Laura Erickson's For the Birds

![Wild Turkey] (https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6218/6351829569_99104f929d.jpg “Wild Turkey”)

(Mallard Laugh)

What do you call a hockey-playing bird? A puck duck.

(Mallard laugh)

One of the nice bonuses of going out on the Christmas Bird Count is getting together with other birders. My group didn’t see many birds this year–by the end of 7 1/2 hours, we had tallied only 251 individual birds, of 16 different species, but we still had a good time. Saturday was a beautiful day, sunny and still. We watched the orange sun rise through trees covered with sparkling hoar-frost at Lester Park, and then spent the morning combing the streets of Lakeside for birds. We startled several people who didn’t expect to see four hikers peering into their yards with binoculars, but no one seemed too upset. Last year one suspicious Duluthian actually started shooting at a Christmas Count group–fortunately, nothing like that happened this year.

At sunrise we saw quite a few birds starting to feed for the day, but as morning advanced, the numbers started waning. Then my group started telling “hink pinks,” those riddles with rhyming answers, like: What do you call a starving bird? A hollow swallow. Or a very thin bird? A narrow sparrow. How about the name of a bird lawyer? A legal eagle. Or a bird’s airplane? An eider glider. What do you call a grieving bird?– A sobbin’ robin. If he cheers up after an especially great tennis shot? A lobbin’ robin. Who arrests illegal gamblers? The bunco junco.

What do you call an eccentric bird? I’ll give you a hint:

(Recording of a turkey) It’s a quirky turkey. How about a bird that lost it’s suntan?

(Recording of a Bobwhite) A pale quail.

Some hink pinks are geographical. What do you call a northern bird?– a boreal oriole. How about Aegean finches? Dardanelles cardinals. Some hink pinks are for the ornithologically bent–like, what do you call a bird about to lay an egg? An oestral kestrel. Some are for sports enthusiasts, like what do you call a baseball playing bird? A punting bunting. If a bird gets four balls, you have to… walk the hawk. If the bird misses a good pitch it’s a … shrike strike. The best base stealer on the team is the … quicker flicker. Who would never dare try to steal a base? The slow crow. And who coaches? The tanager manager.

Which bird has the happiest holiday? The merrier harrier. And here’s hoping you have a veery pheasant owl-iday, too.

(Chipmunks–“Four calling birds…”)

This is Laura Erickson, and this program has been “For the Birds.”