The Bird That Shall Not Be Named

Warning: The story you are about to read is true. The names have been maintained to implicate the guilty. The details are both vague and at times graphic. Do not read on an empty stomach or after a big meal. 

If it weren’t so darned pathetic it would have been funny, but that didn’t keep me from laughing about it. And although I laughed about it, truth be told, sometimes I cried about it. As the legend goes, I have thrice cried over it. There came a point when I could not even bring myself to utter its name, or hear it be spoken without cringing. Especially sensitive friends would join me in referring to it as The Bird That Shall Not Be Named. The less sensitive would blurt it out and watch me squirm. 

My near misses were famous among the crowd I run with. Ornithologist and bird guide friends in different states and different countries, scattered across the globe at all times each knew at least a few pieces of the story. Only a handful though knew it all. Now that it’s over, I can celebrate it. And here’s the thing- I’m not so high on myself that I think I’m in any way special. There have been tales like this before and there will be tales much greater to follow. What made the journey funny and endurable was the knowledge that it has happened to most or all of us at some point, at least to some degree. It’s part of what we do; part of the agony and the ecstasy. It makes the highs higher and it defines the lows. And that is why I share the whole wretched tale here. 

I suppose it was just bad luck that I started birding the valley at the exact wrong moment in history- just as the drought began. Though they were always uncommon, with some effort they could be found, particularly if one spent enough time down there and positioned themselves strategically. I missed them on my first trip, but that wasn’t such a big deal. I didn’t really expect to see one anyway. 

During my second trip, some friends who were birding up river claim to have seen one (pictures or it didn’t happen), but that was far away and I was distracted by other goodies. A few years and zero sightings later, by the time I starting leading trips for the festival, there were few valley specialties I was still missing. Mary was nice enough to take a tactical approach and assign me to lead trips in locales that she knew would up my chances of grabbing sight of one.  

As the years rolled on, there were so many trips, so many misses, and so much failure that it has all blurred together. More times than I can count, friends pulled up pictures on the back of their cameras or tagged me in Facebook photos of The Bird That Shall Not Be Named. I suppose they did it out of wishing I had been there for the moment, perhaps with a dash of one-upsmanship thrown in to spice it up. I would laugh. I would shake my fists in the air. I would vow to not care so much. Inside, I was aching. 

One year, I was leading a trip at Santa Ana NWR. I was excited as one had been seen there earlier in the week. I thought my chances on that day as good as they ever were. There was another group present though and they were occupying the Hawk Tower. My group stood below birding the understory, patiently waiting our turn to glass the skies and scan the treetops; patiently waiting even while I heard shouts from the top of the tower that they were seeing the bird. I knew I couldn’t get up there in time and I couldn’t leave my trip participants to even try. That trip wasn’t about me, it was about them. And we all missed the bird together that day. Ouch!

Another year, Martin and I took a Leader’s Choice van trip up to the Santa Ana Hawk Tower. We got ourselves in position early and began scanning. We were joined by a large group of people that maxxed out the capacity of the tower. I guess it was just bad luck that I’m short and just happened to be standing behind the tallest person on the tower when the bird showed. After the bird dipped back down into the woods, Martin turned to me with a big smile of victory on his face and said “Ash! Yeah, huh!?!” I replied “Eh. Not so much.” I watched the joy evaporate from his face as I choked back deep disappointment and embarrassment. Every person on that tower saw it that day, except for the shortest person on the tower. And as the infamous legend grew, the wound only intensified.

Later, when I spoke with my friend Dave about it all, I told him that I knew I would eventually see one. But at that time, I didn’t know if I would laugh or cry or just give the bird the bird and turn and walk away. When it came to that bird, I was a shell of myself. There was zero Zen left for The Bird That Shall Not Be Named. 

During these years, I birded the tropics a lot. I expected eventually to encounter one. I figured if I couldn’t find one in the states, I’d run across a Bird That Shall Not Be Named, or two, down there. Multiple trips to Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama revealed nothing though. In December 2013, while birding in Ecuador our guide spotted a raptor. I got over there just in time to see the hint of a bird disappear forever behind a hill. Andres was pretty nonchalant about stating “That was a ****-****** ****.” I cringed, I sucked it up. I moved on. I saw other way cool birds. I was still happy, but the bruise was still very much there.

In Mexico in early 2014, Amy said “Oh, we once had a ****-****** **** here.” I looked up, trying to imagine it. Not able to do so. 

And so, with each miss. With each photograph. With each story I had to endure from friends who had seen them (and some of them have seen many over the years). For each time I heard about nest monitoring in the valley, banding of youngsters, research projects. For all I learned of their natural history, as a glutton for punishment and out of the thought that I might eventually be smart enough to get myself in the right place at the right time to see one. After all of it, I gave up. Like someone who has been burned in love. Beaten down by failure. Resigned to their fate. I stopped looking. 

