Cuckoo for Birdwatching  

   I am, of course, an avid birdwatcher – or “birder”. That means I participate in a recreational pastime that invokes excruciatingly early mornings that could have been invested in bedcovers walking forests or prairies or wetlands or deserts or beaches looking for as many wild birds as I can possibly find because it’s excruciatingly fun.

   It’s an addiction, sure, because I’m powerless to resist, but it’s a passion that floods my veins with a rush of fulfillment and joy that must, I am also sure, mirror the way heroine, or meth, or crack cocaine claim the lost and the doomed.

   In those words you will hear neither excuse nor apology nor the justification of drug use but only this: In every imaginable configuration of the word I am a birder.

   However my wife is not.

   At least that’s what she will swear to you on a stack of Sibleys.

   Perhaps being married to a birder diminishes one’s resistance like igneous rock ground into powdered sand over many millennia. Perhaps the bond of partnership that permeates marriage clouds the intellectual parameters of what is and what is not imagined? Perhaps it’s all a lie cleverly cloaked in denial. Whatever the case, Julie is NOT a birder. So when she rings me up at seven-thirty of a workaday morning and asks me what kind of hawk with a brown back and a whitish rump patch she just saw skimming low over a marsh while driving Highway 40 on the way to work, that is not birding.

   Whatever the logical sticking points, Julie — when she marvels out loud at a Great Blue Heron – her admitted favorite bird – swallowing a carp thrice the diameter of its own neck — is not birding.

   Despite the evidence to the contrary, Julie, when dramatically moved to the point of language inappropriate for general audiences by the immediate and surprising appearance of a Pileated Woodpecker the size of a hawk; or when brazenly captivated by the impossible physics of a Brown Pelican plunging beak-first into the sea in pursuit of a fish meal; or when indicted via photographic documentation feeding Doritos to a Lesser Antillean Bullfinch straight from the palm of her willing hand, is not a birder.

   What were you thinking, Fool? Will you next propose that Michael Jordan is a basketball player? That pizza is Italian? Better to banter earth-sun geometry with Galileo than to argue semantics with my dear wife. She is what she is and that is just so. If she says she is not a birder then so be it.

   Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

   Interestingly, Julie used to go birding quite a bit. Before we were married. While we were dating she was possessed of sufficient energy to rise up before dawn and embrace life through binoculars. Then one day that all changed. Julie became a behaviorist.

   For Julie, the thrill is not to see the bird, it’s to see the bird in vivo. Julie loves to see the bird think, see the bird eat, see the bird stacked atop another bird. (You know what that means. Please don’t make me say it!) Julie isn’t interested in lifers or big days — unless you’re talking about husbands mated for life or weddings.

   Me? Oh I’m a birder through and through, and one day I was looking to do a story on Big Sits.

   You’ll get a kick out of this one!

   A “big sit” is one of many games a birder enjoys playing. In this particular version she “confines” herself to a given 17 foot diameter circle – in any location she chooses — and proceeds to record as many birds as she can in a twenty-four hour period (or until she needs a sandwich or a pee break) while positioned within that circle.

   Does that make any sense at all? I mean the description, not the motivation. As long as one remains in the circle, one is free to count any bird seen or heard as part of the total. The current world record for this type of folly is pretty amazing — like over a hundred different kinds of birds — but I’d never actually attempted this kind of thing personally. So I secured a camera for the day, filled a cooler with assorted beverages, set out several lawn chairs, and invited anyone I could think of to stop by and join me.

   From before seven AM until just before dark I spent hours scanning the sky, treetops and surrounding yards for birds. Several neighbors joined me at various times of the day – actually sitting down in a lawn chair and conversing with me, if not actively looking for birds. Julie, however – though she was at home for the day – never entered the count circle. She stopped by to say hello, or to bring me a snack, or to tell me how crazy the whole idea was, but she never actually assisted in the count. 

   So when all was done but not said and I had netted 37 species identified and enough sound and video to put together a story for the nightly news, I got an idea.

   I asked Julie to narrate the story.

   Of course she balked. She’s a teacher, not a journalist. She’d never voiced a TV story before. I explained that I’d write the whole thing – all she had to do was read it with feeling. With a little more persuasion and a hand in editing the final script, she agreed. We hooked the microphone directly to the camera and she read the script in the privacy of our home basement.

