I recently returned from my third Victor Emanuel Nature Tour—the company known as VENT. Since 2022, I’ve taken their tours to Alaska with Russ to celebrate our 50th anniversary and 70th birthdays, to South Florida to see the 700th bird I’ve seen in the ABA Continental Area (the continental U.S. and Canada), and just this year, with Russ again, to Hawaii. I’m planning to go with them to the Dry Tortugas next year. We chose VENT for the simple reason that Russ and I are very close friends with Erik Bruhnke, the tour leader on both our Alaska and Hawaii trips. When I wanted to head to Florida, Erik thought I’d really like the “South Florida and the Keys” tour leader, Rafael Galvez, who turned out to be even better than I’d imagined.
Rafael Galvez
When I talked to Jim Baker from Baker’s Blue Jay Barn about my Hawaiʻi trip, he thought bird guiding might be right up his alley—he could get paid to travel the world over looking for cool species of jays—until I told him that as thrilled as virtually anyone would be to see a Green Jay, White-throated Magpie-Jay, White-tailed Jay, or the dozens of other stunning jays found here and there around the world, the people who come on bird tours also want to check out the other birds in the same area. That was a deal-breaker for him.
As wonderful as Green Jays are, there are lots of other thrilling birds in South Texas. But Jim Baker is not interested in those!
But something about my birding tour stuck in Jim Baker’s craw, and whenever that happens, well, you’re gonna hear about it.
This is me—Jim Baker. You know, when Laura Erickson started blathering on and on about her recent birding trips, I got stymied by the tour company name. I mean what the heck! “Victor Emanuel Nature Tours”—they call themselves VENT??!!
Everyone knows that a bird’s vent is what we would euphemistically call its private parts. The unabridged Merriam-Webster defines vent as “the external opening of the rectum or cloaca: anus —used especially of a nonmammalian vertebrate (as a fish or bird).”
Why on earth would a company focused on birding, and run by so-called bird experts, call itself that?
But then, WHOA—I had a great idea of how Jim Baker—that’s me—can cash in on that birding tour racket. How about if I marketed, specifically for the traveling birder, small packets of bird feed designed to attract whatever jays and other birds of good taste are around wherever you go? I wanted to develop a recipe that would bring in new birds during the brief time a birder is in a new spot, maximizing the chances of finding whichever cool jays happen to live there.
And yep! I developed the perfect recipe, chockful of nutritious ingredients like peanuts, egg yolk, ground-up baby chicks, and fried insects straight from my bug zapper. And thanks to my secret sauce oozing with pheromones, every corvid within miles, anywhere in the world, will fly right in to show off its plumage at close range. Guaranteed.
But what to call this magic elixir? I was stymied until I remembered that quality food going in generates quality stuff coming out the other end—the bird’s vent or cloaca. So here it is: my all new, Jim Baker’s “Corvid Lures: Outstanding Avian Culinary Appetizers.” Yep, CLOACA.
So next time you head out on one of those VENT tours, bring along a bag of the bird food avian digestive tracts love best, CLOACA.
(Jim Baker asked me to remind listeners that CLOACA, like Baker’s Blue Jay Blend and “every other quality bird-feeding product,” is available exclusively at Baker’s Blue Jay Barn, Up the Shore a Ways.)
LOL!! CLOACA!