Subject: [Tweeters] Stories
Date: May 8 09:23:06 2009
From: William Kaufman - beaux at u.washington.edu




If I remember correctly, the first real association I had with wild
birds (in this instance, dead) was when I was five or six and my father, a
country physician, said I would ride with him on country calls for a few
days.
He explained to me that this was likely to be the ?last season? and he
would like to show me a Prairie Chicken.
We spent several afternoons driving circuitously to country calls,
watching for birds. And then on a gravel country road, I can remember the
location even now, a bird flew across the road from left to right, and
landed in the prairie meadow on the right.
We stopped, my father got out, said ?Stay,? took his Browning Automatic
and walked into the field; he was a deadly wingshot.
He flushed the bird and dropped it cleanly. He returned with the bird,
asked me out of the car and we sat on the side of the road. He showed me
the form of the bird, the wing structure and the pattern of feathers.
And made some remark that this was likely to be the last prairie chicken
we would see.
I am a biologist, but of another kind, and I have always had an interest
in birds.
If that experience more than 80 years ago was the stimulus, I do not
know.
I have heard that prairie chickens are again breed

Bill Kaufman
Woodinville