on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Birders of America

How generations of obsessive, list-making bird fanciers may help save the planet

(April 9, 2009)  A phalanx of violet-green swallows advances slowly across the pond; each snow-bellied, arrowhead-shaped bird hovers inches above the surface and pushes, bucking, into the stiff wind. And each follows the pattern: soar, then dip and water-flick — gotcha! Dart up, flashing a glitter-green nape and water droplets, with beakful of insect — which wrongly had thought refuge lay in a water-warmed air pocket.

Soar, dip, flick, dart.

GALLERY >

David Fix watches from the dirt track beside the pond. He scans the rest of the newly ponded field off the I Street entrance to the Arcata marsh. He’s looking for the short-eared owl — has seen it before out here, hunting in the tufted, lumpy landscape where the grasses, once nibbled to nubs by cows, have been allowed to stretch and diversify and house small rodents.

But though the sun heated the earth all day, beckoning spring, a cold northwest wind has kicked up on this late March afternoon. It blasts away all warmth, makes flying a chore. More birds will be lying low.

Usually Fix comes out here with a purpose. Maybe he’ll look for a rare bird he’s heard about, or the owls, or note the return of migrating shorebirds. But even on a mission, he takes it all in, everything: sun, grass, wind, marsh wren chatter in the rustling cattails, water ripples, redwood scent and ocean salt, the low call of the gadwall, the gull’s curdle-cry — even those yellow backhoes that have been building a new wetland out here. Ha, there’s a twist, clever Tonka trucks in reverse, making habitat instead of destroying it.

Fix drinks it all down like an elixir. He also keeps very good notes.

^^^^^

The Godwit Days festival approaches. Anyone in the vicinity of Humboldt Bay knows what that means. The faraway birders assemble their gear — binoculars, scopes, cameras, guide books, pencils and pads, sunhat, sunscreen, hiking shoes — and fill up their cars for the mass migration to Humboldt County. Local birders, too, adjust their schedules and get ready to step out the door.

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