[obol] Re: Camp Adair motorless kite, Prairie Falcon, and Rough-legged Hawk
- From: Gerard Lillie <gerardlillie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "joel.geier@xxxxxxxx" <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>, MidValley Birds <birding@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2015 14:33:43 -0800
Below, Joel reminisces about two out-of-the-ordinary birding experiences he has
had and it made me think of two that I had.
One happened when Jeff Gilligan, Thomas Staudt, my wife Alice and I took a
birding trip to Mexico. We were staying in the small town of Barra de Navidad
on the Pacific coast and one afternoon the other three decided to do a little
R&R at the hotel pool so I decided to take the car and explore an area just
south of town. As I drove down a small road toward the coast I approached an
arch which apparently was the entrance to a fancy hotel under construction.
There were several guards with various weapons and when I stopped at the arch
all the guards pointed their rifles at me. The lead guy asked me if I was
Alejandro. I said, No, Gerardo. They all lowered their rifles and said ok, you
can go. Thankfully my name isn't Alejandro!
The next one also happened in Mexico. My wife, Thomas again and my niece Susan
went to Palenque. As part of the trip we went to the Mayan ruins of Yaxchilan.
To get there you take a road from Palenque to Fonterra Echeverria and take a
boat down the Rio Usumacinta to the ruins. This was in 1999 and during the
Zapatista "troubles". On the road we came upon a heavy duty military checkpoint
with many armed soldiers and machine gun nests on either side of the road. The
captain made all of us (we also had a guide at that point) get out of the van.
For probably the only time in my life while in a birding area I left my bins in
the vehicle. Thomas and I simultaneously spotted a King Vulture and shouted out
in excitement. I dove past the soldier searching the van and grabbed my bins,
jumped out and we admired the vulture. When I lowered my bins I saw every gun
pointing at me. I thought I was going to have a heart attack! The captain
calmly told everyone to lower their weapons and asked for my bins, which he
then used to watch the vulture for a bit. He was impressed with the bird having
never seen one. He gave me my bins and told us we could proceed. Wow, talk
about estupido!
To keep this legit and talk about birds- small numbers of PINE SISKINS and RED
CROSSBILLS have been in my Mt. Tabor neighborhood for several weeks now.
Good birding,
Gerard Lillie
Portland, OR
Joel said:
Participants in a Corvallis Audubon field trip a few years back might
remember this as the place where we got pinned down by a platoon
practicing for deployment to Iraq, when we stopped to look at Northern
Harriers and Rough-legged Hawks. That was certainly the strangest
situation that I've ever encountered as a field-trip leader, to have
several guys jump out of a HUMV, drop into prone positions and train
automatic rifles in the direction of the group.
If this is what it's like to go birding in Iraq nowadays, I think I'll
wait a few years before I try to add Iraq Babbler to my life list. To
this day I'm still not sure if they viewed us as a potential terrorist
threat (I had that happen once in West Germany when I was walking along
with a backpack on a rural road, which unbeknownst to me, was just half
a mile from a U.S. air base that was on high alert due to threats from
the old Bader-Meinhoff gang -- still the only time that I've ever had
someone casually wave a loaded Uzi across my midsection from three feet
away), or if they were just conducting an exercise and trying to pretend
that we weren't there. Or perhaps some mix of the two.
Good birding,
Joel
Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis
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