Started off the school year with a three day retreat at Camp Huston on the
Wallace River. The usual mix of kids, some highly enthusiastic, some
outright rebelliously disinterested in all things natural. I was sitting
with one of the latter on some rocks on the river and I was poking around
looking for Macro Inveretebrates while the student was looking at the river
and complaining. An ouzel (Dipper to some) choose that moment to appear,
popping right out of the water in front of us like some tiny gray magician.
It did a few of its customary curtseys then flew into the shallows, poked
around, then went fully into the much reduced flow of the mainstem of the
river, popping up again on the other side. My previously complaining new
student was full of wonder and questions. How does that bird pop of the
water and not have a drop of water on it!? How did it get through under the
water through the current and not get washed downstream? What IS that
bird..... We had a mini-lesson in field marks, I lent my bins and my now
entranced student followed the bird until it was out of site, recorded and
drew in his journal a reasonable description of an ouzel. When we were
dropped off back at school I noticed he had checked out a bird book over the
weekend. The ouzel was also my first bird of interest, all those many years
ago....

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer, Teacher
The Environmental Science School,
Monroe, WA

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