The Joy Of Birding

Avocet Chick – Bear River Migratory bird refuge

Birding is one if those things people do to get outside and commune with nature where many of the wild birds live. Their sole purpose is to look at those birds and say “I saw you, now I can go home and have a beer.” They make a list of all the different kinds of birds they’ve seen over the years and write them down in a little book, which is called their ‘Life List’. This is shown to other birders and gets them Street Cred in the “I saw a bird and you didn’t” world of birding.

This is not a sport for the uneducated. You can’t be stone cold dumb and be a birder. Many birders have attended highly prestigious places of edification where they don’t necessarily teach birding per se, but they do teach Latin which is used to name and classify bird species and confuse non Latin speakers. This makes the Latin user appear to be much brighter than the poor unwashed non Latin speaker and maintains the guild system that we Americans seem to love so much. It also keeps the rif-raf where they belong and the superior, well, superior. This system is primarily human based as the birds themselves couldn’t give a flying fig about what people call them. Except for peacocks, they are so vain.

One of the burning questions in the birding world is where to go to see birds. Where do they live? Are they accessible to Americans? Does one have to quarantine before looking at a bird? Can you see a bird if you don’t know its Latin name? What do they eat? Are they carnivorous? Do they favor the various root vegetables such as Rutabaga or Turnips? We know they don’t like Parsnips, nobody likes parsnips. These are just a few of the questions asked by people who don’t know any better but want to know so they can move up in the birding world.

One of the places where you can go and look at a bird is one of the various wildlife refuges. This is land that the government has deemed to be of absolutely no other use and therefore suitable to warehouse our excessive bird inventory. Species like those little brown birds you see pecking at everything everywhere. They’re all over the place. You’ve probably tripped over them. It’s very likely they have a Latin name of some sort but who knows what it is. Even if you heard it you wouldn’t know what it meant so one can safely discount and ignore them and go on to look at more interesting birds.

Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge near Brigham City, Utah is one of those holding pens where excess birds are held until they’re needed elsewhere. There you can see huge quantities of birds. They have them stacked all over the place. There are whole fields of those little brown birds spoken of before, which has been learned are actually a house sparrow or the Latin named Passer domesticus. There are great huge lumps of the White Faced Ibis piled willy nilly in unsightly stacks anywhere it’s wet. There you can select an assortment of birds for your own migratory bird refuge, if you have one. Way in the back of the refuge where it’s quieter, is an enormous area filled with lockers where larger birds such as the Tundra Swan are kept until it’s time to cut them loose and send them on up to the Tundra where apparently they are desperately needed at different times of the year.

One of the all time favorites for birders is the American Avocet. The image above is of a young Avocet or chick as they’re more vulgarly known. They look surprisingly like an adult Avocet only smaller. Its bill or beak has yet to grow into the graceful recurve that it uses to sweep through and syphon the water for its favorite food, the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae which is only found here at the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. At least it is believed to be the Rattle-back Shinsnuggler larvae. There were no explanatory signs to indicate what the food is so an assumption was made which is believed to be close to what ever it is that the young Avocet or Chick is eating.

If you are interested in ‘Birding’ or its companion sport ‘Snake-ing’ you can contact any sporting goods store where they’ll sell you everything you might possibly need in the way of birding equipment. They also might tell you where to see birds but I wouldn’t count on that. However you already know where to go as you have just been told right here. It’s the Bear River Migratory bird refuge. So, Happy Birding then, and look down occasionally, that’s where the snakes are.

Tortuga la Rouge

Tortuga la Rouge – Iroquois

To borrow a title from the renown author Robert Heinlein, who we have here is another Stranger in a Strange Land. Like Valentine Michael Smith he is a traveler from a far off place brought from the land of the Iroquois to the furthest reaches of the West to attend a rendezvous in the 1830’s Rocky Mountains.

During the 1830’s it was extremely unusual to have a representative from one of the Eastern tribes be present at a rendezvous set in the area of the plains and inner mountain tribes. How he got there is due primarily to the fur trade. He was attached to the Hudson Bay fur company which was well established in the area where the Iroquois and other eastern tribes were settled. As the Hudson Bay company moved west he traveled with them. Upon reaching the mountains he deserted and joined up with a competitive American trapping party who took part in the rendezvous and so, was able to attend the event. He must have been a curiosity for the other attendees especially for the other tribes who very likely had never seen another Native American from a place over a thousand miles away to the East.

He is dressed in the style of his people at the time, circa 1760 and later, and his finery as he described it, includes a peace metal that was presented to the attendees of the Treaty of Easton by the Quaker parties. The earring and nose pendant are of the Quahog shells or Wampum. The turban, horn strap and bag are woven with the beads in the weave itself. The knife sheath is decorated with dyed porcupine quillwork. There are some trade silver brooches on the shirt and he is carrying an incredible *Presentation Pipe tomahawk forged from an old gun barrel. All in all an imposing figure.

The rendezvous were huge events for the mountain men and Indians of the Rocky mountains where they spent their time trapping furs throughout the year. It was their most important gathering where they could resupply, blow off some steam, and visit with old friends. And sometimes meet strangers from a strange land.

