[obol] Re: Camp Adair motorless kite, Prairie Falcon, and Rough-legged Hawk
- From: Joel Geier <joel.geier@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Gerard Lillie <gerardlillie@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2015 18:44:07 -0800
Hi Gerard,
Great stories, thanks for sharing them!
Your second story reminds me a bit of a story that a Linn County birder
posted on OBOL back in late 2001, when the whole country was on
hyper-alert after the World Trade Center attacks, and there was special
attention for reservoirs. For a brief periods (before the American
Geophysical Union and others convinced the feds that this was ridiculous
and would just cause problems for scientific research), reservoirs and
dams were even blotted out on digital maps.
Wish I could remember who posted the story, but it had to be someone
fairly tall or else the story wouldn't work. Maybe it was Jeff Harding?
Or Tom Snetsinger?
Whoever it was had his scope set up on Foster Dam, looking for migrant
loons, grebes, scoters and the like (in proper taxonomic order, for
those days). Up came the local law enforcement dude, to ask what they
were looking at. Not completely satisfied with the answer, the cop
wanted to see for himself, exactly what the birder was looking at.
The problem (this is where height comes into the story) was that the
birder was a taller guy, and the cop was a shorter guy. So the cop
jumped up and down a few times, trying to verify the birder's story. Who
knows what he saw (it's hard to imagine that he saw anything by this
method) but I guess the important thing was that he showed some effort.
He was also less trusting than the military captain that you encountered
in Mexico during the Zapatista period.
One good thing to come from this story, though, is that whenever I'm
leading some sort of birding trip, I remember to look around the group
and set my scope height so it will work for everyone, before I even
start to line up birds. The image of that poor cop hopping up and down
has never left me.
Happy birding,
Joel
On Tue, 2015-02-03 at 14:33 -0800, Gerard Lillie wrote:
>
>
> .... 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.
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