March 9th, 2013 marked a milestone for the Wiley Family: our one year birder-versary. A year ago, the Wiley Family piled into the car with a small set of binoculars, a little black book for notes and bird lists, a crappy digital camera accompanied by a spunky and steely-eyed resolve to find and observe any and all birds within eyeshot. Our year of birding was filled with wild geese-chases, sloshes through muddy bogs after a tall white-faced ibis, races through thick mountain timber after dark-eyed juncos, and treks across the grassy high plains seeking anything with wings. “Look!” I would shout over and over, pointing wildly at the slightest movement: a flutter of wings, a tuft of fuzz, a blurred streak.
The whole thing started innocently with indistinct photos and pure blind enthusiasm. Soon, we were sliding into the hardcore stuff: multiple versions of bird guides (with pictures and drawings), birding hot spot lists and suggestions for the area, birding websites where fellow birders posted finds, and birding apps for electrical devices. I knew a corner was turned in my life as a birder when I could no longer see a duck as a duck. No, a duck was more than just a duck; ducks were northern shovelers, eared grebes, buffleheads, mallards, or (my daughter’s favorite) coots (and to be technical, coots and grebes are not really, strictly speaking, ducks). For this birdophile, the world was changing quickly before my eyes as I watched beautiful birds glide graciously into my life.
My favorite place to look at my bird friends today is the same area our family birding obsession was born: the Laramie Plains Lakes. These lakes, only about ten miles west of Laramie, are a perfect example of the wholesale change in the view of nature that birding provided for me. A decade ago, had you asked my opinion about the prairie hill landscape rolling up towards either the Snowy Mountains or Woods Landing, I would have used terms like nondescript, dull, plain, or dismissed the area as nothing like the jagged and vast beauty of the mountains. Now, after dozens and dozens of trips out on the plains, the soft colored prairie leading to the mountains is one of my favorite places in the whole world. The area is teeming with happy life, birds and otherwise. The prairie grass that recoils and sways gentle with a breeze achieves shades and hues of color complicated, unique, and wonderful. Each season on the plains brings a new beauty under a shockingly large sky. The splendor of a warm summer day of intense blue sky over darker greens and brilliant plants achieves an altogether stunning glory now equal, in my mind, to the stark white of rolling snow over hills and lakes. Before my little birding run, I would have hardly noticed these intricate splendors.
Watching and waiting for the birds on the prairie has taught me how to truly perceive and appreciate some of the less obvious or glaring glories of nature. The variety of birds swarming the plains is astounding once one begins learning to apply an eye to observing variations and differences between feathered friends. It is odd, but finding specific varieties of birds and observing the differences in behavior and movements makes the natural world bigger in some ways, rather than making the world smaller as might be expected from focusing on a single element. Putting a microscope on an ecosystem only reveals more layers of the complexity inherent in our natural world. I used to think birding would have an inverse effect and make one miss the forest for the trees. It seems focusing on the individualities and singular experience of the birds illuminates the world around them. At least, this is how birding has operated in my own experience.
It could have been the anticipation, the gulp of air and gasp of excitement at the sight of a bird we have not yet encountered that has made birding so addicting and enjoyable. Perhaps the mystery, the Sherlock Holmes element of applying deduction and observation to discover what kind of bird we see eating bugs by the creek, is the best bit of birding. Maybe the best part of our year of birding like mad was just the time spent walking with family along still lakes leisurely and silent, watching and observing a world altogether different from our own. Or, perhaps it was the bumpy drives on country roads watching telephone poles for eagles and hawks while sipping warm coffee and laughing about our wild obsession to see every bird in the great state of Wyoming.
Whatever it is, we will drive out to the Laramie Plains Lakes this spring with no less enthusiasm than last year. We will be filled with the same eagerness to capture new birds for our list, to enjoy company together on the brown then green then yellow then white grasses of the plains, to look towards the mountains topped with snow and dream of summer nights in the woods under singing mountain birds. The sun will beat down strong and the wind will whistle in approval as falcons soar, sparrows sip puddles of water, and geese stare dumbly towards us. Another year of epic birding waits! And, I cannot wait to watch and enjoy all the bird friends that will return to the area to see us again and to meet new birds that come to visit for the first time.
A white faced Ibis, one of the many birds we chased.
