Written on 11/25/23
I had a happy childhood. Every week, I roamed our family farmland with a chunky pair of metal binoculars my Grandma Ingwell gifted to me before she died. I began watching birds at a young age, and a few of those sightings have stuck with me through the decades. These experiences shaped the man and the birder that I am today.
I didn’t take birding very seriously before my mid 20s. I kept no lists in my childhood, and the only time I consulted my dad’s field guide (now in my possession) was when I was trying to figure out something I had seen during my wandering. I would look things up hours later, relying on memory, after I returned home. As a result, a lot of the species I saw went unidentified, and a lot more have been forgotten over time. I remember the common birds from my childhood home, the ones that reliably showed up throughout the year. I often think nostalgically about that place, and the birds I remember inhabiting it.
The home I grew up in was on the outskirts of Naples, Utah. We were almost as close to Dinosaur National Monument as we were to the 8,000 person town of Vernal, Utah. Our property had many stately cottonwood trees, and a soggy willow thicket in the southeast corner. We had ten acres of irrigated farmland where we grew alfalfa in the summer months to feed our horses through the winter. We had an additional acre and a half corral where the horses were kept during the growing season. Our lawn, garden, and a strip of land that followed our private drive comprised another acre or so.
Thirteen acres is a large amount of land to bird. It’s as large as many of the hotspots that I visit today. Even without knowing a great deal about birds, I found the diversity to be incredible.
Here’s what I recall:
Early in the spring, when things started to warm up, and life began to stir, a Northern Flicker would drum everywhere on our house. It would wake up much earlier than me, and hammer on the wood window frame outside of my bedroom. This bird was trying to attract a mate, and I was trying to sleep as late as I could. I’d wake up, shuffle over to the window, rip open the curtains, and shoo the bird. I’d try to fall back asleep, but often failed, because I could hear the flicker lustily drumming elsewhere on the house.
In the early summers, the California Quail would breed in the willow thicket. The adults would walk ahead, while their young would follow behind. Two parents, and a handful of dirty cottonballs with legs, would zigzag through the dense patch. The adults would cluck at me as I walked the trails that the horses and deer had carved through the area.
Every year in June, the Common Nighthawks would return to the corral. They’d fly sharply over the trampled earth, eating insects on the wing. They had an ample food supply there, as the horses and the horse shit attracted a lot of flies. Their harsh “bew” calls accented late summer evenings, just as the sun was going down.
In the fall, after the alfalfa was cut, baled, and stacked, the Sandhill Cranes arrived. I would hear them first. Their bugle-like calls could be heard even when the birds were flying so high they couldn’t be seen. They would descend to the earth, circling above our field, dropping in elevation. They looked like a winged tornado touching down. The cranes would pick through the dried out alfalfa stubble, spending a few days there before moving on farther south.
A single adult Bald Eagle came next. It would roost in the skeleton of a cottonwood that was beside the irrigation canal. I always assumed it was the same bird that returned year after year. It wouldn’t do much, it would just sit in the dead tree. I only saw it try to hunt our field once, when it went after our family cat. I ran out and scared the bird off by frantically waving my arms and yelling. The cat was laying flat in the dirt, making itself small, but it was trembling. We kept our smaller pets inside after that, but the eagle continued to roost in the old dead tree.
Near the barn, where I fed and watered our horses every day, our closest neighbors had a crabapple tree. I’d pick the fruits and shoot them from my slingshot. There were thousands of tiny, bitter apples, so I didn’t shoot enough of them to take food away from the Cedar Waxwings. When the fruit became mushy and fermented, it was no longer suitable ammunition, and that’s when the waxwings showed up. In the mid-winter months, they’d gorge themselves, filling their bellies and likely getting quite drunk. I loved watching them eat, and they didn’t seem to mind my presence. I was fascinated by the red in their wings, and their yellow tail tips, that seemed to be made out of polished plastic.
The Cedar Waxwings marked the end of the annual regulars that I remember on our family farm. As a grown up, that spends hundreds of hours a year watching birds, these species are all very common, but they are some of my favorites, because they are tied to childhood memories. Each one of these birds are a chapter in my genesis story.
Between high school, and my mid-20s, I didn’t bird at all. I returned, and even though I tell people that it was because I put up some backyard bird feeders outside of a Salt Lake City rental, I know that it was really these memories calling me back. These are the seven species that got me into birding. They just knew how to play the long game. I feel fortunate that they taught me how to watch.
Interesting post and I like those 7 species that got you into birding. I think my first few birds I becamse interested in as a teenager were Red-tailed Hawks, American Robins and American Goldfinches.
That property must have been an amazing place for birding. No crowds!