Tony Barrand, David Essig, Charlie Maguire, John Roberts, Garnett Rogers, Stan Rogers,
[undocumented]
I read a poem on the show last week by Margaret Haskins Durber, the Poet laureate of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. A number of people wrote us about it and she had another one here I thought I'd read to you. This one in kind of a rough draft been written for the spring, but I felt like reading it here tonight, though it's not appeared yet in the Lake Wobegon Herald Star. It's entitled A Book Report on Minnesota Birds. And she writes first in parentheses.
This poem is accurate to the extent that I can read and understand ornithology for the inevitable mistakes my apology.
The field guide “Minnesota Birds” by Robert Jansen and Janet Green, lists all the birds ever found here and when and where they were seen. Some birds stay all year, including certain owls, woodpeckers and jays. Most including the robin, come only for the season or about 120 days. Some live North and South of here and are only seen as they fly over twice a year, including the merlin mockingbird and the piping plover. And a few, including the northern shrike, snow bunting and snowy owl visit us in the winter, oh admirable and independent fowl. 44 species are referred to in the book as accidental. They were seen they were here, but by mistake most likely mental. Such as veering off course to the west by just the slightest bit, or perhaps one purple sandpiper got mad at the rest of the purple sandpipers and flew off in a purple snit. Saying “sure birds of a feather stick together, but Gee whiz cripes, you guys aren't acting like purple sandpipers, you're acting like a bunch of yellow bellied common guttersnipes.” And he flies off in a huff and tells them not to follow some things a bird can't stomach, not even a common swallow. We say to err is human, perhaps to err is also avian. When a bird is lost, however, we don't call the National Guard or the Navy, and we just look up and say “good heavens. What is that black throated gray warbler doing here? Where all this snow and ice is?” Maybe the bird looks down and sees it's Minnesota and has an identity crisis. He says “if I'm here in the winter, maybe I'm not a black throated gray warbler” and broods and broods about it and feels horribler and horribler. Until he's too depressed to warble a single note for how can he know for sure he's a black throated gray warbler if he can't see his throat? Maybe he’s something else, a loon or a dodo, or a goose. Maybe he's a black throated grow horribly with a couple wing nuts loose. Finally, to find out what area of the country his flock and his flock leaders in, he checks out a copy of Roger Tory Peterson. And there Roger Tory Peterson clearly states that all black throated Gray warblers fly to Miami in the winter because in the winter they can get group rates. To be a black throated Gray warbler in Minnesota is like being a Liberal Democrat in 1980. It's no cause for gaity. Still, it's not so bad as being of an extirpated species, such as the Eskimo curlew or the trumpeter swan extirpated means that you may exist somewhere else, but in Minnesota you are gone. Or to be extinct, which means you don't exist anywhere, not even a little bit, not even a smidgen. An example of an extinct bird is the passenger pigeon. Once numerous, it was never seen here after 1895. The last passenger pigeon alive lived in a zoo in a cage behind a screen in Cincinnati and died in 1914. Did that pigeon understand the doom of its family, know its own tragic worth? Did people know? Did they bring their children and stand at the cage and, say, take a good look, Henry and Sadie, because when this pigeon dies, there will not be another like it anywhere on God's green earth. Or did they look at it and say, “what's that a pigeon? Big deal. Let's go to the ape house, Margaret. I can see pigeons in the park.” As the pigeon huddled in the corner in the dark never to fly again, its homing instinct n ow only a dream of far away.Just as we can only imagine that bird today. Happily, other species, once close to the brink, are now given a fighting chance, such as the Prairie chicken, the males of which perform a spring mating dance to the beat of an orange sack on the neck that when filled with air, goes thumpita thumpita thumpita. Another rare musician is the swan, the well known trumpita. One sentence to die led to the post given a last cigarette. A reprieve came just before the tying of the mask. A great many trumpeters now live happily in Alaska. The book is filled with accounts of rare and unusual sights. On August 18th, 1949, a farmer in Spring Valley saw a pair of swallow-tailed kites. On May 3rd, 1973, near Duluth. Someone saw an adult Arctic loon, a lazuli bunting seen in Marshall County in 1929 on the 26th of June. A purple sandpiper 1966, a sabeans gull near Stillwater, 1944. A western wood peewee and cottonwood 1971, An ivory gull seen in January 1956 at Two Harbors by Mr and Mrs RB Evans. Reading along one can almost see the faithful watchers straining toward the heavens, as suddenly the heart leaps, the eyes open, the hands get clammy. A pair of trumpeter Swans nesting in a marsh in 1937 in Beltrami. The whooping crane, which long ago existed here in great bounty, last observed on November 7th, 1951, near Rice Lake in Aiken County, seen by birdwatchers. Birdwatchers in the weeds, in the swamps, sitting all day on stumps. With clouds of mosquitoes around their heads, biting them and making small red lumps. Birdwatchers scratched and bit with messy hair and torn shirts and baggy pants with baggy knees. Why do they endure these agonies? Perhaps they are cats, cats who restrain their claws, cats who don't pounce, but pause. Their tails winding set to kill these creatures, but instead write down identifying features. I don't know. It can't be described in words. Words fail us. People fail us. We are never disappointed by birds.
Central New Jersey Home News Nov 15 1980
1980.11.15 Wisconsin State Journal / Audio of the News available as a digital download.