Birding to Change the World by Trish O'Kane

Author:Trish O'Kane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

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JUST TWO WEEKS AFTER THE GEESE GOT A DEATH SENTENCE, I GAVE MY FIRST BIRD WALK TO kick off Wild Warner’s nature walk series. Seventeen people showed up that sunny Saturday, seniors and parents pushing strollers with kids in tow. The walk began with an osprey we serendipitously found perched on Warner’s marsh island. Fifty years earlier, that bird was nearly extinct, I told the delighted crowd. Now they were hanging out in Warner’s marsh. Right afterward, as if on cue, a belted kingfisher with its punk hairdo hurtled past us, making its loud metallic rattling call. The new birding enthusiasts oohed and aahed and snapped pictures.

My first public walk ended on a spectacular note, with a star appearance by another bird I’d never seen in Warner Park. As we stood on the dog park bridge scanning the marsh island for waterfowl, an enormous bird with a six-foot wingspan came barreling out of the marsh, straight toward us, wings outstretched, flying low, that unmistakable white head with a yellow eye peering down as people yelled, “WOW!” and scrambled to snap photos. It was Warner’s very first bald eagle and a new species for my bird list.

I was standing beside a squirrelly-looking boy and his father when this happened, all of us exclaiming in disbelief. The father turned to me and said he’d done human rights work with Native Americans in the Southwest for years.

“You know, that’s what Native Americans call a sign.”

At that moment, geese parents were escorting long lines of goslings under the bridge, paddling just beneath us. The boy leaned over the rail and counted the goslings. I asked him how he felt about the geese.*

“To see them gives me a sense of accomplishment. I can tell my class about them. We can come here and see them,” he said.

His name was Gabriel.* He told me that he was ten years old, he loved hiking with his dad, and that he was a Boy Scout who had already earned a badge. But best of all, in the fall he was starting sixth grade at Sherman Middle School, and he was very excited about joining my new birding program.

Gabriel pointed at the geese and fixed his huge hazel eyes on me.

“Are they already killing them?”

His father raised his eyebrows and gave me a pained look.

“He reads the news.”

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AT HOME I THOUGHT ABOUT GABRIEL’S WORDS—THAT HE COULD SEE THE GEESE, THAT JUST seeing them gave him a sense of accomplishment, and because they were so easy to see and find, he could share them with his friends. I knew exactly what he meant. When I’d started birding two years earlier, it was so hard. I almost gave up after those first frozen weeks trying to learn to use binoculars in 10-degree weather and not even being able to find small birds. But large birds like the geese and ducks and eagles made it easy. And the geese made it easiest of all for a beginner because they just loafed around—you didn’t even need binoculars to watch them.

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