Why I Bird

by Phil Wedge
Assistant Professor of English

. . . he stood against a big gum tree beside a little bayou whose black still water crept without motion out of a cane-brake, across a small clearing and into the cane again, where, invisible, a bird, the big woodpecker called Lord-to-God by Negroes, clattered at a dead trunk.

William Faulkner, "The Bear"

I can't remember a time binoculars weren't at hand when I was a kid. My mother had the bug and transferred it to me by the time I was a scout. The first "rare" bird I independently identified was a Mississippi kite that had perched atop the TV antenna at our house in Old West Lawrence. The sun and clouds made it difficult to make out more than an outline, but I knew it was a hawk-like bird I'd never seen before, with a triangular tail. On the inside cover of my mom's battered Peterson field guide, I found the kite's silhouette perfectly etched in black and knew I had something special. It had gone beyond the range map's coverage of Kansas. I was elated when Professor Raymond Hall from down the street, who worked at the Natural History Museum, confirmed my ID. I was 14. I was hooked.

I know birders who drop most anything they're doing to chase a true rarity, something spouses and bosses must get used to. Recently, a northern three-toed woodpecker was found in the very southwest corner of Kansas. It should have been in Rocky Mountain National Park or places farther north. When it was still in the same tree the next morning, birders from all over the state raced to get there before, ignorant of its status as a first state record, it vanished.

When I can add a bird to my list, when it's not totally inconvenient job- and family-wise, I'm there. I'm a lister as well as a birder. But it's not just a "tick" on a list for me either. I love to be out in nature, even in extreme conditions, to observe birds, to find new species or to watch familiar ones. I help with Christmas counts, annual surveys of birds in a given area on a designated day. I've sat with a friend on a picnic table in subzero temperatures, squinting through scopes to count waterfowl in a hole in the ice at Lake Perry, hoping for something new. I once hiked five miles down a canyon in the Arizona heat to hear and see a life bird, the five-striped sparrow, which breeds in only two desert canyons in the USA. We left camp at 5 a.m. to be sure we were there by 8. If we got there after 9, it might have stopped singing. Kind of obsessive, huh?

How I ever got my wife to go camping in Texas in August so we could see birds, I don't know, but despite the deer ticks at Huntsville, the mosquitoes under the shower at Goose Island and the fire ants everywhere, we survived, thanks to wood storks, roseate spoonbills and a host of other stunning "lifers." We even stopped at the Big Thicket, where ivory-billed woodpeckers had once been reported, hoping . . .

This fourth of July weekend I dragged the family out to north central Kansas so I could run three Breeding Bird Survey routes for the U.S. Geological Survey. You start the count around 5:30 a.m. at a designated spot, record birds seen and heard, by species and individual, for three minutes; drive half a mile, count three minutes; and so on for about 25 miles and four hours of birding. I do the same routes each year, past many wheat fields, enjoying the occasional cluster of trees, small creek, hedgerow, counting pheasants and meadowlarks and dickcissels till my pencil breaks. I can't wait till I reach stop 41 on the Jamestown route (through Cloud and Republic counties) because I should hear a song sparrow. It's one of the few spots in Kansas where they breed.

My 13-year-old son sometimes joins me on these counts while the others sleep on in the motel. When we found a belted kingfisher this year in the middle of nowhere, and I said something a little more profane than "Lord to God" in my excitement, we high-fived and smiled — and kept counting. To find a bird where I least expect it, to know its call before I see it, to know its sex and age when I do, to watch it feed and nest and rest without, I hope, disturbing it — that's why I bird. No doubt that's part of what drives others to haunt the swamps of Arkansas or Louisiana, looking for something invisible in the thicket, clattering at a dead trunk.