Fowl play is cheap fun

Birds in particular can put on wonderful wildlife shows

Johnnie Hudman is one of those outdoorsmen who appreciates the big picture. Hudman is wildlife manager for Stasney’s Cook Ranch in Shackelford County, Texas. He mostly concentrates on deer, turkeys, quail and doves, but he never passes up an opportunity to observe something interesting in the wild.

During the late spring, Hudman was camping with friends on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River when a barred owl called from upriver. Like many spring turkey hunters, Hudman can do a fair rendition of the barred owl’s distinctive “who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all” call.

Hudman called back, the owl answered and a second owl soon chimed in. Before long, Hudman had talked the two owls into a tree above the campsite. That’s where they stayed for most of the weekend, putting on a nature show for the campers.

Why the normally shy owls would do such a thing is anybody’s guess, but Hudman figures he called up a mated pair that may have come to chase interlopers from their territory. The world is full of fascinating wildlife, and you don’t have to watch the Animal Planet to witness terrific wildlife shows, particularly from birds.

When I lived east of Dallas, our neighborhood was a converted cow pasture that really appealed to killdeers. These dapper birds sometimes nested in our yard, and I’d have to mow circles around the nest until the chicks hatched.

Killdeers are famous for faking a broken wing to lure predators away from eggs or chicks, and I seldom pass up an opportunity to critique their performance. Some killdeers are as wooden as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his Conan the Barbarian acting infancy. Others are so frantic and convincing playing the injured bird that they deserve an Academy Award.

Killdeer chicks are equally good at hiding. I was fishing in the spring and saw three chicks following their mother. When I approached, the mother bird went into the broken wing routine, and the little ones hunkered down in cover not much thicker than the grass in my yard.

Ignoring the mother, I walked to where I knew the killdeer chicks had hidden and spent five minutes looking for them. I finally gave up and backed carefully away for fear that I would step on one of those baby birds. I never did spot them.

Adult killdeers can do a lousy acting job and live with the bad reviews. If killdeer chicks do a poor job of hiding, they become an easy meal for a predator.

These days I live south of Dallas in an old, established neighborhood. There are no killdeers in my yard, but there are many interesting bird species. Twenty years ago, I didn’t much care what kind of birds I was watching if they weren’t game birds.

I still have an affinity for game birds. When my wife pointed out the other day that 12 white-winged doves were eating sunflower seeds in our , I commented that 12 doves during hunting season makes a daily bag limit everywhere except the North Zone.

I probably learned my fascination for non-game birds while deer hunting. When you sit for hours at a time in a deer blind, watching the antics of any wild animal passes the time.

Fascinating wildlife dramas play out around us every day. Most of them do not involve apex predators like mountain lions or coyotes, but they are nonetheless life-and-death dramas.

If you’re a grasshopper, then a scissor-tailed flycatcher must seem as fearsome as a small, winged dinosaur and a roadrunner must seem like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Another thing I’ve come to realize is that it’s more fun to watch birds if you know what you’re watching. Texas has more bird species than any other state and identifying them, even at a backyard feeder or birdbath, can be tricky.

I’m amazed by how many anglers, for instance, refer to any large wading bird as a crane. In truth, only two crane species spend much time in Texas. That’s the whooping crane and the sandhill crane. Most large wading birds are either egrets or herons.