pants excited about seeing a certain breed of bird or hearing their melodious songs.

“Come here, Norman. Hurry up. The loons! The loons!” – Katherine Hepburn to Peter Finda in “On Golden Pond.”

Growing up in Colorado, we didn’t have a wide variety of birds to swoon over. Robins, barn swallows, magpies and crows were pretty much the norm. Ducks and geese were seasonal each spring and fall. It wasn’t unusual to see pheasants, doves or pigeons. On a rare occasion you might see a hawk. Sure, there were plenty of others, but they had fancy names, and we didn’t see them very often.

In Boy Scouts, we used to send the young boys on snipe hunts, just as our older peers did to us. As a teenager I like to hunt ducks and geese. The only duck I ever got managed to fall into the sewer pond at the local sewer plant. On one hunt, a duck and a bittern took off at the same time. I fired, but it wasn’t the duck that fell. At least that’s what the nice game warden told me.

Down here in Texas, there are more bird varieties than I could possibly imagine. When I joined the Brazos Bend State Park Volunteeer Organization in 2012, I was taught about the various birds that inhabit the park. I was overwhelmed. I still have a hard time remembering what most of them are called and how to tell the difference if something is crowned or crested, scissortailed or breasted, but I do remember that the little, tiny ones are hummingbirds.

I enjoy hanging up a hummingbird feeder and having the little buggers flit around my front porch. I like the challenge of trying to photograph them. They move fast and they’re hard to get.

One birding experience I will never forget came a few years ago when I was working for The Sealy News. Sealy is located near the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge. Twice I was given a private tour early in the morning to see and photograph these critically endangered birds as they did their mating ritual. There are fewer than 200 Attwater Prairie Chickens known to exist, and most of those are at the refuge.

The males will inflate the orangish-yellow sack on their necks and rapidly stomp their feet on the ground, which is called booming. They do this in the spring whenever a female is nearby.

This weekend the refuge is holding its annual Boomin’ and Bloomin’ Festival. It means having to get there by 7 a.m., but it is worth the trip! The protected prairie there has many species of birds and other animals, along with many natural wildflowers that are blooming this time of year.

Last fall I covered the grand opening of REI Co-op in College Station. They were using the event to help raise funds for the Rio Brazos Audubon Society. I got to interview the organization’s president, Mark McDermott.

“We’re a conservation organization, or more specifically a bird conservation organization,” he said. “We run activities and conservation programs that are designed with conserving bird life and the habitat that they need to thrive.”

I might have to check them out someday.

It’s become obvious to me that birding is something that sneaks up on you as you grow older. Even though I don’t identify as a birder, I think it’s happening to me. I probably won’t wind up an old man on park bench feeding pigeons, but my family enjoys feeding he seagulls off the back of the Galveston ferry boats. I guess that’s kind of the same thing.