{"id":1100,"date":"2025-04-20T15:13:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmupgrades.com\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2025-04-20T15:13:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:13:59","slug":"what-can-you-do-go-birding-it-wont-help-the-national-situation-at-all-but-youll-feel-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmupgrades.com\/?p=1100","title":{"rendered":"What can you do? Go birding. It won’t help the national situation at all. But you’ll feel better."},"content":{"rendered":"


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Usually, birds come to me. To my backyard feeder: robins, sparrows, wrens \u2014 little brown birds, mostly; with the occasional red cardinal, gray pigeon or blue warbler offering variety. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m generally content with that setup, though chasing off squirrels is a constant challenge. They adapt.<\/p>\n

Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures, however. So when Bob Dolgan, publicist for the Newberry Library, said he is a regular birder, and invited me along, I could not refuse the opportunity to seek out birds. Anything is better than sitting in the kitchen, staring gape-mouthed at the newspaper.<\/p>\n

We met in the parking lot of the Sheraton Northbrook, and, to my amazement, took a few steps and we might as well have been on Egdon Heath. We were on a grassy bluff above a body of water carrying the lyrical name Techny 32B inline reservoir. A strong, steady wind ruffled our clothes. He carried with him a tripod and a 60x Bushnell spotter scope. <\/p>\n

A few dozen European starlings vectored past.<\/p>\n

\u201cEuropeans starlings \u2014 we kinda hate them, right?\u201d I said, tucking myself into the fold of birders. An invasive species, introduced in Central Park by some fool who wanted every bird mentioned in Shakespeare to be found in America, crowding out native birds. A reminder of how much lasting damage one idiot can cause. <\/p>\n

\u201cToday I\u2019m feeling very generous, so not I\u2019m going to say that,\u201d Dolgan replied. \u201cThey were introduced more than a century ago; they just take up a lot of habitat from other species. They\u2019re not a great bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Bob Dolgan spying a noteworthy bird on a watery mud flat in Northbrook. Turn in the other direction and you get an eyeful of Sheraton parking lot. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Great birds came fast and furious. Three mallards on the water. A killdeer \u2014 a large plover on long legs. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a life list, right?\u2019 I asked. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have been a little bit less focused on my list, and more focused on the experience,\u201d he said, not offering the number of distinct species he\u2019s seen in the wild in his birding career. I deliberately didn\u2019t ask for the figure. Guys have a way of turning every pursuit into baseball, every activity into a batting average, a numbers game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at birds just to check a name off a list, a lot gets lost,\u201d Dolgan said. \u201cThere is less a connection to nature and joy of discovery. At the same time I am keeping up with it. Looking at how many I\u2019ve seen in Illinois, how many in Cook County. I report it on ebird.org<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ebird.org i<\/a>s an engaging, well-crafted website. There Dolgan listed the 22 birds we saw over the next hour \u2014 well, birds he<\/i> saw; I sorta squinted in the direction he pointed, though the geese were my contribution: hard to miss geese.<\/p>\n

For those keeping score at home, in addition to my Canada geese, we noted examples of: blue-winged teal, northern shoveler, mallard, green-winged teal, killdeer, Wilson\u2019s snipe, lesser yellowlegs, greater yellowlegs, pectoral sandpiper, ring-billed gull, American herring gull, great egret, great blue heron, barn swallow, European starling, American robin, house finch, song sparrow, eastern meadowlark, red-winged blackbird and common grackle.<\/p>\n

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Some birds require careful observation to determine exactly what they are. The great egret, seen on a mud flat in Northbrook, is not one of them. Hunted to near extinction for their feathers, the egret was an early save credited to the Audubon Society.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

I definitely saw the great blue heron, an enormous bird, slowly flapping its wings as if it had just escaped the Pliocene Epoch. And the egret, with its long neck and snowy white plumage. <\/p>\n

Dolgan goes birding about twice a week and knows his birds \u2014 how they look, how they sound, the way they move. \u201cThe plover will take a staccato step \u2014 three steps,\u201d he said. \u201cYellowlegs and sandpiper are more constantly going around.\u201d<\/p>\n

And no, he doesn\u2019t get many people inquiring what he\u2019s doing, skulking around peripheral areas with binoculars, though birder colleagues have had the police called on them.<\/p>\n

We weren\u2019t done, but relocated to the Glenview Park District\u2019s Kent Fuller Air Station Prairie, directly behind the Evelyn Pease Tyner Interpretive Center. Again, I kicked myself for my lack of initiative. My doctor\u2019s office is directly across the street. I\u2019d pulled into that parking lot dozens of times, and never once cast a glance at the lovely Illinois grassland and nature center directly across the street, never mind stepped into it. I own the shame, though in my defense, I got here, eventually.<\/p>\n

Our mission was woodcocks. Dolgan assured me that males burst out of the brush and hover in the air in a dramatic mating ritual. We tramped around the prairie as the sun set. No woodcocks presented themselves, but I can\u2019t say I was disappointed. In fact, had we seen no birds at all, the experience of spending an hour in the wetland beyond the Sheraton, and then in this prairie would still be well worth it. As the great Brendan Behan once said, a change is as good as a rest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n