*The Incredible Presentation Pipe was actually made by the reenactor himself, Tortuga la Rouge, by forging it out of an old gun barrel. The skill that this took is amazing and reflects the lengths the participants of these events go to maintain authenticity and honor the traditions and customs of the people they represent.

Dancing In The Dust

Buffalo – Yellowstone National Park – Click for larger view

It’s summer and the the young buffalo are feeling itchy and out of sorts. Something’s coming up, they can feel it but don’t know what it is. All they know is they have to run around, and buck, and spin, and fall to their knees. Pushing their snouts in to the fresh dirt they’ve stirred up, and using their horns to tear up the ground is also on tap. If one of their herd mates is close by they might try and goad them into a sparring match but nothing too serious. The time for the real fighting is still a couple of months away. It’s the prelude to the Rut and these first timers are just at the mercy of their hormones.

The Rut is the breeding season for the buffalo and it is the largest event in their lives. The urge to breed is totally consuming and will occupy their time with fighting, chasing willing and unwilling cows, bellowing, kicking up dirt and dust and generally being swept up in the compulsive nature of their lives. This young buffalo used an old wallow as the center point of his frustration and danced and ran in circles around it and thru it and put on a spectacle that lasted until it was exhausted and finally collapsed to rest. To the observer it was dancing in the dust and for a large animal it was surprisingly graceful.

First Bend in The River

Bill and Lee Bailey – First Bend in the River

Any adventure worth its salt starts with a single defining moment. In this case it is the first bend in the river at the beginning of an unknown journey, an untested trip down the Arkansas river. The sun is shining, the river is calm, its surface showing the first indications of white water, not huge rapids but still a change from it placid meandering into a focused point of energy. A rapid movement of water where it will soon sluice between large rocks and over hidden snags, drop several feet in elevation with startling rapidity into shallows that can tear the bottom out of the boat, all unknowns that can alter the course of this journey in an instance. But all those possibilities lie ahead, after all the unknown, that which makes it into an adventure, are still to come, around the first bend in the river.

Bull Boats On The Arkansas River

Bruce Day – Gabe Hanratty in Bull Boat on the Arkansas river

Bull Boats, they’re all the rage on the Western rivers in the 1830’s- 40’s. Here’s one now loaded to the gunnels with everything necessary for a journey. Including but not limited to beaver traps, miscellaneous beaver trapping paraphernalia other than traps, supplies, sundries, ointments, unguents, bandages, fulminate of mercury tablets, food stuffs, a book on how to trap beaver and make money, another book of maps of unknown beaver rich tributaries, 12th ed., fire starting gear, tobacco, pipes to smoke tobacco with, extra things to repair the boat in case it gets ruin’t, pen and water proof ink to write help messages with, many small letter size pieces of parchment to write on, compass, hatchet, extra gunpowder in Arkansas river-proof containers, 200 hundred individually flaked flints for their rifles, two rifles, musket balls, lead to make musket balls, small cast iron pot to melt lead, little patches of cloth to separate ball from gunpowder in rifle, another hatchet in case head comes off first one, English to Comanche dictionary, complete foldable chart of American English to Indian sign language with full illustrations, pistols, very sharp knives, extra feathers for hats, sinew to sew feathers back on if loosened by turbulence, extra leather soles to put in moccasins in case of walking in rocky river, small needles to remove splinters from eye if not ducking in time, beeswax to maintain buffalo tails at either end of boat, good intentions, two excellent mountain men bull boat drivers and other things too numerous to mention. All in all a perfect set up to be a successful river runner.

September Along the Madison

Sunlit Grass – Cow Elk – Along the Madison River – Yellowstone

September in Yellowstone Park is a special time of the year, especially early September. The Rut is still some weeks away yet, the calves are big enough that they’re basically taking care of themselves, and during the hot afternoons the wolves are usually sleeping back at their dens waiting for the cool of the evening before setting out to see what bounty is available. It’s a rare moment for the cows to take a little time for themselves.

This particular cow had found a spot on a small island in the middle of the Madison river and taking advantage of the tall, golden grass covering it, has settled down for some time in the sun. A haven of relative safety she can let her guard down slightly in a rare moment of solitude. The heat of the afternoon, the absence of any breeze, the buzz of the occasional insect, plus the quiet murmuring of the river as it slowly made its way downstream was enough to allow her to recharge and get set for whatever Nature has in store for her. It’s September along the Madison.

Morning Snow

Sandhill Cranes morning flight Bosque Del Apache

On an early December morning a group of Sandhill cranes left for their daily flight to the feeding fields near Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife refuge. It was bitter cold on the high desert near Soccoro, New Mexico and an unusual light snow was falling on the ponds where the Sandhills had spent the night.

Sandhill Cranes can appear ungainly in certain activities but when they take flight they are the epitome of grace and beauty. Similar to cranes in Asia, most notably in Japan, they are very similar in appearance to their Japanese cousins the Red Crowned cranes. The difference being Red Crowned cranes have black tail feathers that droop like a bustle where as the Sandhill crane has straight shorter tail feathers.

This is a photograph reimagined into an art image by the use of software programs and hand manipulation of the elements of the images on the computer. The purpose being to elevate a normal photograph into a vision that brings out the emotional content of the scene while still keeping the primary elements, the cranes, in their original captured state. In other words, Birds in Art.