   That wasn’t all of it, though. I also asked her to tape what we call two reporter “stand-ups”. That means she’d have to recite lines from memory while I rolled the camera – an exercise that regularly challenges professional journalists.

   To her credit, Julie did marvelously — so well in fact that the story “Cuckoo For Birdwatching” actually won an award for excellence in journalism from the Wisconsin Broadcaster’s Association statewide competition in 2009 (click below to watch story).

That’s something to crow about.

CUCKOO FOR BIRDWATCHING

Posted under Artist? Scientist? Philosopher? Camera Guy?

Death Tempts the Photographer

   It is a given that a news journalist will find her or himself suddenly immersed in circumstances that are disagreeable, unforeseeable, or even unimaginable. 

   I once beat the coroner to an accident scene on I-94. When I pulled up to the site there was a blue van parked in the northbound lane, with a person still in the driver’s seat. His balding head and arms were draped over the top of the steering wheel and he wasn’t moving. All of the contents of the van were heaped in the front of the vehicle, likely as a result of impact.

   As I was breaking out the camera a firefighter hung a large blanket over the driver side door.

   As I rolled video of the scene the coroner arrived. He ducked under the blanket and after a few more minutes walked away and spoke to the emergency crew. After the body was removed a tow truck hauled the van away too, and a firefighter used a power hose to remove the thickly-congealed blood from the interstate pavement.

   Each videographer was required to serve an on-call night each week. One mid-week night in January the phone rang at three-something AM. It was a producer telling me that I needed to proceed immediately to Pierce County. Someone had stolen a semi tractor and had holed themselves up in a house there and refused to surrender.

   The camera gear and work car were already at my home, so I dressed warmly and drove the hour west into rural Pierce County. I had been given detailed directions and found the country road just fine, but when I turned onto it I saw a county sheriff deputy get out of a vehicle and wave me to a stop.

   The house where the semi thief was hiding was ahead about a quarter mile. It was pre-dawn on a very clear and very cold morning, and I could see the house pretty easily over the snow-covered farm fields. However the officer informed me that the perpetrator had a gun and it was unsafe for me to risk a closer approach. He directed me to park behind his vehicle and told me that it was permissible to begin taking video from there.

   From that distance there really wasn’t much to see, so I rolled video of the home using the 2x lens doubler, and took another shot of the squad car with the country scene behind. As I was still taping, another car came slowly crunching up behind me and two women got out.

   The next few moments were both chaotic and confusing. One of the women began to charge past the deputy, who had stepped forward to intercept them. When he tried to block her path she persisted, shouting “That’s my son in there!” Both the deputy and the second women meanwhile were both trying desperately to calm the mother, but it wasn’t working. When she tried running past the deputy he was forced to tackle her.

   I was so startled by the scene that at first I could only stare in shock. Then I remembered the camera. But instead of turning it on the three people now wrestling on the snow-covered road, I quietly packed it into the bag in the trunk of the car and tried to become invisible. The deputy – and the woman who I came to believe was the daughter of the first woman – had managed to subdue the mother, pinning her to the cold road, just as a single gunshot echoed across the fields.

   I later learned from the law enforcement officers on the scene that the perpetrator – who was depressed and had likely been drinking — had attempted to steal the semi trailer from a neighboring residence, but had been surprised when a squad car had caught him in the act. The semi thief then backed up over the squad car and had sped back home and barricaded himself in. After a stand-off lasting less than an hour, he had shot himself.

   The sheriff deputy and daughter were now escorting the mother – who was wailing inconsolably — back to her car, and the road block was soon removed. I approached the house — now busy with law enforcement personnel — and finished taping video of the outside of the house and the semi tractor.

   Maybe this event defines me more clearly than any other of my career. It could be I don’t have what it takes to be a good news journalist. Had I rolled on everything I had witnessed that early morning it’s entirely possible that I would have been nominated for an Emmy, the award presented to people in TV news for exceptional work. But at the time the decision to set the camera aside — which to this day I do not regret and cannot forget — seemed terribly easy.

Posted under Artist? Scientist? Philosopher? Camera Guy?

Uniroyal Pain

   You don’t have to go back too far in time to remember when Uniroyal was King. Ask your parents, your grandparents; your aunts and uncles. When the King was ripped from the throne, it sent shockwaves throughout the state.

   Uniroyal Goodrich was of course, a tire manufacturing plant.  Had been since 1916. It was part of the old labor guard – the kind of job that paid living wages, provided benefits, and the kind of place where – from the time you were hired — you worked one job for the rest of your life. Can you imagine that?

