I am a birder. I
have never been competitive about it like the guys in the book and movie “The
Big Year,” but I pay attention to birds.
Because I pay attention to them, I’ve had several odd encounters with
birds over the years. Here are a few of
the oddest.
One
Many years ago, I worked in a house by a University. One afternoon as I left work, I noticed that
there was a Great Horned Owl in a cottonwood in front of the house. As owls often are, it was being mobbed by a
flock of crows. I rode a bike to work at
the time, so after watching the owl for a few minutes, I got on my bike and
started home. My house was about two
miles distant as the crow flies, somewhat longer following the grid of streets.
As I biked home, I continued to hear the mob of crows off
in the distance, even as I started getting close to my house. When I arrived home, within a minute the
Great Horned Owl landed in an Elm in front of my house, still followed by
crows. What are the odds of that
happening at random? Or was the owl
following me? I’m not sure which
possibility is odder.
Two
Another Great Horned Owl.
This one I saw flying a distance away, noticing that there was something
strange about it. It seemed
misshapened. As it got close, I saw that
a Red-winged Blackbird was perched on its back like a rider on a horse. It rode that owl for at least another half
mile. And was still riding it when I lost track of them. If I was unaware of the hostility that
songbirds typically have for owls, I might have thought they had formed a fairy
story alliance.
Three
I like birds, but I like cats too, and despite birder
disapproval, I let my cat outside. It is
a good hunter and it brings to my doorstep a steady stream of mice and an occasional
baby Cottontail and English Sparrows. I
am not sentimental about nature -- it is filled with death. Yet I’ve tried to tell my cat he doesn’t need
to bring me his trophies, especially the ones that are still alive.
One autumn morning my cat came to the door with a bird. I could immediately see it was not the usual
sparrow. I got the bird away from my cat
after it came inside, and the bird ran and hid. Eventually I was able to find
and identify the bird. It was a Yellow
Rail.
Now I live in the middle of a city and I’m pretty sure
there is no breeding population of Yellow Rails within fifty miles of where I
live. Even in the rural areas of my
state the bird is not common; though not rare either, but always hard to
see. In fact, this was the first Yellow
Rail I had ever seen and certainly the strangest way I ever added a bird to my
life list. So what was this rail doing
in my door yard that morning? There had
been a mild storm the night before, and I can only think that the bird had been
migrating and gotten grounded by the storm.
I let the bird outside and it ran into the bushes. It didn’t look hurt. I’d like to think it survived, but probably
it didn’t.
Four
Several of these odd encounters involve crows. Crows, I have observed, are every bit as
intelligent as reputed.
I am in the habit of getting up early and having a cup of
coffee on my porch. One morning while
doing this I observed three crows and a rabbit out in the street. A crow seemed to be taunting the rabbit, and
the rabbit chased the crow. Then another
crow came and taunted it and the rabbit chased that crow back across the
street. This went on through several
iterations. It seemed like an odd game.
I learned later that this crow behavior has been observed
by others. The belief is that the crows
hope that by luring the rabbit back and forth across the street, it will eventually
get run over by a car and become a drive through meal. How devious!
I can’t imagine that this is genetic-based behavior, so I assume that it
is learned and passed down from parent crows to children. On that particular day, the strategy didn’t
work.
Five
Another crow. I
had learned that a Peregrine Falcon had made its nest under the I-94 bridge crossing
the Mississippi. I was looking for it, when I saw a crow doing something most
un-crowlike. The crow had flown high in
the sky and dived down on a starling, catching it in is “talons.” The crow, not actually equipped with talons,
was not able to hold on to the bird, and the starling dropped dazed just a few
feet from me. Eventually it recovered and
flew away.
I highly suspect that this crow had observed the
Peregrine Falcon use this technique on its prey and thought it would give it a
try. I have yet to find another report
of crows hunting in this falcon-like manner.
Six
A flock of swans flying in front of a full moon is a
hauntingly beautiful sight. I have been
lucky enough to witness this three different times in my life. Perhaps even better, I have also observed a
flock of cranes fly in front of a full moon. On a full moon night during migration, who
needs a better reason to take a walk than this?
Seven
So far all of these encounters occurred in the city where
I live. This one was in a wild area
along Lake Superior. I had gone out in
the morning to meditate on the rocks overlooking the lake. I was deep in meditation when a Northern
Goshawk landed about ten feet from me on a rock. We sat there together for many minutes – two
well-focused beings. It is hard to judge
the quality of another’s meditation, but I’d like to think that the goshawk’s presence
was a favorable judgment on mine.
Eight
A cold February day, late in the afternoon. I was birding with a small group in a bog in
northern Minnesota. Through my
binoculars, I scanned the landscape hoping to find a Hawk Owl, perhaps, or
better a Great Gray. In the field of
vision I saw a bird. “What the hell!” I exclaimed
-- a six foot tall bird in the Minnesota woods?
But there is was, an Emu. In that
little off-beat corner of nowhere, somebody had an Emu farm. Who’d a thunk it?
Nine
While in college, I worked for a couple of summers as a
state park naturalist. One of the
activities I provided was an early Sunday morning birding hike. On this particular morning, I had attracted a
good-sized group for the hike.
Unfortunately, the birds had apparently gone to church because during
the hour long hike, there was a scanty showing of birds. I was feeling rather bad about having gotten
these good people up so early for nothing.
Then, as we were coming back to the campground, in the same tree
together, one shining like a blue fire and the other like a red fire, an Indigo
Bunting and a Scarlet Tanager. The oohs
and aahs of a beautiful redemption!
A few weeks later no one showed up for my Sunday hike,
but I decided to go out and do it any way, just for practice. While walking I noticed a Bald Eagle flying
in the sky, and then saw another one.
They flew together and the one slipped underneath the other, and I got
to witness my first dalliance of eagles.
Oh how I would have enjoyed sharing that with a group.
Ten
One evening, while I was courting the woman who was to
become my wife (and still is 30-odd, so very odd, years later), we were walking
beside a lake and I noticed a Starling that was flying in an erratic manner. Getting closer, I could see why. It had a fish hook stuck in its beak, and the
hook was attached to a line that was tangled in the tree.
I hated to see the bird suffer like that, so I climbed up
the tree, which leaned out over the lake.
I got to the bird, and then felt myself falling. The tree had crashed in the water with me in
it. I unhooked the Starling and set it
free and splashed my way to shore. I
must have looked like a dripping muskrat coming out of the water, but I think I
had made a pretty good impression on my lady anyway.
