During the larger part of my childhood, my parents were what was known as “birders” -- amateur yet dedicated ornithologists who, rather than looking at birds, looked for them. They had met in college, both pursuing a degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Management at Frostburg State University. Neither of them ended up in careers related to their major -- my father became a molecular biologist and my mother a school psychologist -- but they did retain their love for the natural world and, more importantly, their fierce affection for the world of birds. Because of their ornithological inclinations, I grew up surrounded by bird paraphernalia. Binoculars with tangled neck-straps sat on the dining table, bright splashes of color that were Audubon
…show more content…
Overholser was not what one might call a beautiful lake; it was remarkably muddy at its clearest and if one walked more than a hundred yards along the shoreline there was sure to be at least one dead fish. During the summer, the tiny asphalt parking strips at the end of the roads were adorned with the bodies of sunbathing Oklahomans who looked more in pain than relaxed, and the leaves of the blackjack oaks in the surrounding woods never got quite green. But because I spent a truly inordinate amount of time there, I came to regard it with a certain degree of …show more content…
No one in my family remembers exactly what it was, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t three hundred yet. We had to see three hundred birds; we had worked hard enough that we felt we deserved it. But as December wore on, the last bird remained elusive. We had almost given up.
On New Year’s Day, we decided to take a final trip to Hackberry Flats, a wildlife management area that was little more than an observation tower and acres of alternating marsh and flatland. Like Lake Overholser, it was not beautiful, but it held a certain charm; the pale grass met the sky in an unending line across the horizon and the ducks were the only creatures holding out against the loneliness of the former prairie. We had seen several headliner species there earlier in the year, such as the ferruginous hawk and the barn owl, and we were hopeful that it would reveal to us a bird that we had not seen
Overholser was not what one might call a beautiful lake; it was remarkably muddy at its clearest and if one walked more than a hundred yards along the shoreline there was sure to be at least one dead fish. During the summer, the tiny asphalt parking strips at the end of the roads were adorned with the bodies of sunbathing Oklahomans who looked more in pain than relaxed, and the leaves of the blackjack oaks in the surrounding woods never got quite green. But because I spent a truly inordinate amount of time there, I came to regard it with a certain degree of …show more content…
No one in my family remembers exactly what it was, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t three hundred yet. We had to see three hundred birds; we had worked hard enough that we felt we deserved it. But as December wore on, the last bird remained elusive. We had almost given up.
On New Year’s Day, we decided to take a final trip to Hackberry Flats, a wildlife management area that was little more than an observation tower and acres of alternating marsh and flatland. Like Lake Overholser, it was not beautiful, but it held a certain charm; the pale grass met the sky in an unending line across the horizon and the ducks were the only creatures holding out against the loneliness of the former prairie. We had seen several headliner species there earlier in the year, such as the ferruginous hawk and the barn owl, and we were hopeful that it would reveal to us a bird that we had not seen