   The plant was one of the oldest tire plants in the United States and, at one time, the largest private employer in Eau Claire and the second largest in Chippewa Falls. In early 1991 1350 people — or 13 percent of the 10,500 manufacturing jobs in Eau Claire and neighboring Chippewa counties — were employed there.

   In January of 1991 despite frantic efforts by its labor union to keep it alive — the plant announced it was closing shop. For Eau Claire that meant not only a crushing blow for working individuals but the loss of $61 million in revenues.

   Uniroyal’s headquarters were in Akron, Ohio, so as part of an “exclusive working tour package” I was offered the chance to fly to Ohio to cover the story for news. I thought why not? It wasn’t Disney World, but it was out-of-state and something different. Sure. I’ll go. Besides, they were going to fly me and the reporter, and at that time I’d only been up in a jet twice before.

   The first leg of the flight was of course from Eau Claire to Minneapolis. We then boarded a 747 for Detroit. But that’s when things quickly disintegrated.

   Upon arriving in Detroit we discovered that we had mere minutes to catch our connection to Akron. If you’ve ever run through the airport you know the feeling of sheer desperation that stems from the fear that you’re about to miss your flight. If you’ve ever run through an airport carrying your personal luggage plus forty pounds of camera gear you wonder if you’re going to collapse of heart failure.

   We made it to our gate – which I swear was at least a mile from where we landed – only to hear it announced that the flight to Akron had been cancelled due to weather conditions. The next flight wouldn’t be leaving until morning. So the reporter, feeling the pressure of looming deadlines, got an idea.

   “Why don’t we rent a car and drive the rest of the way?”

   I thought why not? It wasn’t free drinks and hot towels all around, but it was out-of-state and something different. Sure. I’ll go. Besides, I’d only been in Ohio once before, and I remembered it as kind of pretty.

   Three-and-a-half hours and 200 wet and gray miles later we pulled into Akron, which I can assure you is no Disney World and is not pretty. The executives at Uniroyal refused to grant us an interview so we taped the reporter doing an on-camera stand-up outside the Uniroyal headquarters in the lightly-falling snow, filed a “phoner” with the station back in Wisconsin, and crashed at the hotel. When our request for interviews were again turned down the next morning, we salvaged a quick chat on camera with the local union rep and flew back to Wisconsin, this time without complications.

   There was nothing fun or glamorous about the trip, and that’s only fair I suppose; it mirrored the dismal mood that had enveloped Eau Claire.

   Many of the workers from the Uniroyal plant eventually retired, transferred to positions in Indiana and elsewhere, or returned to school for retraining in a new career, and the property itself soon evolved into what we know as Banbury Place.

Posted under Artist? Scientist? Philosopher? Camera Guy?

 Bird Island

   A fellow reporter once told me “How many stories can we do about birds? Do a story on birds and there! That’s done! On to the next subject!”

   She was wrong, of course. One hundred and thirty newspaper stories, three dozen magazine articles, a couple of books, and nearly one hundred some TV stories later I’m still flying high. Volumes have been written about birds, and for good reason; birds are fascinating, they sing pretty, and they’re fun to look at…

   Hmmm. Sounds like I’m describing Sheryl Crowe, not the American Crow…

   But several of my most unforgettable stories have actually involved birds (imagine that!).

   Like the time I had to wear a football helmet to approach the nest site of a large raptor called a Goshawk. Or the story I did on the parrots that Mayor Washington brought to live in downtown Chicago. Or the time the city of Manitowoc pumped Barbra Streisand music out through loudspeakers to try and discourage Ring-billed Gulls from roosting in its harbor marina.

   See! I told you birds are fascinating!

   One of the oddest experiences I ever walked into was in the middle of Green Bay. Not the city, the body of water.

   I rode in a small motorboat with local ornithologist Tom Erdman and his assistant out into Green Bay to a tiny dot of land called Cat Island. However there are no cats on Cat Island. No way. The birds would have driven them screeching into the waves.

   There are several remarkable things about Cat Island. One is that I don’t know why it’s called that when it has no cats. Another is that it’s devoid of living trees – it’s basically just a lump of dirt half the size of Lambeau Field with a few weeds and bare snags. And lastly, where’s that football helmet when you need it…?

