We chased the Eurasian collared dove Saturday. Molly opted out of a grueling day birding and swam 3.5 miles at swim practice instead. She just isn’t tough enough to handle something as rigorous as birding.
We took a little drive down to the Indiana border and met up with our friend Fred who took us to another Fred’s house. A couple from the Detroit area showed up at the same time. It started with the usual, “it was here 20 minutes ago….” But, we hung around and sure enough it popped up. We also had great views of a Lincoln’s sparrow in Fred’s yard. Not a species I’ve seen too often.
How to make a collared dove fly away. Get out the camera.
After Fred’s house we stopped at the ever popular Kinderhook sewage treatment plant. I was hoping for a snipe but there wasn’t enough marshy habitat. Nice mix of ducks moving in but no snipe.
Kinderhook sewage treatment plant. Sometimes it’s hard to explain why I find birding enjoyable.
When I was in Boy Scouts we would do the old snipe hunt trick on new kids at summer camp. Take them out to some field at night with a bag and tell them the rest of us were going to walk through the field and scare the snipes toward them. Then they could catch the snipes with the bag. Naturally we would go back to the camp and leave them out there. Must have been a more innocent time. Most of us didn’t even know what a snipe was and I can’t recall anybody ever questioned why we were catching them. It’s just what you did.
So one time we took some poor sap out there and dumped him in the dark. While we were back at camp roasting something over the fire he came running back into camp yelling, “I got one, I got one.” Since none of us actually knew what a snipe was, yet alone seen one, everyone started crowding around him. As I was running down to check it out I saw a circle of scouts all lean inward as he emptied his bag, then suddenly they all fell backward yelling. Somehow our new scout managed to catch a skunk. And we did know what a skunk was. Casualties were fairly low. One or two guys had some clothes they needed to burn and a tent got some spray. The skunk walked away unhindered and we ended the annual snipe hunt forever.
Coming back from the collared dove hunt we stopped for lunch at Schuler’s in historic Marshall, MI. Schuler’s has been an inn or restaurant for over a hundred years. Really good food and worth the trip.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 