This is flyover country and we like it!
By Bob Ford Special to
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My father and I butted heads throughout my youth, but once he finally matured a bit we became best buds.
Jake Ford was a birder. We would get up at the crack of dawn and head off to Squaw Creek, now called Loess Bluffs, with a bird book and binoculars in hand to count snow geese, Canada Geese, pelicans and bald eagles. It was always a thrill to find something he hadn’t spotted.
Each year on the family’s annual trek to Minnesota’s “cottage,” Dad would keep a small book. In it he identified all the birds seen by him in the state. For some reason he kept that notebook to himself, one day I snagged it only to see he wrote down all the species in Latin.
OK, turn it off dad, you’re on vacation. The apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree but in this case it hit the ground and rolled away. I don’t know any Latin.
Almost every year at Christmas we played this game. I would come up with a really cool gift for the two of us, usually involving birds and train travel. He, praise be, would play along, then on the final day of our adventure write me a check covering the cost, thank you Dad.
One such trip was to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico on the Rio Grande Riverr, located 90 miles south of Albuquerque. It’s quite a sanctuary, some 57,191 acres of protected habitat.
The purpose of the trip was to see a whooping crane. At the time there were only 100 left in the wild. The bird was totally dependent on efforts from wildlife conservationists if the species was to survive. In speaking with the Refuge’s Outdoor Planner Chris Olson, the saving scheme was to “swipe” whooping crane eggs from nests in Idaho and place the eggs into sandhill crane nests, allowing the Sandhills to raise the endangered bird and become foster parents. The hope was it would cause whoopers to lay more eggs.
A similar program was underway in Wisconsin, but the plan suffered a setback when a determined raccoon maneuvered his way through tarps and electric barriers, entering the cage and eating three of the rare bird’s eggs. I’m sure that racoon must be a relative of the group that meets in my attic most nights to play Texas Hold ’em.
Having spent a restless night in Socorro, New Mexico, we were up early to score a sighting. Driving along the back half of the refuge, suddenly there it was, a gorgeous 5 foot white whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America standing in a field surrounded by hundreds of 3 feet gray sandhills.
Unbelievably, in an adjacent field a quarter mile away, we spotted another whooping crane with his flock eating, prancing, then quickly gazing around. Both birds would look, eat, take a couple strutting steps, bob their heads and act nervous. Then they saw each other … it’s almost like one said, ”are you 2 feet taller and a different color than your parents too?” They started walking towards one another.
Who knows what we witnessed that morning, from nothing to the recovery of a dying species.
There are four major flyways of migratory waterfowls in North America: the Atlantic, Mississippi, Central and Pacific.
The Atlantic Flyway stretches from the Arctic tundra and Baffin Island to the Caribbean, some 3,000 miles. There are many feeder birds that use the Atlantic flight path, including Goldfinches, Arctic Terns, Sparrows, Baltimore Orioles, chickadee’s and Blue Jays.
The Mississippi Flyway transverses central Canada to the area surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, mostly following the major rivers in the United States. Along with many birds from the Atlantic Flyway, the Mississippi also sees woodpeckers, robins, cardinals and hummingbirds.
The Central Flyway follows a broad path along the Rocky Mountains from Canada through the central United States to Mexico. Sandhill cranes, buntings and meadowlarks are among many species that traverse this avian pathway.
The Pacific Flyway is a bird interstate from Alaska to Mexico. Several species of birds use multiple flyways. A few winging it on the West coast include crows, robins, kingfishers and blackbirds.
My father’s best friend was Dwight Dannen, a fellow birder. They had lunch together every weekday for 30 years.
“If you went to Elks or the Benton Club it was a two martini lunch, I’d need to go home and take a nap after that!” he would often say.
Dwight was a teetotaler and Dad made up for not partaking during the day after the sun went down.
As my father gained full maturity, then started to decline, it was my pleasure and duty to be in his life. When he passed in his mid-80s, Dwight was the first one at the front door. Without saying a word he slowly walked in, grabbed my shoulders and firmly kissed me on the cheek. Never had a gesture meant so much … he had just lost his best friend.
A few weeks after, Dwight and I met and had lunch in the Ramada Inn at their table. I ordered the soup of the day, half a BLT and a slice of peach pie out of reverence.
Not surprisingly the eloquent Dwight Dannen found his peace a few months later, I guess it’s true, “birds of a feather do flock together.”
I miss them both.
