For the past 14 years, I have had the distinct pleasure of sharing my passion for birds with you, my treasured readers. Although I've met but a few of you, I feel that I know all of you. No matter where I was, thoughts of how to breathe life into a new place, a special sighting or an exceptional person for "On the Wing" were always with me.
In this way, you have traveled with me across this great country of ours, as we met new friends and reconnected with old ones. We have discovered new places and rediscovered ones we knew well. We went by way of car, we went by motorhome and we even took a couple of trips by train.
You joined me at a birding festival in west Texas where, on our first morning out, we were treated to the sight of two young riders racing their steeds down a hillside to round up half a dozen horses grazing in the open range. We went out before dawn on a frigid morning in Wisconsin and stuffed ourselves into a tiny plywood structure where we froze, waiting for daylight to bring male prairie chickens to "dance" on their lek. We visited the tiny Rocky Mountain town of El Rito, N.M., and we found remarkable birds in the crowded city of Manhattan.
We discovered new books, like Scott Weidensaul's "Return to Wild America" and Doug Tallamy's "Bringing Nature Home." Scott taught us that while some of our bird populations are declining, there is hope; and Doug let us know in his engaging book precisely how we can make a difference. We learned that birds are not dumb animals; but rather that they have cognitive abilities and that some species develop emotional connections or at least strong social attachments.
The offering for this month was to be about shorebirding in San Diego, where we would stop in the city's Little Italy for lunch. Little Italy has been an ethnic business and residential community for more than 80 years, and today it represents downtown San Diego's oldest continuous neighborhood business district. At one time, more than 6,000 Italian families lived in here, and they worked hard to build the city into the center of the world tuna industry. More than two dozen eateries line the several blocks that make up this neighborhood, where Italian still makes up the first language for its residents.
After freshly prepared Calamari Parmigiana and homemade raspberry gelato, we would have gone out at low tide to check on shorebirds around Mission Bay, as my husband and I did recently. Hordes of "peeps," (small shorebirds), sanderlings (check how they run with both feet off the ground at once, as in the photo) and black-bellied plovers foraged furiously in the wet sand, while California brown pelicans plummeted into deeper water for fish. From there we would have headed to Bird Rock in La Jolla to search for both black and ruddy turnstones. If we were lucky, we might have found a surfbird, a rock sandpiper or maybe even a rare red knot.
I say that my column this month "was to be about ..." because this will be my last. Like other companies, the paper has had to make difficult budget decisions. One was to let go non-staff writers like me. This piece is to bid all of you a very fond farewell.
I want to thank the editors of the Record-Eagle for giving me this opportunity. When they accepted my column, I'd never been published anywhere and had no journalistic experience. I am most grateful that they took a chance and gave me this wonderful opportunity. Seeing my byline for the first time was one of the highlights of my life.
If you have taken anything away from my writings, I hope it will include the following: That our native birds are in trouble, and that you can make a difference by incorporating native plantings into your personal landscape.
And for those interested in a regular "bird fix," please check my blog at www.savingbirds.org. It won't be a replacement for "On the Wing," but it will always be my very best effort to share information about birds as engagingly as possible.
Kay Charter is executive director of Saving Birds Thru Habitat, an organization that teaches people how to help migrating birds whose populations are declining.
To reminisce with Kay and read over her past columns, don't miss our archives at record-eagle.com/kaycharter and http://static.record-eagle.com/columns/charter/
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