   I’d no sooner touched down on the beach when the Herring and Ring-billed Gulls that nest on the island declared war on my scalp. They never drew blood, though they tried, bless them. At one point I actually tilted the camera skyward to capture them squawking overhead like something right out of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. Between protecting my skull and trying not to step on gull chicks, it was all a videographer could do to keep upright and not bleed all over the expensive camera gear.

   Cat Island is not only a nest site for gulls but a number of other piscivorous (that means fish-eating) birds. Double-crested Cormorants, Great and Snowy Egrets, Black-crowned Night-herons,  Common Terns, and a bird that has become much more common in Wisconsin in the last dozen years, White Pelican.

   Fortunately for me, pelicans, cormorants and egrets don’t dive-bomb. The scientists and I could literally walk right up to their chicks and take vital measurements (the scientists) or video (the videographer). I won’t try to stretch the truth and tell you that pelican and cormorant chicks are “pretty to look at” – but they’re photogenic as hell.

   With scrawny necks and big heads and beaks gaping they flap their pin-feather wing nubs and squawk at you like they’re begging for a handout. Everywhere there are birds dashing about – like it’s some kind of feathered cyclone. The black cormorants, which nest on the ground, are interspersed with white gulls and pelicans (which also nest on the ground) and white egrets (which nest in the scraggly snags [say that ten times]). There’s bird doo-doo coating everything (including the back of my shirt) and the noise is a cacophony of hisses, squawks, bill snapping, and the screams of irritated gulls.

   If you’re a cat, it’s a certifiable nightmare.

   But to a photographer?! How cool is that?

   Bird Island Video

Posted under Artist? Scientist? Philosopher? Camera Guy?

Bryan’s Trees

   When Jamie Paige pitched me the story idea I was unimpressed.

   “There’s this guy who runs a tree lot along North Clairemont Avenue, and it operates on the honor system,” she said.

   “Thanks, Jamie,” I responded politely. “I’ll think that over!”

   As a reporter I am responsible for generating story ideas – lots of story ideas. More than one hundred a year. So I’m grateful to my peers when they contribute suggestions, but I really had no intention of thinking it over.  Until I got in the car and started driving home.

   This guy sells trees, but he’s not physically on the lot. How on earth do you put together a story about that?

   Then it dawned on me. Hmmm. Wait a minute. This guy sells trees, but he’s not physically on the lot!

   Do you remember that TV show “Home Improvement”? And that neighbor guy who’s always hidden behind something whenever he’s talking across the fence? Jamie’s idea was suddenly transformed into novelty.

   I called Bryan, the owner and (invisible) operator of Bryan’s Trees and hit him up with the idea.

   “You see, there’s this guy who sells trees, but he’s not physically on the lot. Get it?

   “Yeah!” lied Bryan.

   “Anyway, “I continued, “here’s what I’ve got in mind…”

   When Bryan and I met I had all of my props in tow. I went over “his lines” and we discussed shots, then taped them one by one.

   TV is such an amazing process. Either we’re crashing the gates of some catastrophe or we’re documenting life as it unfolds. Sometimes with a little creative application.

   Bryan not only sells Christmas trees, but Halloween pumpkins at his corner lot across from Ciciones Italian Restaurant in Eau Claire. I’d never seen him until the day I met him to do the story, because, of course, he’s not physically on the lot. If you buy a tree of a pumpkin you simply drop your payment into the payment slot in the tiny shack he’s erected on site. No one is there to guarantee an honest transaction – though there are video cameras trained on the lot and the drop box.

   One of the thing s I love most about my job is that everyday people are so creative and fun-loving. They’re like River Otters! Bryan hadn’t ever met me before either (because of course, I’m never physically on camera…) but he was just fine with playing along with the idea.

   First we did the interview – with Bryan’s face hidden by the tree he was holding – with Bryan silhouetted by the sun – with Bryan’s voice talking while the camera focused on an empty lawn chair.

   There’s a lunch box sitting there with Bryan’s name on it, and every once in a while you can see him scurrying through the background of the shot. There’s even an interview with a customer – right there on camera. At one point in the story Queen’s “Invisible Man” plays. Not once do you get a decent look at Bryan.

   As a journalist I’ve been in some exciting places, met some famous people, experienced things that other working people may never get to, but there are days when the stories are just about that amazing animal the human being, and his or her wonderful sense of humor.

   Keep those ideas coming, Jamie!

BRYAN’S TREES

 

Posted under Artist? Scientist? Philosopher? Camera Guy?