You may recall from my first blog that I mentioned I was a rookie. This is true not only for shows but for birds in general. Yes--shocking I know--but the truth is that once upon a time I was a huge mammal person.
Dwarf Mongooses formerly at the top of my list
Meerkats, otters, prairie dogs, lemurs, big cats, red pandas, canines these were my passions, along with frogs (which are clearly not mammals). I would map out zoo routes so that I could find my way to the meerkats the fastest; I knew which zoos had my mammalian friends and where to find them.
River Otters--one of my former favorites
I could navigate a zoo in record time and see all of my favorites and if I was short on time I skipped the aviary. It wasn’t that I disliked birds; I just didn’t really get them. Over the years I was exposed to them on occasion--songbirds in the backyard, shorebirds at the beach, raptors at environmental centers. Nothing really clicked. There was no passion, no drive to research their behaviors. Then one day in college I needed another biology course and my friend suggested ornithology. It sounded cool, so I signed up.
That course was the first of many life changing bird experiences. Once you learn about birds it’s impossible not to be fascinated by them. The course was both lecture and lab and I learned so much from both. Feathers, hollow bones, flow through lungs, physiological systems that are so efficient humans are envious, and fused, lower back vertebra called the synsacrum are just a few amazing traits unique to birds. In the field lab I discovered I was a decent birder, other than once telling my class that the call of a mourning dove was an owl ( which is what I was told when I was younger--so a perfectly honest mistake).
After Ornithology class I had a new appreciation for birds, but I didn’t really LOVE them—yet. That didn’t happen until I interned at WBS, and even then it snuck up on me.
I arrived with a fear of Great Horned Owls
I arrived at WBS with a car full of belongings, everything I had learned in ornithology, and a fear of Great Horned Owls. This last was entirely the fault of the movie Rock-a-Doodle whose villainous owl not only gives owls a bad name, but gave me nightmares for years. I was entirely prepared to treat the next three months as a stepping stone. I would work hard, learn all that I could, and then move on to the next aspect of environmental education. As you may have guessed, that is not what happened.
Have you ever been waylaid by a chicken? They are absolutely irresistable!
The birds snuck up on me. They waylaid me when my guard was down, and worked their way into my heart before I even realized it. I learned about more species, their life histories and their personalities. The feeling of having a bird on your glove and being involved in their training is highly addictive. Then I was invited to do shows and the rest, as they say, is history.
Murdock excited to see me
Now the aviary is my first stop. I have a small but growing library of field guides and bird books, and my cell phone is 98 percent bird photos. If you had asked me in college what I would be doing right now, “working with birds” is probably the last response I would have given you. Birds sneak up on you. Once you learn about them it is impossible to not be fascinated by them. So come out to the sanctuary, meet our birds and see what it took me until college to figure out: birds are awesome, bird people even more so.
Submitted by Leah Tyndall, World Bird Sanctuary Naturalist
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