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Jul. 15th, 2008 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oakenguyTrue fact: I love killdeer.
I grant, this might partly be because when I saw them this morning we'd already had breakfast and coffee at my local coffeeshop's outdoor table, complete with a server coming around with samples of their new mango-banana smoothie and coupons for a free one. So with that AND a caffeine high under my belt AND the fact that I was walking along the river watching crew boats paddle past instead of being in a car stuck in the rotary where four lanes were trying to merge down to 1...suffice it to say that I was feeling love and goodwill (and schadenfreude) towards all creatures furred and feathered.
Apart from that, though, killdeer are awesome.
Thing you need to know about killdeer: they were the first animal young behavioral scientist Oakenguy, age 8, read about in 'Ranger Rick Magazine' and then observed in real life.
When I was a little kid Ranger Rick Magazine was the shizzle. I was a nerd for the National Wildlife Foundation the way other kids were for sports teams. I even, and this is a fact I've never shared with anyone, tried writing an article of my own on my Dad's electric typewriter, thrilled by the way it hummed and buzzed like an outdoor motor and jerked a little with each key I pressed as I copied the encyclopedia entry for 'wapiti' and then added some purple prose of my own for the last line. ("Ther forests are disappearing and soon the mounrful cry of the wapiti may be heard no morr." I can't remember the name of a single kid in my class that year, but I can still remember that line.)
If Ranger Rick Magazine had a flaw, though, it was that they mostly talked about the KEWL animals. Elephants. Pandas. Sea Otters. "Sea otters float on their backs" was a fact with about as much immediate use to me as "Stormtroopers are, by and large, taller than Luke Skywalker". But then one day they had an article about killdeer.
Killdeer are ground birds. They're about as close to a roadrunner as you'll find in New England, zipping around everywhere on their little legs. They build their nests on the ground, and when they have an egg or chick to protect they'll do so by pretending to have a broken wing and luring the predator away. Also, some lived in the abandoned construction site across the street from me.
Armed with this knowledge I went across the street, and in one of those sequences that never happen in fiction or in real life everything went just the way it was supposed to. Gravelly landscape, check. Speedy little brown and white bird fluttering and hopping with a dangling right wing, check. Looking over my shoulder in the opposite direction from where it was leading me and spotting a fluffy chick, CHECK!
I subscribed to 'Ranger Rick' for four more years, but it never got better than that day. (For one thing, it turns out that in real life raccoons aren't allowed to be forest rangers.)
So today on the riverbank we crossed paths with a couple of killdeer, and it turns out that even when there aren't chicks around they seem to like being followed. One would sit down, wait until I got within ten feet, zip away on his little legs and then sit down again, waiting for me to catch up. Maybe they like to keep in practice, or maybe they just like messing with people. But it's weird how just following a bird can take me back 20ish years to the North Waterford gravel pits.
I grant, this might partly be because when I saw them this morning we'd already had breakfast and coffee at my local coffeeshop's outdoor table, complete with a server coming around with samples of their new mango-banana smoothie and coupons for a free one. So with that AND a caffeine high under my belt AND the fact that I was walking along the river watching crew boats paddle past instead of being in a car stuck in the rotary where four lanes were trying to merge down to 1...suffice it to say that I was feeling love and goodwill (and schadenfreude) towards all creatures furred and feathered.
Apart from that, though, killdeer are awesome.
Thing you need to know about killdeer: they were the first animal young behavioral scientist Oakenguy, age 8, read about in 'Ranger Rick Magazine' and then observed in real life.
When I was a little kid Ranger Rick Magazine was the shizzle. I was a nerd for the National Wildlife Foundation the way other kids were for sports teams. I even, and this is a fact I've never shared with anyone, tried writing an article of my own on my Dad's electric typewriter, thrilled by the way it hummed and buzzed like an outdoor motor and jerked a little with each key I pressed as I copied the encyclopedia entry for 'wapiti' and then added some purple prose of my own for the last line. ("Ther forests are disappearing and soon the mounrful cry of the wapiti may be heard no morr." I can't remember the name of a single kid in my class that year, but I can still remember that line.)
If Ranger Rick Magazine had a flaw, though, it was that they mostly talked about the KEWL animals. Elephants. Pandas. Sea Otters. "Sea otters float on their backs" was a fact with about as much immediate use to me as "Stormtroopers are, by and large, taller than Luke Skywalker". But then one day they had an article about killdeer.
Killdeer are ground birds. They're about as close to a roadrunner as you'll find in New England, zipping around everywhere on their little legs. They build their nests on the ground, and when they have an egg or chick to protect they'll do so by pretending to have a broken wing and luring the predator away. Also, some lived in the abandoned construction site across the street from me.
Armed with this knowledge I went across the street, and in one of those sequences that never happen in fiction or in real life everything went just the way it was supposed to. Gravelly landscape, check. Speedy little brown and white bird fluttering and hopping with a dangling right wing, check. Looking over my shoulder in the opposite direction from where it was leading me and spotting a fluffy chick, CHECK!
I subscribed to 'Ranger Rick' for four more years, but it never got better than that day. (For one thing, it turns out that in real life raccoons aren't allowed to be forest rangers.)
So today on the riverbank we crossed paths with a couple of killdeer, and it turns out that even when there aren't chicks around they seem to like being followed. One would sit down, wait until I got within ten feet, zip away on his little legs and then sit down again, waiting for me to catch up. Maybe they like to keep in practice, or maybe they just like messing with people. But it's weird how just following a bird can take me back 20ish years to the North Waterford gravel pits.
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Date: 2008-07-15 11:22 pm (UTC)Ranger Rick was indeed the schnitzel growing up, and I came across it again in College for an Art studio - they provided some good reference photos for painting/drawing.
I don't remember any specific articles from childhood, but I remember the article on Snowy Owls at Logan Airport from the class at College (wouldnya know I was using those photos of Snowys for art projects) - Back in March I happened to meet the father of the girl who wrote the article doing the research on said Snowys at said Logan, the father doing an enourmous amount of work at the Blue Hills Trailside Museum in Milton; and turns out I met her briefly/in passing when I did work for Wildlife care....So it became a small world very quickly and having to do with Ranger Rick...And Snowy Owls... :D