By Christina Price, new BHAS member
I want to share a story with the members of the Black Hills Audubon Society. From 1976 through 1978 I worked at local radio station KGY in Olympia. The station at that time was 1240 AM. The building was (and still is) built on pilings out over Budd Inlet. One of my responsibilities at the station was to take weather reports over the phone from the local National Weather Service office. The man who called the reports in to the radio station was an avid bird watcher. His first name was Jack — I can’t recall his last name. Jack told me that where I worked was a prime birdwatching site for water fowl. Each day when he called he would give the weather report, then say, “the bird for today is…”- and proceed to tell me all about a bird. Each day I would hear about a different bird. Before I met Jack, I had no idea how many different birds were flying around me.
One day when he called I told him I could see some birds out on the water that looked like swans. He got very excited! He hurriedly asked me a few questions and then hung up. Within 20 minutes a half dozen people showed up outside the radio station with binoculars, scopes and cameras. Apparently what I had seen were Trumpeter Swans.
I am pretty sure Jack was a member of the Black Hills Audubon Society, and that he had put the word out to club members to make a beeline to the radio station to check out the swans.
Jack and his wife invited me to their home for dinner. Their house was surrounded by trees (the trees were so close to the house it looked as if the house had been dropped in the forest by helicopter!!). They had a creek running through their property with a pond. There were bird feeders of all kinds hanging from the trees. There was a real bird convention going on in their backyard! Every kind of bird you could imagine was there — they even had wood ducks on their pond!!
That did it — I was hooked on bird watching!
I met my husband John at KGY, and in 1979 we moved up to the Seattle area because John got a better job. That was 42 years ago. Five years ago we retired to rural Rochester, just south of Tumwater.
My husband is an amateur radio operator and we have a 60 foot tower in our backyard that houses 5 different antennas on it. Each year the swallows use the antennas to perch. We watch for the swallows to return in the spring, watch them raise their young and teach them to fly, and then gather in a large group to make the trek south in the fall. We sit on our deck in the back watching the “happy birds” (that’s what we call them). Just this past week (end of August), we counted 134 swallows!
It all started with Jack and his “Birds 101” lessons.
Note: It was most likely Jack Davis to whom she referred. He was a founding member of our chapter and the person after whom our Conservationist of the Year is named. A very personable, erudite man committed to birds and bird conservation.