I didn’t stop looking for birds. I stopped looking for that bird. I didn’t want the legend anymore. But on the first day of the festival last fall I met up with Ben. He was with a coworker and friend of his who I had not yet met. Just minutes after we all started shooting the breeze, somehow The Bird That Shall Not Be Named came up (I believe my new friend mentioned it). I recoiled and began to babble incoherent jibberish. Ben told him that I was “The One.” 

“Oh, that’s you” my new friend politely and disquietly exclaimed. Apparently, the legend had grown to even outside of my immediate circle. This time I truly laughed heartily. The idea that the legend was bigger than I was comical. I embraced the role. It was what it was. 

On the last day of the festival, I was leading a Bentsen trip with Doug and two other guides. We had split our large group in half and Doug and I wandered out to see if we could get our participants good looks at some of the birds we hadn’t yet seen as well as we would have liked. Doug was walking ahead of the group and I was following up at the rear. I looked up and called up to Doug “Two raptors in the air.” I quickened my pace to get up to the rest of the group to put my scope on the birds.

And then. The darndest thing happened. I just stared at them. Through the scope. I just followed them. I couldn’t think other than to say to myself “Gosh they are strange-looking birds.” I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything else. Doug yelled out “Hook-billed Kites! They’re Hook-billed Kites!” and furiously radioed the other half of our group to try and get them on it. And in that moment, I just went catatonic. Or Kite-atonic. Or whatever you want to call it. For minutes. And then, complete astonishment. 

Doug Gochfeld's original image of the juvenile Hook-billed Kites

After they had disappeared out of sight and high-fives were traded all the way around, I quickly texted Martin and Marci, two of the people who had been along with me every agonizing step of the way. And then a funny thing happened. My phone exploded. Not literally, but figuratively. Congratulatory texts began rolling in. The nemesis had been vanquished. The Bird That Shall Not Be Named had revealed itself to me. To all of us. I was in disbelief.

Phone edit and crop of Doug's original photo

That afternoon, I was greeted with hugs and more high-fives upon returning to the convention center. The intensity of it all made me feel a bit like a star player being carried off the field after a glorious victory. To say I was flying higher than a kite is not only a bad pun, but also perfectly describes my heart and my head. It was almost too much for me to bear. Earlier I mentioned the agony and the ecstasy. After so much deep agony, the ecstasy on the other side was like none other. 

I now presume that everywhere I go, there will be Hook-billed Kites to be seen. Birding is funny that way. Sometimes it just takes one to start the landslide. Oh and yes, from that very moment and unto eternity, I can say those words without shudder or wince. For the record, when the birds disappeared out of sight, I took a deep breath, put my head down, and thanked them. These birds have no idea what they do to us, but that won’t stop me from being grateful for it. Even when they rip our hearts out of our chest and then mend them all back up in a nano-second.  

On Kings and Fowl Weather at The Biggest Week

The week had been beautiful. Unseasonably warm and with the exception of a few afternoon thunderstorms, relatively dry. I grew up on the south shore of Lake Erie and know well how fickle a month May can be, bouncing from days that feel more like November or December to afternoons that feel downright July-like. Just as the birds were, I was paying close attention to the weather. So when I awoke to a rainy Friday morning, I prepared myself to lead a field trip for which I was nearly certain most of the participants would not show. 

Oh, how I love being wrong!

Ray Stewart and I had a van full of folks, all of our registered participants in fact, whose spirits had not been dampened by the wet morning. I worked to pump myself up, as much as the participants, by letting them in on a little secret; that birding in the rain was fun and is often even more productive than birding in fair weather.

I thought back to a particularly wet Big Day Van trip that I led at the previous Biggest Week in American Birding; a day that will live in my memory for a long time. I met new friends that day and saw a King Rail, which for me was a new bird. As a guide, rabid birder, and professional ornithologist, lifers don’t happen every day.

As Ray and I worked to keep our humors up, off we went to a magical land of Private Marshes.

When Rob and Lester sent me my leader schedule a few weeks before the festival was to begin, I was delighted to see that I was slated to lead a Private Marshes trip. This very special trip allows participants to enter an extremely prestigious piece of private land, the renowned Winous Point Shooting Club. While many individuals might at first not understand the connection between shooting birds for sport and bird and habitat conservation, when one dives deeper into the subject they may find volumes written on conservation dollars raised by hunters and sportspersons. Winous Point Shooting Club is the oldest shooting club still in operation in the United States, dating back to its founding in 1856. Throughout its history, Winous Point has been on the cutting edge of wetland research and conservation efforts (for more info on the history of the club and its associated marsh conservancy, preview this epic volume at: https://books.google.com/books?id=8e4lAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false).

As a private hunt club, access is extremely limited. One must be either a member (of which there are fewer than thirty), a guest of a member, a researcher, or one of the lucky few individuals that is granted access (usually as a member of a group) for educational purposes. When I was pursuing my undergraduate degree in Wildlife Management at The Ohio State University, I was fortunate to spend a weekend camping at Winous Point, exploring its marshes. I saw my first Bald Eagle there. To say I was eager to get back would have been a major understatement.

