Column: Festival proves birding is more interesting than reality television

Al Batt, Nature's World

Published Saturday, February 28, 2009

Al Batt

My neighbor Crandall stops by.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“Everything is nearly copacetic. I was over at Ma’s helping her put more plates on her walls. If the walls of her house could talk, they would say, ‘No more nails!’ This winter has caused me to spend too much time indoors and when I spend too much time indoors, I spend too much time eating. I’ve eaten so much lately that I’m sweating gravy. It’s not my fault, I’m at that eating age.”

“Everyone worries about what they eat between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We should worry more about what we eat between Christmas and Thanksgiving. I’m not saying you’ve put on a few pounds, but I’d never get in an elevator with you,” I say.

“Ha! You need to shop at the Clue Warehouse. It’s not easy living in Droolville — I’m never more than a few steps from a sandwich. I began talking back to my Rice Krispies, people blamed me for the Twinkies shortage, I was eating three packs of candy cigarettes a day, and I wore a raccoon suit while going through your garbage. I tried doing crunchies, curls, burpies, jumping jacks — why does exercise have to sound like snacks? I rode an exercise bike twice. That makes me a recycler. I went to see a hypnotist to lose weight. The hypnotist gained 20 pounds.”

“No good news?” I ask

“I did find some loose change in his couch.”

The Sax-Zim Bog Winter Birding Festival

“Bad news,” I told the group. “The nude beach is closed.”

“It’s 11 degrees below zero and we’re looking at birds,” said the shivering voice crying out in the frozen wilderness.

I offered encouragement by saying that at least there wasn’t much wind.

It was my pleasure to speak at the 2009 Sax-Zim Winter Birding Festival in Meadowlands on Feb. 13-15. Meadowlands, located in St. Louis County about 45 miles northwest of Duluth, has 111 people, a small grocery store, two bar/cafe establishments, a post office, a community center, the home of a Minnesota-based furniture store chain (Schneiderman’s), five houses of worship and a gas station.

Cold temperatures are an excuse to wear ugly clothing — especially unsightly hats. The secret to staying warm in Minnesota is to dress like a dork. There is no bad weather, only bad clothing. If people can tell if you are a man or a woman, you’re not wearing enough clothing. In northern Minnesota, stores sell long johns in the lingerie department.

On a cold day, I miss my cooking. The heartburn is warming. On a cold day, lip balm becomes an addiction. On a day meant for soup, I remained as snug as a bug in a rug and as warm as bread in a toaster because of the warm company of delightful birders and beautiful birds.

A woman from Tennessee asked me the temperature. I told her that is was five above. She replied, “It seems like 18.”

She was well on her way to becoming an honorary Minnesotan.

“I was worried that my eyes would become too cold to see through the binoculars,” said another Southerner.

Birders migrate to the Bog in the winter in the hopes of seeing birds like a gray jay, pine grosbeak, boreal chickadee, black-backed woodpecker, hoary redpoll, common redpoll, red crossbill, white-winged crossbill, Bohemian waxwing, snow bunting, northern shrike, boreal owl, great gray owl, American three-toed woodpecker, northern hawk owl, evening grosbeak, and ruffed grouse. The area Christmas Bird Count holds the top records for a number of these species.

Birds are more interesting than reality TV. A gray jay coats a mouthful of food with saliva and stores it in bark. Redpolls have throat pouches for temporarily storing seeds. They may fill the pouches with seeds and fly away to swallow them in a more protected spot. The great gray owl is called the phantom of the north, spectral owl, Lapland owl, spruce owl, bearded owl, and sooty owl. While defending its nest, it has driven off predators as large as black bears. During the irruption winter of 2004-05, Ben Yokel of Cotton stood in one spot and counted 28 great gray owls.

The pine grosbeak is the largest of the northern finches and was depicted on a Canadian $1,000 bill. I’ve never had my hands on a $1.000 bill. A birder called them “russet potato birds.” A group of grosbeaks is called a “gross.”

The feathers of a northern hawk owl are stiff, unlike those of nocturnal owl species. This means its diurnal flight is not completely silent. We stared at a hawk owl at 11 o’clock, knowing that there would be pasties and gravy at 6 o’clock. Pasty is pronounced, “pass-tee” and a traditional pasty has beef, potatoes, onion, carrots, and rutabaga baked inside a golden crust. It was a filling meal for those who toil in the mines and for birders.

Tucker Lutter, a 15-year old who birds with gusto, found his 300th life bird — a boreal owl. I couldn’t count to 300 when I was 15.

We saw both Heckle and Jeckle, a birder referred to the black-billed magpies as “dumpster pheasants.” We watched a white-winged crossbill in a spruce and a red crossbill in a pine — just where they should be. We had good looks at a hoary redpoll and could see that it definitely looked “more wintery” than a common redpoll. We watched boreal chickadees come to the suet while ignoring the seed upon which the black-capped chickadees fed.

I pointed out cravens — either crows or ravens at a distance.

Some of the photographic equipment that was lugged around was impressive. It would have been easy to suffer from camera-envy if the birds had not been so capable of distracting a person from the telephoto lenses.

There were people there from at least 22 states which would be half of all the states if we counted the Virginias, Carolinas and Dakotas as only one state each and put California, New York and Rhode Island on the disabled list.

We birded until someone asked, “Whose frozen ear is this? I found it on the ground.”

Did everyone see every bird that he or she had hoped to see? I suspect they did not. That’s a good thing. It will give them reason to keep looking.

Thanks for stopping by

“Our attitude is something we can control. We can establish our attitude each morning when we start our day. In fact, we do just that whether we realize it or not.” — Earl Nightingale

“Laughter is an instant vacation.” — Milton Berle

DO GOOD.

Al Batt of Hartland is a member of the Albert Lea Audubon Society. E-mail him at SnoEowl@aol.com.

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