Sharing Birding Contest Second Place Winner
Our big white van turned into a long gravel lane with a sign ushering us to Crane Creek in Ohio. My brothers bounced in their seats excitedly, clutching their binoculars tightly. My nine-year-old sister, Talitha, tried to capture the sight of dozens of families of Canada Geese waddling between the road and the river. Proud fathers and anxious mothers warned their little goslings with loud honks to stay back from the road, and my sister sighed in disappointment that we were going too fast to get a nice picture.
I fell in love with the cute little goslings and held four-year-old Tirzah up to the window to get a glimpse of the geese. But as we pulled into the large parking lot, I inwardly resigned myself with reluctance to long, boring hours of creeping along everlasting boardwalks, trying to spot the birds that my enthusiastic brothers were always hunting for.
My brother Matthias sprang out the van door as soon as my dad put the vehicle in park. On one side, we could hear the foaming waves of Lake Erie crashing on the sandy shore. On the other side, we could hear a few faint bird calls coming from the boardwalk section. Maybe, I thought, I can slip away to the beach for awhile. That would be fun!
Matthias turned to us. “Let’s go!” He got out his D7500 Nikon, carefully balancing its 600mm lens. He had been saving since he was eight to buy this camera and was so excited to try it out at Crane Creek. It seemed like everyone except me was excited. I had never got into birds before, and I sighed as we stepped onto the long boardwalk.
My brothers had stopped bouncing. Now they crept along quietly, straining their eyes to catch sight of a bird. “Shhh,” one of them cautioned, “I think I hear something!” He put his hand behind his ear and listened. “I think it’s a Baltimore Oriole.”
Sure enough! I just had time to catch a flash of orange and black before the bird disappeared.
Then Matthias noticed a group of birders gathered a little ways ahead, all aiming their big cameras at a spot in the bushes. He bounded ahead, and I tagged along. “Oh, neat!” he exclaimed in a whisper, slinging his camera into position. “A Yellow-rumped Warbler!”
I looked in the direction his camera was pointed. There was a beautiful black, yellow, and white warbler posing on a branch, puffed up and seemingly proud of all the attention he was getting.
Just then my dad called to us, “Up here’s an owl of some kind. I think it’s a Screech-Owl.”
Matthias quickly snapped another picture, then joined my dad under the branches of a tall tree. “If only there weren’t so many branches in the way,” he complained, trying to decide what the best position for a picture would be.
Some of the excitement was catching on to me now. I peered up into the jungle of leaves and branches, trying to spot it as well. “Here, look through my camera,” Matthias offered, zooming up a little on a soft brown bird, high up in the trees. Its eyes were half closed—it looked like it was taking a nap.
We saw a few more birds, but the lighting was beginning to fade. Eventually we headed back to the van, and drove to an RV park where we would share a motor home with some birder friends for the night. At the campsite, the boys lit a campfire, and we roasted marshmallows while comparing notes on birds we had seen that day.
The next morning at 6:00, we got out of bed. Donning jackets and grabbing binoculars and cameras, we got into the van and drove back to Magee Marsh to see how many birds we could spot before breakfast. Lots of birds were out that morning. We saw a Scarlet Tanager, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a Northern Parula, and many other rare and beautiful birds.
At 9 a.m., everyone gathered in the camper for breakfast. As we ate, we perched on the couches and tables, chattering and looking at pictures from the morning. “I really like this one,” said Matthias, showing me a picture he had taken of the little brown Veery we had seen.
“Who’s ready for another bird walk?” someone called, and we all trooped outside once again.
All along the trail we took, someone had put out orange halves on sticks to attract orioles. And we did see many orioles, although most of them weren’t in good positions for pictures. However, Matthias was really excited to get a few great pictures of a Prothonotary Warbler, a beautiful yellow bird with light blue wings.
“I’m going to see what those people are looking at,” he whispered to me, motioning toward a group of birders clustered under a large maple tree. By now, we had learned that if you saw a crowd gathered like that, you should go check it out!
“It’s a Great Horned Owl,” someone said.
This owl did not look like it was asleep—it stared suspiciously at us with large yellow eyes. Matthias tried to get a picture, but it was hard to get close because of all the people. More and more birders kept arriving, and soon we decided to leave for nearby Howard Marsh.
This time we rode in the RV. We rolled the windows down and stuck our heads out, laughing—all except Matthias. He sat on the couch, absorbed in his pictures. “Look, is that a goose?” my sister asked, pointing to a pond we were passing.
“No, it’s a swan. How beautiful!”
Then my youngest brother, Darius, shouted, “There goes an osprey!” The big bird soared over the RV and disappeared.
“Oh look—another family with baby goslings!” my sister squealed.
Soon we pulled up to the Howard Marsh parking lot. At the entrance to the Lake Trail, we saw a number of Black-necked Stilts. We looked through binoculars and cameras at the funny black and white birds with long legs and long beaks.
“Look!” someone said, and there stood a stilt in the water, which reflected beautifully. Matthias whipped out his camera.
Farther up the trail, my younger brother called, “Come look at these turtles!”
We had barely reached him when we heard Daddy call, “Come quick! There’s an egret with a fish in its mouth!”
We arrived just in time to see the tail of the large white bird disappear into the bulrushes.
“I got a picture!” my sister Talitha told us excitedly. It was a great picture for her camera. Matthias congratulated her politely, but I could tell he was thinking about what that picture could have looked like if it had been taken with HIS camera.
All too soon we came to the end of the trail. It hadn’t taken that long to walk the short path around the lake, so we decided to visit one more place yet.
At Ottawa Wildlife Refuge, we first looked at the wildlife displays at the welcome center. But soon we were back outdoors, watching the Purple Martins clustering around one of the poles holding multiple gourd-style birdhouses. “May we get one of those?” Darius asked Mama.
“I don’t think so, unless you want to pay for it,” she chuckled. “Those houses cost around $300!”
“Oh.” He lapsed into silence and zoomed his camera up on one particularly splendid Purple Martin.
“Come on, let’s go!” Matthias started off toward the trail. He didn’t like taking pictures of Purple Martins in a setting like that—it wasn’t natural enough to suit his tastes. We started on the path, walking a little faster than before, hoping to cover the trail before lunch.
We had gone for quite a ways, not seeing much, when Darius stopped. “Is that a Red-eyed Vireo?”
“You’re right. Good eyes!” Matthias praised him. “But it’s too far away to get a good picture. Too bad!”
At noon, we gathered with our friends for the last time together in the camper and shared lunch. Our friend, Shawn, told us a bit about their own birding experiences between bites of casserole. They had taken a different path through the woods than we had. “We saw a Blue-headed Vireo,” said Shawn.
“No fair!” replied Matthias, who began to wish he had walked with them instead. But all in all, he had a grand time, and together our family had seen or heard at least fifty-eight bird species in the twenty-four hours spent in the Crane Creek area.
As we drove the many miles home, Matthias had a question for me. “Well, are you glad we came?”
I thought about it for a minute. Birding had been more exciting than I had expected. I was eager to see the pictures that had been taken. And this had been a fun family expedition, too. “Yes,” I replied, then added,
“Could we look at your pictures together?”
“Of course!”
Next time we go to Crane Creek, now that I know what to expect, I’m going to have a camera along.
Author’s note:
At first I almost decided to ask to stay home. It was Matthias who convinced me that it would be worth it. He really worked to make sure I was included, and that it would be fun for me. It turned out to be more fun than I thought, thanks to Matthias.