The intermittent rain coupled with the wind made birding difficult. It seemed each time we would all pile out of the van, a steady sprinkling would begin and birding from inside of the van was a near impossibility with the number of bodies inside. We were doing the best we could and enjoyed the birds we got to see, but activity was low and by mid-morning our enthusiasm was beginning to slip.

We were finishing loading up the van when a Utility Vehicle with two young men pulled up on the dike road behind us. Presuming they may be researchers, I went to chat them up. Sure enough, they were checking the rail traps. I had caught wind of the project through a conversation with another guide who had led the same trip just a few days before. Their lucky group had the chance to ogle a King Rail up close and personal. Knowing how rare King Rail is in Ohio, state listed as endangered, in fact, I figured we wouldn’t be that lucky, but hoped that perhaps the crew might catch a Virginia Rail or Sora that our group could see. Their plan was to take any bird they might catch back to the headquarters to put a transmitter on it, for tracking movement and locations, band it, and take measurements before returning it to the location where it was captured. They agreed to hold on to anything they caught for us to see, I agreed that we would be back at the headquarters around the time they were to return from checking the traps, and off they went.

A short while later, I saw their UV ahead of us on the dike road. The two men were walking back from the marsh and I noticed the lead gentleman was carrying a bag. A big bag. I was like popcorn in the passenger seat of the van, completely giddy. I had a really, really good feeling about what was inside that bag. There was no tempering my excitement and I notified everyone in the van that they had caught a bird for us to see!

We pulled up behind them and scampered out of the van as they walked back up to the top of the dike. Yep. Sure enough. The King of all Rails was in the bag. My unbridled enthusiasm compelled me to snap a few pictures of the bird in the bag with the beautiful marsh from where the King Rail came in the background. The photo captures the dreariness of the day, but at that moment, a sun was shining in my heart and I was on could nine in my head. 

Another bander friend of mine once said “Seeing a new bird in-the-hand is like getting a lifer all over again.”

We spent the next short while birding the remainder of the marsh but all I could think of was the King Rail that would be awaiting our return. We picked up a few new species for the day and headed back to talk with the researchers and John Simpson, the Director of the Winous Point Marsh Conservancy, which oversees the management of the land. John was kind enough to not only show the bird to us and discuss their rail research project, but he also later took us into the main lodge and discussed the history of Winous Point Shooting Club and its associated Marsh Conservancy. We poured over the maps and probably would have happily asked him questions for another several hours, but as the weather started to break, our anything but bleak day was drawing to a close. 

 

A close-up of the Elvis of water chickens.

The richly-colored and boldly-patterned flank of the beautiful King Rail.

Another close-up, because, yeah.

This lightweight satellite transmitter will help the researchers track the locations and movements of this individual, helping to shed light on the little-known ecology of this endangered species of the Lake Erie marshes area.

While our species day list was kept below average due to the weather conditions, being lucky enough to view a King Rail, in-the-hand was something that certainly does not happen on just any birding trip. In fact, I believe this is only the fourth King Rail transmittered since the project began. Combine this with the opportunity to spend time at an exclusive hunting and conservancy property, having the chance to speak with its director about the history and research goals of the organization, and being granted the permission to walk through the lodge and inspect the museum-quality artifacts, decoys, letters, photographs, etc., made this the absolute highlight to a week punctuated by one intensely positive experience after another.

I can’t say enough about The Biggest Week in American Birding. Visiting private parcels of land such as this, observing research in the works, and aiding conservation efforts with special fundraising events and programs (check out The Biggest Week webpage for more information on this: http://www.biggestweekinamericanbirding.com/) truly makes this festival one of the premier annual birding events in the US. The camaraderie and community associated with this festival is second to none. There is nowhere in the world I would rather be during the first two weeks of May! While the warblers draw folks to the area, sometimes royalty steals the show.  

And for me, it’s a chance to come home.

On that day, I was given a particularly special gift. I was able to revisit a place I spent time during a formative period in my career, when I was just starting to get my feet firmly planted as a wildlife biologist. Though my time there was incredibly brief, it was impactful. I was raised on the shore of the lake that feeds these wetlands, romped across the beaches and islands of the region as a young girl, and developed my interest in the natural world in this area. The Great Black Swamp served as my natal birding grounds, with this piece of property helping to pique the interest in birds and bird research which has morphed into my passion and my vocation. To return all these years later as an accomplished researcher, bird bander, wildlife biologist, and bird guide, was humbling and exciting and profoundly soul stirring.

Not soon to be forgotten.

To see a couple of cool maps associated with the transmitter locations of the marked King Rails, including the bird that was marked the day our group visited Winous Point, check out the Winous Point Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Winous-Point-Marsh/111584338881320.