When Russ and I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1976, I’d been birding just over a year, and had a lifelist of 214. I’d taken two college ornithology classes and spent virtually every free moment birding, but I was timid and shy. I was first in my high school class, graduated from college with highest honors in elementary education, and finished the coursework on a master’s degree in environmental education, yet was terrified to even apply for a teaching job, so I spent my first year in Madison working as a bank teller.

I went on Madison Audubon field trips from the start, but I was too shy to talk much. Fortunately, most of the field trips were led by a young man named Ken Wood. He was even shyer than I, but he was an excellent birder and naturalist with expertise in plants, especially prairie plants. Ken could overcome his own shyness to do what needed to be done—he’d even served in the Peace Corps in Africa for three years—and he took me under his wing. Little by little, he’d ask me to explain this or that about a bird we were seeing, gently easing me into sharing my expertise with field trip participants. Soon he was asking me to cover for him when he’d not be available to lead a scheduled field trip. By the next year, I had a teaching job, and Ken was encouraging me to teach beginning birding classes for Madison Audubon.

When the city editor of Madison’s morning newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal, heard about my birding class and asked me to write an article about warblers for them, I agreed to do it, but then became paralyzed with second thoughts and fears. Ken told me to pretend I was writing it for my students, hooking their interest with exciting, accurate information. The article was a big success—it even won the paper an award—and the editor asked me to start writing regular bird stories for them. This was thrilling for me, and no one was steadier in his encouragement than Ken. The first magazine article I ever wrote, a cover story about birding for Wisconsin Trails in the 80s, was based on an assignment from an editor who approached me because she remembered those articles in the newspaper. It is not an exaggeration to say that my entire career as a writer and speaker would never have come about if not for Ken.

When I’m birding, I’m a very poky walker. Last month when I took a 12-mile hike in Big Bend, a lot of people commented about what great shape I must be in, but really, you just need some endurance and motivation, not any kind of muscular definition, to hike 12 miles in 10 ½ hours. I’ve loved going on family outings to wonderful natural places—we all remember these trips with a great deal of fondness—but even when our children were little, it always shook out that Russ and the kids ended up way, way ahead of me, sometimes even lapping me on loop trails. It’s not just my family—virtually everyone, including other birders, walks much faster than I do, too. But Ken and I always moseyed along at the exact same pace.

I was as scared about driving as I was about most things, but Ken took me birding almost every week while we were in Madison. It was through his eyes that I discovered the importance and magic of prairies. In 1979, he and I came upon the baby Blue Jay that became the first bird I ever rehabbed successfully—again, my becoming a wildlife rehabilitator was made possible in the first place by him.

An avid birder who was still in high school, Tom de Boor, was too young to drive. Ken and I always made sure Tom knew about field trips and that he had a ride–it was such a pleasure for both of us, because Tom was so bright and fun, and as good a birder as we. Tom recalls one thing I’d forgotten: Ken’s “ability to whistle at extremely high pitches, probably the only birder I’ve ever met who could do a convincing Blackburnian Warbler. ” Ken really was an amazing whistler. His Black-capped Chickadee was spot on–he captured that sweet tonality perfectly. As Tom said, “Somehow it seems appropriate that someone so unfailingly sweet and gentle should have been given that unique ability.”

Most of the friendships we make in life require some maintenance—it’s a rare friend that we can meet after years or even decades and pick up right where we left off. After Russ and I left Madison, I saw or heard from Ken only a handful of times. But when we reconnected in June in the aftermath of his surgery for a Stage-IV brain tumor, we were instantly back in tune. He was thrilled to hear tales and see photos from my Conservation Big Year, so I drove through Madison coming and going from every trip. I spent several hours with him on August 10, knowing it would be for the last time; he passed away on August 16.

My life in conservation and as a birder is so fundamentally intertwined with my friendship with him that I’m dedicating my Conservation Big Year to Ken Wood, the most treasured birding buddy and one of the very best friends of my life.

Ken’s obituary

Puzzles

One of Ken’s hobbies was making jigsaw puzzles. He’d cut a very thin slice of basswood, affix a picture from a magazine, calendar, etc., and cut it with a jigsaw. This one was tailor-made for Russ and me—a big E for Erickson made with a National Wildlife holiday card-sized calendar showing the state birds of the 13 colonies plus the Bald Eagle. Ken virtually never gave any hints about what a puzzle would look like. This one had EIGHT corner pieces, so we were mystified! This puzzle’s more than 35 years old now. Two pages of the original calendar have faded less than the others, even though the puzzle was stored in a dark cupboard most of this time.

