Reluctant Birder

Many people deeply connected to the natural world have always been drawn to birds. Not so our commentator, who came to her fascination only recently. The Allegheny Front's Karen Schaefer recounts how her new-found love of bird-watching came to be.

“For most of my life, I never paid much attention to birds.

There was that summer in the Colorado Rockies, when my father suddenly cried out, “Look! Golden eagles!” We duly admired the rare, golden-headed birds as they soared on the thermal winds. But I was more interested in boys than I was in eagles.

It wasn't until after I moved to the not-so-wilds of northern Ohio 25-years ago that my attitude began to change. Here, I met people who festooned their winter gardens with bird feeders. Why, I wanted to know? Couldn't the birds fend for themselves? Because we like to watch them, they said. Watch birds? I still didn't get it.

Then in 2002, an entire Lake Erie Island was declared an Important Bird Area by the National Audubon Society. As an environmental reporter for a local public radio station, I was invited to attend the day-long festivities. I arose before dawn and caught the first ferry. Bird-watching, I discovered, was all about getting up before the birds.

On the ferry, I met other early-risers from as far away as Canada, their Eddie Bauer parkas draped in expensive cameras and powerful binoculars. My newfound acquaintances introduced me to native cormorants who dive-bombed the waves like sleek black jet fighters, snatching up silvery fish and gulping them down like sword-swallowers.

As I wandered the island, I began to absorb the birdwatchers’ excitement. I caught the joy of a naturalist as he spotted a peregrine falcon soaring over limestone quarries. I stood dumbstruck with the group who marveled at the sweet songs of slender red-eyed vireos and tiny yellow warblers. How, I wondered, could such miniscule migratory birds, some weighing less than an ounce, survive the annual trek across thousands of miles from their winter homes in South America to this particular Lake Erie island?

Then, taken from a mist net strung across a woodland path, I briefly held one of those tiny butter-yellow birds, its fast-beating heart pulsing frantically against my fingers. In my hand was an epic voyager, a peerless Lilliputian journeyer, mine to admire for the brief moment it took to wrap an identifying band around its slender leg. I released it with regret and with a silent prayer for its safe passage.

Since that day, I have actively sought encounters with wild birds. Some have been less than pleasant. At one wildlife sanctuary I watched a naturalist feed an ailing turkey vulture with road-kill, while crooning, “You can't help it that you smell so bad.”

But other bird encounters have been delightful, like driving slowly through the lakeside marshes, watching Great Blue Herons and snowy-white egrets stalk their fishy prey with the slow, elegant dance steps of a Renaissance pavane.

I still know very little about birds. I cannot identify most birds by their calls. And I don't recognize species without consulting a computer.

But when I pull into my driveway, I wait and watch as the English sparrows roosting in my bushes disappear into the winter-barren branches, then slowly hop back out along the slender twigs and re-commence their busy chatter. Every spring, I listen for the first mewing call of the catbird who haunts my yard in the long, hot summers. And I revel in the cuckoo-like call of a bird I have yet to identify, that echoes like an Elizabethan sonnet from treetop to summer treetop.

Karen Schaefer is an independent radio producer living in northern Ohio. This is her first essay for the Allegheny Front.