Birders should leave pride behind and submit to eternal truths

I grew up in Emporia, Kansas, in the southeastern part of the state. At the time (which I won’t specify), Emporia boasted a population of about 20,000 when the two colleges in town weren’t in session.

Every third or fourth December we’d spot a Snowy Owl or two forced south, presumably, by the promise of food that had grown scarce in the birds’ native northern regions.

If nothing else about a Snowy Owl grabs your attention and imagination, try gazing into the yellow eyes for while. Photo by Petr Kratochvil.

I remember two owls in particular. One was on top of a power pole at the John Redmond Reservoir east of town, the other on a neighbor’s TV aerial (remember those?). In both cases, the birds were lit by the setting sun, their white feathers glowing rose in the dying winter light.

The images are burned into my brain like no others from childhood, except maybe for the time I had to stand in front of my third-grade class and confess that the story I’d told about my brother Terry, who was then in high school, killing and skinning a bear had been, well, exaggerated. I hadn’t considered that the teacher would verify my account with my brother Scott, who was in eighth grade at my primary school.

Last year, while we were attempting our first Big Year, my wife Fran, my other brother Phil and I followed every lead so we could add a Snowy Owl to the list. We failed. This year, there have been reports of sightings about 150 miles west of our base in Kansas City, at the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area near Great Bend, Kansas, but none nearby.

All this preambulation leads up to a basic truth of birding: It’s always the person sitting right beside you, who just started watching birds a couple of years ago and not, like you, with more than half a century of freezing in gale winds and broiling under desert suns who will see the feathered ?!#%&$@ you’ve been questing for – and you will miss it entirely.

So it was last Sunday that, when we were driving through a prosperous part of town, Fran spotted it – a big white bird that could only be a Snowy Owl, flying north. I didn’t see it. So I grilled her on what it looked like and tried my best to come up with alternatives, which, truth be told, were much more unlikely (think Northern Goshawk).

Nothing worked. It was a Snowy Owl. Fine. It’s on the list.

Since my last post, we’ve added Lesser Goldfinch and Black-billed Magpie, thanks to brother Terry in Montrose, Colorado. Here in K.C., the Common Grackle summer population has begun  reestablishing itself, so that makes four new birds.

Official Big Year species count as of March 6: 94.