Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
What, I say, you have a stuffed shorebird coming?
“No,” she says gravely, “this is a giant painted shorebird with a cutout face, so people
can take pictures.”
This festival attracts hundreds of people from Delaware to Fairbanks to participate in
events like the Birder's Breakfast (pancakes at St. Joe's Catholic Church on Saturday
morning), the Bird Academy (at the US Forest Service building Saturday afternoon), and
the Birder's Bash & Dinner Cruise Saturday night. There is a bird hotline, 424-
BIRD
, an-
nouncing sightings of birds like the semi-palmated plover, the bar-tailed godwit, and the
rufous-necked stint. The names alone are worth the whole trip.
On the slightly more serious side, photographer and—judging by the camera
flashes—bird world rock star Kevin Karlson gives the keynote speech on Friday to an
SRO
house at the Masonic Lodge. His talk is called “For the Love of Birds.” While birders are
increasing, he tells us, birds are in the decline, owing much to the increase in population
and the loss of habitat to developers. The Everglades alone has lost 95 percent of their
bird population since 1900.
But Karlson has a way of acknowledging the bad news without losing his enthusiasm
and optimism for “the sport, the hobby, whatever you want to call it.” He tells us a story
of an Internet listserve he is on in New Jersey which alerted members to the unique on-
shore sighting of a yellow-billed albatross. They used cell phones to zero in on it (“It's ten
miles north of here!” “No, no, it's ten miles south of there!”) and then they finally spot it.
Karlson focuses his camera and waits for the perfect shot, and then he shows us a slide of
a telephone pole with albatross wings. There is a huge roar of laughter; this is a crowd
every one of whom has a shot exactly like that in their photograph album.
The next day I liberate seven-year old Annie from her parents and we go to the Bird
Academy. There are six stations where kids get their passports stamped, after which each
kid gets to build a birdhouse. They play bird bingo, fold origami cranes, and find out why
a wetland is like an egg carton, an egg beater and a sponge. Annie likes listening to the
obnoxious call of the laughing gull and learning how to spot birds through binoculars, but
her favorite activity is imitating bird feeding styles with tweezers picking up rice (wood-
pecker), a clothespin pecking up seeds (chickadee), a slotted spoon straining bugs from
