A Love Affair with Birds

Not only did I get to read Sue Leaf's book A Love Affair With Birds but I got to hear her speak about it at my master naturalist meeting on Wednesday. I had read it the weekend before along with her other book The Bullhead Queen.  She is a great speaker and it was interesting to learn more about the Minnesota doctor, birder and author Thomas Sadler Roberts.  Next on my list will be his thick two volume book The Birds of Minnesota.  Roberts wrote this conclusive study of Minnesota birds after he retired as a family physician.  He commissioned artists to illustrate various birds.  The odd thing is he was just as concerned at the loss of bird species in 1930 as we are almost 100 years later.  He saw many burrowing owls in western Minnesota before the prairie was plowed.  When he returned 30 years later those burrowing owls had disappeared and he was really upset by that.  He was so upset that he immediately got to work on a diorama at the Bell Museum about the prairie.  He was driven by the fact the prairie was almost all gone and people needed to know what we used to have.  How do I feel about the fact that Roberts had the same fear about endangered birds that we have today?  Maybe that is a good thing and I should have less call for concern than I do now because the same worry has been going on so long? Or is it a bad thing that after 100 years we continue to repeat our same mistakes?  My take on it is that the human life span is too short to make the changes that need to be made to save our planet.  Not that all older people are wiser but some times the people who make decisions are not looking at the big picture.  Greed for things that don't really matter in the long run has too much influence on our choices. T.S. Roberts also shot a great volumes of birds to death with his gun.  In those days, bird watchers did that.  Sue Leaf said the first ornithologist to refrain from shooting birds was Florence Bailey.  She used binoculars to watch birds.  I raised my hand to ask, "Did she write A-Birding On a Bronco?"  Turns out she did.  What are the chances I would have read that book too and Sue Leaf seemed surprised that I had read such a rare book.  I asked the author to sign a copy of her book and we talked.  Turns out we lived near each other as children and are about the same age.  She asked me if I knew Anne.   "Yes," I gushed, "She was my aunt; my neighbor; my best friend."  She knew her too and thought of her often.  She was saddened to hear of her passing.  How cool that other people knew her and thought of her too.  As we left the meeting and stepped outside the building at Carlos Avery, the wolves at the Wildlife Science Center were in a full-out howling session.  We had to stop and listen as the voices separated and gradually fell out of chorus.  Wow.  Listening to those wolves raised the hairs on the back of my neck and was the perfect way to top off a great evening.