November 2, 2011
Just some folks talkin about birds — and where to spot them at the UW
The next meeting of the Birders Brown Bag group is at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 10, in 359 Savery. Everyone is welcome.
OK, so youve seen a freshwater diving bird and you know its a grebe. But is it a horned grebe or an eared grebe?
If you attended a lunchtime meeting of the Birders Brown Bag group, you could listen to a discussion of that topic, and get the answer to your question. The group rarely has a formal agenda; its just a bunch of people talkin about birds.
The group has a long history at the University. It was started in the mid to late 70s by faculty members Charles Evans, Dale Wesley and Don Norman. Evans and Wesley have since died and Norman has moved away, but the group goes on. Some members even come back to attend after theyve retired.
Tom Cotner is surrounded by the beauty of Rainier National Park, but hes focused on looking for a white-tailed ptarmigan hed seen on previous trips. Cotner is a regular at the UWs Birders Brown Bag group.
Like Tom Cotner, for example. A longtime faculty member in pediatrics, hes retired but does some part-time work for the Department of Biological Structure. He figures hes been coming to the birding group meetings for about 18 years.
Its a natural outlet for him, since he and his wife take between 50 and 80 hikes a year and always carry binoculars. “If you look for birds,” he said, “you will find birds.”
It was Cotner who led the discussion about grebes at a recent birders meeting. Identifying the two he was talking about, he said, is usually like the first letters of their names. Eared grebes are easy to identify, horned grebes hard. But on this occasion, it was the eared grebes that presented the greater challenge for him.
As soon as Cotner began relating the story, longtime member and retired neurologist Fran Woods pulled out a bird book and handed it over. Cotner found the photo of grebes, and he and other members noted the markings.
And thats the way it goes. The topic is birds; the floor is open for discussion.
The group meets monthly in Room 359 of Savery Hall. Thats because member Beverly Wessel is the administrator of the Department of Philosophy, which has its home across the hall. Wessel became a birder about four years ago after encountering “the most amazing bird” behind one of the Universitys residence halls. Philosophys chair at the time, Ken Clatterbaugh, is a birder, so Wessel described the bird to him and he told her it was a cedar waxwing.
“That was what birders call my ‘spark bird — the one that got me interested,” Wessel said. After that I got myself some binoculars and joined the Audubon Society.”
She joined the UW group about a year ago after learning of it from her friend Ellen Meyer. Meyer is a UW retiree who keeps the email list for the group. Anyone can join it and learn about the meetings. Just send an email to elle@u.washington.edu.
“I like to go to the group because most of the people in it are more experienced birders than I am, and they can usually answer any questions I have,” Wessel said. “I also like to hear about places to go to see birds.”
One place to go isnt very far away. “Behind the stadium, in an area we old-timers call the Montlake fill, is one of the most actively birded places in the state,” Cotner said. “There have been 270 different kinds of birds identified there. There are probably 100 that breed there. There are people in our group who go there at least once a week.”
Cotner also said there are a number of birds nesting right on campus that most people never see.
“There have been brown creepers nesting in the Medicinal Herb Garden,” he said. “Theyre a bird with a bill that curves downward and theyre pretty tiny. They nest between the bark of a giant sequoia or a giant cedar. Or therell be little crevasses in the tree and theyll bore a cavity and nest in there. Then there are woodpeckers all over. Right off Rainier Vista youll see red-breasted sapsuckers.”
Washington, the birders say, is an excellent place to see birds because of the variety of habitat it offers. You can read all about it in A Birders Guide to Washington, by Hal Opperman. Or, if you want to be part of the larger community of birders in the region, you can join the Tweeters Northwest email list, whose members were tweeting long before Twitter came along.
Theres also a more formal organization available at the University. The Washington Ornithological Society provides a forum for birders from throughout the state to meet and share information on bird identification, biology, population status and birding sites. Membership is open to anyone interested in birds and birding. The society meets at 7:30 p.m. on the first Monday of the month at the Center for Urban Horticulture.
But if you just want to chat about the birds you saw on your most recent walk, the Birders Brown Bag people welcome you.
