I have always loved birds.  I'm not a serious ornithologist, but I've always been interested.  I've studied the local birds, and know their habits and songs.  Most of them I can recognize by sight, flight pattern, or sound.  They each have their interesting points.

For instance, I've clocked them as they've flown beside my moving car, so I can tell you that a robin (and most other birds) flies about 25 miles per hour.  Ducks are a lot faster, and magpies slower; but most birds fly between 20-25 MPH.  That speed makes them very efficient at moving from here to there--even over long distances--because they don't have to worry about bends in the road like we do.  They can set a straight course to their destination, and they'll soon be there, perhaps faster than we could do it in an auto.

I cherish my memories of encounters that I've had with birds.  My first memory involving birds, however, is not a pleasant one.  It involves my Uncle Andy, who briefly inhabited "the room," which was an extension of Dad's machine shop.  There was a bluebird nest up under the eaves, with baby birds in it.  I was horrified when Uncle Andy reported that he'd destroyed the nest because the baby birds were keeping him awake.  I was just a little boy.  I never said anything about my shock at his action.  I always liked by Uncle Andy, but I probably never quite forgave him for that mean and heartless act.

My next bird memory was two or three years later.  I was playing in the bathroom sink when I heard a loud "clunk" on our metal roof.  I hurried outside and found a fully-fledged sparrow hawk, or kestrel, on the lawn.  He had obviously come from a nest that must have been in the cottonwood tree, and had decided to try out his wings for the first time.  I didn't want the cats to get it, so I picked him up, and brought him in.  I'd heard about training hawks to be falcons, so I set right out to train him.  I tied a string to his leg, and kept hold of the other end.  I set him on the wood pile, and offered him hamburger and grasshoppers as I tried to entice him to fly to me and perch on my arm.

I later had a second young kestrel that I found up near the Markle place.  I worked at training them both, with zero success.  I don't remember what happened to either of them, but hopefully they were set free after they'd learned to fly.  The reality is, however, that without parents to show them how to hunt, they probably had short lives because of my interference.

Sparrow hawks have ever since been one of my favorite birds.  They were fun to watch as they circled above my tractor as I raked the hay field.  When they see something of interest on the ground, they have the ability to stop in midair and flap their wings in a pattern that allows them to be stationary and hover in one place until they judge the moment right to drop upon their prey.

Perhaps the most thrilling bird thing that I've seen was a gathering of bald eagles in the field east of the Brazofsky house.  I was driving by.  There in a perfect circle, about 20-30 feet in diameter, were perhaps 15-20 bald eagles.  Some were adults, with white heads.  Others were juveniles whose heads had not yet turned white.  They were facing one another.  I imagined the gathering to be a meeting where each bird was being assigned a particular sector of the valley to work that day.  It was a most unusual sight, and one that I wish I had a picture of.

Another bird thrill was to come upon three newly-fledged great horned owlets up in the woods.  I did that on two separate occasions.  The young owls sat side-by-side on a limb waiting for their parents to come back and feed them.  They had just left their nest, and were too inexperienced to try to fly away.  They just snapped their beaks at me in what they hoped was a frightening manner.  I went back and took a picture of one set.  Sadly, I haven't seen the picture for many years.

Once I was fortunate enough to find the occupied nest of a pileated woodpecker.  Pileated woodpeckers are not a common bird.  They're very striking in appearance.  They're the size of a crow, with a black body, and a red head.  I noticed a quaking aspen tree with lots of large, fresh wood chips at its base.  I looked up and saw a round hole about 15 feet from the ground.  A pileated woodpecker stuck its head out.  She had her eggs or her babies in there.  She only used that nest once, but the tree is still there 20 or 30 years later.

The birds that I became best acquainted with were Amy and Shawn Geese, named after my daughter and son-in-law, the Gees.  Amy and Shawn Geese came to the pond by our house every spring for 16 years.  Canada geese mate for life.  I know that it was the same pair each year because they were so gentle.  If they were on the dam, they would only move out of the way if I got within twelve feet of them.

Amy had a nest somewhere over in the woods.  Shawn stayed all day on the pond patiently waiting for Amy to come get a drink and a snack.  After covering her eggs she'd take off for the pond, honking as she came, to let Shawn know that she was on the way.  He'd answer loudly, and take to the air to meet her.  It was touching and inspirational to see how excited they were to see each other.

Amy and Shawn only raised one gosling in the first several years that they came to our pond.  I finally found where Amy's nest was, and knew right away why they were being unsuccessful at raising babies.  The nest was in the broken-off top of a 30-foot-tall cottonwood tree.  A coon found the nest each year and broke it up.  I nailed a wide band of tin around the tree so that the coon couldn't climb up.  Amy brought babies to the pond that year.

When the cottonwood snag fell down one winter, I was finally able to convince Amy to lay her eggs in a goose nest that I erected on a post by the pond.  From then on she hatched up to six eggs per year.  She and Shawn would keep their brood on the pond for one week, and then they'd take their babies overland down to the gravel pit, and we wouldn't see them again until the next spring.

The last time I saw Amy and Shawn Geese was the spring of 2013.  We left on our mission in September of that year.  Something must have happened to one of them while we were gone.

Happily, though, as I write this in April 2020, there is a new pair of geese on the pond.  I'd be willing to bet that the female is one of Amy's and Shawn's descendants.  Three days ago I discovered that she is laying a clutch of eggs in my goose nest!  Soon she'll start setting, and about 35 days later I'll be able to watch and photograph her babies jumping out of the nest.  Amy and Shawn II will stand below the nest encouraging the babies to jump.  One-by-one they'll take the leap.  Their little legs will be sticking straight up in the air, and they'll land on their backs.  When everyone is out of the nest, they'll head for the pond.  Shawn will lead the way.  The little ones will plunge right in without a moment of hesitation, and swim away in a tight knot following their father as Amy brings up the rear.

I could also talk about quail and red-tailed hawks and Stellar's jays and doves and swallows, but I've written about those in other articles.  The stories I've noted above are my bird "experiences."