Ken knew I love rodents. This is my personal favorite.

When I needed surgery in 1979, he brought me a puzzle every day I was in the hospital. This is the explanatory card he included with the first one.

On April 1, 1980, I found right outside our apartment door a tiny tea tin labeled with this:

Inside?

You can see the entire collection of 10 puzzles (or 11, depending on whether you choose to count “Ultima) on my Ken Wood Handmade Jigsaw Puzzle Collection flickr set.

This year I’ve been crisscrossing the nation looking for birds of conservation concern and trying to be mindful of all the issues affecting them. Some of these issues are huger than others, making me increasingly uncomfortable with things I do in my own life that contribute to their problems.

All year I’ve been seeing badly overgrazed countryside. In Colorado, the remaining populations of Lesser Prairie-Chickens and both species of sage grouse are dwindling because of habitat loss, much due to cattle production. In Kansas, I witnessed a heartbreaking sight—the last surviving Greater Prairie-Chicken on one lek putting his heart and soul into breeding displays with no other prairie chickens watching or responding to him. Lekking grounds are often on disturbed habitat—the birds display in the open where their antics can be seen to greatest advantage—but the habitat surrounding that lek on private land was also overgrazed. Fortunately, prairie chicken numbers are improving within the protected Cheyenne Bottoms, which includes public land managed by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and private land managed by The Nature Conservancy. But prairie chickens, like Florida Scrub-Jays, are homebodies, virtually never wandering more than a few miles from where they were hatched. Continued fragmentation of habitat means that small remnant groups are stuck where they are, and end up dying out. I saw my first Greater Prairie-Chickens in Michigan in 1976—that was the very last group in the state, and within a few years the entire species was gone forever from Michigan. I saw my first Lesser Prairie-Chickens near Campo, Colorado, in 1996—that local population is also lost now. One by one these small remnant populations die out. Our heavy consumption of beef is one of the main causes.

Driving through New Mexico was the last straw. Everywhere in the open landscape was badly overgrazed habitat, along with voracious cattle who don’t even get to enjoy the fruits of the landscape for long before they’re slaughtered, to be replaced by a never-ending supply of new cattle. Suddenly, out of the blue on July 19, I reached a breaking point. I’d needed a quick meal and quick use of the Internet while on the road a few days earlier and picked up a cheeseburger at McDonald’s. I didn’t want that to be the last beef I ever ate, so as I was leaving the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, I stopped at a lovely little restaurant in San Antonio, New Mexico, called the Owl Bar and Café. Tom Kuenzli, a friend of mine who works at Eagle Optics, had introduced me to the café a couple of years ago when our paths intersected at the refuge’s annual Sandhill Crane festival, and he highly recommended their “green chili hamburger,” which has even achieved national acclaim. Now, because the café was right there, I decided I’d make their specialty the very last beef meal I’d eat. And now I’m done with it.

My decision didn’t even take into account other unsettling truths about beef production. A great deal of it takes place on huge feed lots, where the cattle are fed corn. Corn production involves more pesticides than other food crops, and much of it now is genetically modified to produce Bacillus thuringiensis, implicated in declining populations of Monarchs and other butterflies. Growing so much corn for cattle and for ethanol is taking up huge swaths of valuable grassland habitat. And waste and runoff from feed lots cause serious contamination of freshwater. (These issues were discussed extensively in my 101 Ways to Help Birds because #2 was “Eat lower on the food chain, and especially eat less beef.”)

One March sometime in the 1990s, on my way to the Rowe Sanctuary in Nebraska to see the huge Sandhill Crane migration, I found myself behind a cattle truck for well over a hundred miles, with one cow staring right at me the whole way. This was disconcerting enough to put me off beef for a couple of years. I’ll think of her, and of other cows that have stared me in the face, if my resolve ever grows weak.

When I mentioned I was quitting beef, my husband pointed out that this would mean giving up one of my favorite foods on the planet, Rocky Rococo’s sausage pizza. Virtually every time I drive through Madison, Wisconsin, I stop at a Rocky’s to get a slice. This was sobering, but I was steady in my resolve. Fortunately, a little research on the Internet revealed that Rocky’s Italian sausage is made with pork. At some point I’ll probably find myself giving that up, too, but for now, I’m simply telling myself, “Don’t have a cow, man.”

(Do notice the active nest in the last “c” in the sign. Apparently even robins approve of Rocky Rococo!)