Birds and boys

You just never know what sort of influence you might be having on your kids and of course they are never going to tell you, but I realized one tonight and it was a pretty good one.

A friend of mine wrote a nice, thoughtful piece in the paper tonight about his young son’s encounter with a flock of Bohemian waxwings in the past week. It reminded me of my own son’s adventures with birds or at least my efforts to encourage some adventures and I thought maybe it would be an idea for my friend to try.

In the house my son and I shared every other week for seven years we had huge picture windows that overlooked a large woodland. Of course there were birds, a wide variety and we put out feeders for them. There were enough different species that I suggested we keep a life list. I called it “Our extra special picture window life list” and we taped it to the glass. The rule was we both had to see the bird and we had to identify it exactly, no “little brown chippies.” Over the next few years we added to that list often. Once in a while I would take it down and type the new ones into the computer to replace the handwritten ones and then tape it back up. That windowsill was always cluttered with bird identification books and binoculars.

Our favorites were the Steller’s jays who came to the deck for the peanuts we put out for them. They came every day in winter, often in gangs. One day we counted 13 on the deck and in the nearby trees waiting for their turn to swoop in for a peanut. We even recognized a few individuals. One we called Tank was noticeably bigger than the others and we swore the house shook when he landed. There was a day, too, when I hadn’t put any peanuts out yet. I heard a tapping on the window and when I went to look there was a jay perched on the back of a deck chair pecking at the window, demanding nuts.

Another favorite of mine was sometimes we could see a chickadee start from way deep in the woods and make a line in that up and down wave-like flight pattern they fly straight to the feeder that held sunflower seeds.

There are too many stories about the birds we saw and what they did for me to relate in a short blog post but they were almost constant entertainment. A friend from way back in high school visited once and added several species to his life list just sitting drinking coffee one morning.

My son more tolerated my passion for it more than he actually participated. But he surprised me when he was in sixth grade and wanted to do his science project testing what foods the jays would like best. His project won a statewide science fair division and earned him a big blue ribbon from a birding group.

After that junior high school took over and he got way too cool for dad’s bird interests. and I never noticed him paying much attention to birds again.

I hadn’t realized it until just today as I was telling my friend about our life list when it hit me. On our square-rigger sail this summer it came up we needed a bird identification book and no one seemed to have brought one. Turns out one person had. My 20-year-old son quickly produced his, the only one among that environmentally conscious crew to have one. And it was in telling my friend about it today that I realized what an event that really had been, the realization that at some point I had planted a positive idea with a growing boy. Perhaps in the encounter with the Bohemian waxwings, my friend has planted the same sort of idea with his son and one day the boy will reveal that influence to his father as well. I can tell him now it is one great, if unexpected, reward for being a parent.

Here is the last life list from the picture window:

JUSTIN AND TIM'S VERY SPECIAL PICTURE WINDOW LIFE LIST

(Seen through our window by both of us and confirmed with bird books)

Birds we've seen                                             Birds we've heard

Varied Thrush                                             Owl (Saw whet)

Steller's Jay                                                      Woodpecker

Common Redpoll                                             Loon

Robin                                                               Birds we fed

Raven                                                               Steller's jay

Hermit Thrush                                             Black-capped chickadee

Wilson's Warbler                                             Rufous humingbird

Hairy Woodpecker                                             Redpolls

Bald Eagle                                                      Red breasted nuthatch

Black-capped Chickadee                                    Junco

Black billed Magpie                                    3-toed woodpecker

Rufous Humingbird                                    Pine grosbeak (m&f)

Red-breasted Nuthatch                                    Pine siskin

Dark-eyed Junco

Three-toed Woodpecker

Pine Grosbeak (m & f)

Blackpoll warbler

Pine siskin

Downey woodpecker

Sharp-shinned hawk

Great horned owl

Violet green swallow

Dad saw:  Hawk, either red-tailed or sharp-shinned

                        and, either red-tailed immature or Goshawk; also a falcon, probably peregrin

My friend's story: Waxwing diversion