Play on Birds

I've become somewhat of a bird nerd in the past couple years. I've taken bird identification classes the past two spring seasons. I've gone on bird tours. I participated in the Christmas bird count. I memorized the owls for the owl survey. I've been to Hawk Ridge several years in a row. Now I am helping with the breeding bird atlas. I have a canary and four chickens. Ever since I saw a great crested crane in the fields of Africa, I've just really been into birds. Last night a friend from bird class and I went to a performance of "Play on Birds" at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Bird Chick (a Twin Cities blogger) performed with her non-birding husband. I laughed until I cried. This was a ROFL performance. She started out with a skit about how she got started in birding and she started sounding like she was confessing to a drug addiction. She started out putting food on a window sill for the starlings, grackles and sparrows. Soon she wanted a better feeder with higher quality birds. I could relate to everything she said. Another skit was about squirrels. She had a bird feeder prop and a puppet squirrel on a stick. She pantomimed playing a tape of a bird song for expert advice only to learn she was playing the sound of a red squirrel. I did the very same thing! I listened to that red squirrel for months trying to figure out what bird it was. She chased the squirrel off the bird feeders - just like me. When she brought that super soaker on stage I just about split a gut. I use a super soaker on my squirrels too! They have these new squirrel proof feeders with a counter balance device. The squirrels in her neighborhood have learned to get around that with team work. One squirrels hangs on the counter balance device while one eats and then they switch sides. Bird Chick and her husband did another skit about bird walks where birders will ignore the beautiful great white egrets and showy red winged blackbirds to focus on some little brown bird that looks like a knothole on a tree. They totally captured the sighting process that goes something like this: "See those three oaks there? Go to the middle oak. There is a branch about 2/3 of the way up. The branch is coming at you. About 2 o'clock in the tree there is a crotch in the branch." She was hilarious. One skit poked legitimate fun at the MOU - Minnesota Ornithological Union. This is a serious bunch of bird experts. She was hilarious in mocking the snobbery that goe on. She pokes fun at bird guides. I have a very simple bird guide that has only the basic birds and the birds are separated by color. The book easily fits into a pocket and the author's name is Tequila. Thorough bird guide books go by taxonomy instead of color and most of them are several pounds each. Bird Chick makes her point about bird guide books brilliantly, loudly, and with remarkable comic timing. There was another skit on how birders think they look and how they really appear. We birders think we look pretty cool (rap music plays in the background). How we really look is different (country music in the background) with our odd hats and our pant legs tucked into our socks. The final skit was about bird names that sound dirty. I about died laughing. If you are a birder you HAVE to see this. If you aren't a birder, you will like it too. The performance continues next weekend.