It's hard to say when I first became interested in birds. When people ask me that question most often I say that I always had a latent interest in them. As a boy I enjoyed being outside and I tried to notice the world around me. I loved all animals but the birds it seemed had something special, the ability to defy the gravity that holds the rest of us firmly in our place. Soon however, I began to notice that which makes them truly amazing. Nowhere in nature have I seen such vivid color, sublime beauty, or shear majesty than in these astonishing creatures. These revelations were aided by my parents who bought me my first bird guide when I was in second grade (the cover of which appears at the right).
As a city dweller on the west coast I marveled at the book's images of bright red Cardinals, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and the Blue Jay. "Are those colors real?" I would wonder to myself, "Or are they just painting them to look more beautiful?" It turns out that they weren't real, my first sighting of a Northern Cardinal in Portal, Arizona made the red bird of my old bird book look as pale and washed out as a 10-year-old pair of Levis. Nothing, it seems, can reproduce the colors you see on a singing male bird in spring. What is amazing is that most people never notice these miracles of color around them, it's not until you look through binoculars or a spotting scope that suddenly you find yourself in a different world. These kinds of looks would not come my way for a while yet. Our world serves up so many distractions to our children, I would be seduced by many of them before I would return to birds.
For me that return came with a new room-mate my senior year of college. You can't be a student at Humboldt State University without rubbing shoulders with students in the natural resources field. Jeff Manker was a science major with a passion for birds and a need for housing. He was responsible for rekindling my interest and soon we were spending hours at the Marsh Project and I began to keep track of what I was seeing. Later Jeff and I would do a Southern California big day (for the NAS Bird-a-thon) that saw my life list probably double. Jeff taught me a lot about the basics of bird identification and we spent many hours avoiding our studies and enjoying the natural beauty of Humboldt County.
Another fortunate break for me was my involvement in, of all things, the choral music program on campus. Those of us who loved music came together from all disciplines to share this. While singing in the University Chorale I met Mike Morris and became reacquainted with Paul Sheppard and that is when the real trouble began. For a brief semester we sang together before Paul was off to grad school and eventually a professorship at the University of Arizona (he's a tree ring guy). But in that short time we formed a barbershop quartet, discovered a shared passion for birds, and managed to avoid any violence while singing for change on the street corners of Arcata, California.
Over the course of the next few years while I was in grad school, Michael and I shared housing and birded the far corners of Humboldt County and Paul worked his way through Cornell, the Lamont-Doherty tree ring lab and eventually U of A. During that time we managed to get together for the Great-Barbershoping-Birding-Bash (GBSBB) of whatever year it was. The first and perhaps most memorable was to Southeastern Arizona in March of 1986. We piled into "Bertha" my 1967 VW Bus and took the road trip of legends. Paul flew in from NY and we met at his grandmother's in Tucson. Some of the great moments: After driving late into the night we sleep on the edge of the Salton Sea and wake up in the middle of a pile of dead fish; The first morning we are in Arizona Michael accidentally steps on and breaks my brand-new glasses that we had just picked up in Oakland; We discover that you can put too much cilantro in the cooking pot at fabled Cave Creek campground in the Chiricahuas; We do an emergency rest-stop brake job on Bertha somewhere in Southern Arizona then drive over a pile of nails on our way back into California; A massive case of the giggles destroys our final night's concert somewhere in the San Jacinto Mountains; And finally, upon returning home, I discover that the film in my camera had striped off the winding peg leaving me with exactly zero pictures. Subsequent trips would be to the northeastern US in May for the warbler migration, the south coast of Texas in April, back to southeastern Arizona two more times and then to Monterey for a Pelagic trip with Shearwater Adventures when Paul's daughter who is now grown was new to this world. So many great times and so many laughs. I look forward to the reunion that will come someday soon.
The First GBSBB - The Salton Sea, 1986
Finally there was the annual Thanksgiving trip to Tule Lake, the Klamath Basin and Lava Beds National Monument. Each year for almost 15 years I did this trip with friends from Humboldt and then friends who I had met playing the sport of Ultimate in the Bay Area. The camping and camaraderie were unparalleled as was the beauty of the high desert and its birds.
Now that I am retired I have much more time to devote to improving my birding skills and to taking trips around the spectacular region we know as the American west. In recent years I have been joined in these adventures with increasing frequency by Michael and Jeff. Both are highly skilled birders and I never retire from a day in the field with them without having learned something new. Not only that, but the three of us together may have a few things to teach the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers. It is a sure sign of a kindred camaraderie that very soon after returning from one trip I begin to think of the next one we can do together. Here's to the chase!
Chuck Dresel - Napa, CA
The Three Stooges?
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