Anything Can Happen Day
Birding is wonderful both for its predictability and its unpredictability.
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When I was a little girl, The Mickey Mouse Club was my favorite television show. Every day of the week had a theme—Monday was “Fun with Music,” Tuesday was “Guest Star Day,” every Thursday the Mouseketeers went to the circus, and Friday was the Talent Roundup. Wednesday was unpredictable so they called it “Anything Can Happen Day.” As much as I have always loved predictability and knowing what people, places, and things I can count on, I also love unexpected delights, so I loved “Anything Can Happen Day” most of all.
Even as the annual patterns of bird movements and behavior are as predictable as sunrise and sunset or those Mickey Mouse Club days of the week, and even as I can happily rely on my backyard chickadees, Blue Jays, and Pileated Woodpeckers just about every day, I especially love birding’s Anything Can Happen Days, sparkling with unexpected delights.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that since I got home from Colorado last week. Going through thousands of photos kept all the unexpected delights of the trip vivid. Starting the trip our first day with a White-tailed Ptarmigan at Loveland Pass was not unexpected, but the bird flying in less than 15 feet away from me sure was!
Our last day, we ended the trip with a Sprague’s Pipit—a bird I’ve seen only twice before, in 1991 and during my Big Year in 2013, both in Texas, and both at a great distance. The only photo I had was a horrible shot of one in flight.
This time around, the species was so unexpected that it wasn’t listed on our checklist. Erik Bruhnke stopped our van when he spotted it in the grass next to the road and I just happened to be in a perfect position to get photos out the window. It wasn’t surprising that the glass was clean—Erik is extremely and consistently conscientious about washing the windows—but my photos turned out much better than through-the-glass pictures usually do. Yep—anything can happen!
In the middle of the trip, we came upon two extraordinarily cooperative Dusky Grouse. I’d never before gotten a photo of this secretive bird, and the best we were hoping for was a distant look, maybe. Another unexpected delight!
Then I got home, and on April 17, both a Cinnamon Teal and a Eurasian Wigeon turned up in Duluth—two species I’ve never seen in the county. The teal was reported just once—a fly-by—but the wigeon has been seen by a lot of birders at Chambers Grove Park and then at Slag Point, both in West Duluth. Oddly but aptly enough during an Anything Can Happen Day, I’d already seen both species in Colorado on April 8 at the Walden Reservoir. The teal wasn’t unexpected there but the Eurasian Wigeon sure was—like the Sprague’s Pipit, it wasn’t on our checklist of expected birds for the trip.
I’ve been behind in all sorts of things ever since my return, so I didn’t try to find either of them. But when Jim Lind found a Brambling in his Two Harbors backyard on April 19, I simply had to chase that one!
It was too close to dark for me to head there when Jim first saw it, but the next morning, as soon as I could, I drove up. The bird had been seen three times before I got there, the last a few minutes before I arrived. I stuck around for over an hour until I had to head home to babysit, but no luck. It was seen again about 11 am, and so I headed back after Walter went home, but that 11 o’clock sighting was the last.
Dipping on a good bird is hardly delightful, but the possibility—even likelihood—that a good bird won’t stay long is an important element of what makes it so joyful when one does. I did get to see a Brambling once—in East Grand Forks in 1989 with a couple of birding friends. We tried psyching ourselves on the long drive so we’d not be too disappointed if we missed it. That made us even more elated when we did get to see it.
Standing in the cold for two or three hours hoping against hope I’d see Jim Lind’s Brambling had plenty of rewards—connecting with other hopeful birders, getting lovely looks at a nearby sapsucker…
… Brown Creeper…
… Yellow-rumped Warbler…
… a flock of swans…
… and then pelicans winging by.
It’s this run-of-the-mill birding, seeing what is supposed to be around right then, that gives us something to count on whether we see rarities or not. Rachel Carson wrote, “There is something infinitely healing in [the] repeated refrains of nature, the assurance that night after night, dawn comes, and spring after winter.”
My day-to-day, predictable joys provide a soul-deep contentment that isn’t diminished on the days when I do miss an unexpected delight. And minor disappointments make the unexpected delights I do get to experience—a sudden White-tailed Ptarmigan flying right up to me, a close-up Dusky Grouse, a Sprague’s Pipit right outside my window—sparkle like a dazzling sunrise.
Had we only seen that ptarmigan, grouse, or Sprague’s Pipit at a huge distance, I’d still have been utterly delighted. Instead, they gave me unique, unasked-for moments of grace and the assurance that yes, nature is soothingly rhythmic and predictable, but like those Mickey Mouse Club Wednesdays, unexpected delights may pop up at anytime. Anything can happen.
