busconews.com

by Neil A. Case

I’ve become a modern birder. I’ve learned to use my computer to get on the Internet and check reports of rare and unusual bird sightings, birds seen in unexpected places. For example on the Internet I learned that there was a western grebe seen at Salamonie Reservoir last month. Salamonie is in Huntington and Wabash Counties, north-central Indiana. Western grebes nest in the northwestern states of the U.S. and winter farther south.

by Neil A. Case

There was a cowbird on one of my bird feeders a few days ago. Cowbirds are usually birds of warmer weather. Yet this one was on my feeder on a day when the temperature was twenty degrees. It was there as the usual winter visitors, black-capped chickadees, tufted titmice, house finches, blue jays, a red-bellied and a downy woodpecker flew in and out.

by Neil A. Case

In “Birds of America” the black-capped chickadee is described as a “feathered small boy of the woods.” No reason is given for this description but to anyone who watches a black-capped chickadee there is no need for a reason. It’s obvious. This is a little bird, hardly bigger than a house wren, a little bird with white cheeks, a black cap and bib, a gray back, wings and tail that is ever active, ever calling, ever cheery it seems.

by Neil A. Case

Wilderness in the United States, according to the Wilderness Act signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 3, 1964, is “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

by Neil A. Case

I was home and I intended to stay home through the afternoon and evening, reading, watching TV, perhaps doing a little writing. Then the phone rang and when I answered the caller told me, “That bird is back.” That bird, a bird he had called me about a couple of days earlier, a bird that had flown into a window near where he stood, dropped to the ground, then got up and walked into a corner where he had been able to catch it. He had taken it in his house and kept it for a few days. It seemed to recover completely and when it had, when it started to smell up the house he said, he had taken it outside and released it.