The Colors of Everyday Life

Most of us see the real world in living color, not sepia or Technicolor.

(Listen to the radio version here.)

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Wizard of Oz, even though every time I see it, one element disappoints me to my core. The opening scenes, set in Kansas, were filmed in black and white and then the film was colored in a sepia-tone process, giving us a dramatic visual sense of Dorothy’s drab existence at the start of the story. After her house, with her and Toto in it, is carried off in the tornado, she opens the door to the Emerald City and the magical land of Oz, suddenly in dazzling Technicolor. What a creative and meaningful transition!

But after all her wondrous experiences and adventures are over and Dorothy grows homesick, suddenly recognizing the beauty of Kansas, I wanted her return home to be filmed in realistic color. The first time I watched the movie as an adult, after I’d become a birder, I was heartsick to think that the way the movie was filmed, the happy little bluebirds Dorothy sang about would still be in sepia tones, not vivid blues, for the rest of her life.

I was thinking about The Wizard of Oz when I came home to Duluth after spending a week and a half in Colorado. The very word Colorado comes from Spanish, meaning “colored red” for the reddish sandstone and soils of the state and the reddish silt in the Colorado River. And like Dorothy’s adventures in Oz, this was probably the most intense adventure of my life—a 9-day, 2,000-mile journey encircling Colorado, always getting up extremely early each morning, and never staying in the same motel two nights in a row.

Most of our group went owling one night and found a Boreal Owl, but for the first time in my life, I stayed behind because I was just too exhausted. The point of the trip was to search for various gallinaceous birds on what Victor Emanuel Nature Tours calls the Colorado Grouse tour—we ended with eleven species! I didn’t expect to see any lifers on this trip, but at this point in my dotage, I’m more interested in savoring wonderful birds regardless of whether I’ve ever seen them before.

We had a lot of excellent luck, and most of the birds we saw were in stunning living color. Not quite Technicolor—the gorgeous male White-tailed Ptarmigan who flew about 12 feet from me at Loveland Pass on our first outing did show off his brilliant red eyebrow, but the fierce wind and blizzard conditions made the rest of him a white-on-white sort of thing.

The next day’s Gunnison Sage-Grouse were far, far off—the only blinds to observe the leks of this critically endangered species are far off to protect the birds from any possible disturbance.

Erik Bruhnke took this photo with my phone through his spotting scope.

The rapidly disappearing Lesser Prairie-Chicken has pretty much vanished from Colorado now, which is why our final day’s outing took place in Dorothy’s Kansas. Dense morning fog muted these splendid birds’ colors, so they weren’t quite sepia, but hardly vivid.

As the species who devours 9 billion chickens in America every year, we humans should be able to appreciate that gallinaceous birds must have muted plumage to protect themselves from predation. The brilliant psychedelic colors of male prairie-chickens and Sharp-tailed Grouse are limited to special air sacs that they can deflate and hide under feathers when not displaying at a lek.

Dusky Grouse have brilliant crimson air sacs, but keep them mostly hidden even when they are displaying. It’s not easy being tasty.

Even if our views of brilliant color were limited, I did get the best looks I’ve ever had at Greater Sage-Grouse…

…Dusky Grouse…

…and Greater Prairie-Chickens…

… to say nothing of that amazing ptarmigan.

I also had my best looks in decades at Gambel’s Quails…

… Clark’s Nutcrackers…

…and one surprisingly cooperative Sprague’s Pipit.

And on top of all that, I was shocked and delighted to get a lifer—a Chukar!

This introduced species is a popular game bird in the Middle East and was introduced a few times here and there in the United States before it became established in dry, rocky habitats of the West in the 1830s. Because it’s not native, it’s also legally bred in captivity for game farms and for training hunting dogs. In 2021 and 2022, a group of escapees found their way to my neighborhood, and I got quite a few good photos, even though these Chukars were not countable on my life list.

Perhaps the combination of Chukars not being native American birds and my already having lots of pictures of them was why, when I looked through the list of birds we might see before the trip, I didn’t think of the Chukar as a potential lifer. But our superb guides, Erik Bruhnke and Kevin Burke, took us to a very dry, rocky spot called Coal Canyon, and WHOA! eBird noted that it was a lifer!

All in all, even though much of this splendid trip couldn’t be said to be in Technicolor like the Emerald City, it was in living color, and as filled with joy and adventure as Dorothy’s time in Oz.

But unlike Dorothy, I did not return home to a dull sepia world. Robins and cardinals were singing away, their vivid colors somehow less thrilling than the brilliance of their songs. My beloved BB the banded Pileated Woodpecker hasn’t been hanging out in my part of the neighborhood all year—since late autumn, an unbanded male seems to have displaced him. Now an unbanded female seems to have paired with this new male, and the two of them showed up within minutes of my arriving home Sunday.

And miracle of miracles, my beloved Dizzy, the adorable and extremely friendly chipmunk who is at least two years old now, is back and just as adorable and friendly as ever.

Dizzy is named for her humongous cheeks, reminding me of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.

No, as much as I love having colorful adventures away from home, my world when I return is not dull sepia. My heart aches for poor Dorothy Gale, who even when she had finally started appreciating that there is no place like home, could not see it, or the rainbow those happy little bluebirds were flying over, in color.

You don’t have to be a birder or to love backyard critters to see the whole world in living color, but maybe it helps.