Life is too easy these days.
Used to be you’d wake up Thanksgiving morning, hunt for a bird, and return home only when you had enough game to feed the children and nearby kinsfolk.
I love the feeling of having earned a meal. Too bad that feeling normally resides in the foggy chambers of my fading memory.
So I had this idea. Why not drag the family out of bed every Thanksgiving for a turkey hunt? A ‘hunt’ in the figurative sense, of course. The only thing I’d shoot it with is my camera.
But if we didn’t see a turkey by noon then we’d have to go home and eat liver or beef jerky. My green bean casserole (from a CAN!) would MORE than make up for turkey withdrawal. What a way to motivate the family on a SHARED goal! What a CRUEL way to get my kids to go birding! Heh, heh, heh.
My idea arrived too late for Turkey Day, but I convinced Paul and the kids to take a ‘practice run’ the day after Thanksgiving. We set out at about ten am. This was a little late for my taste, but I figured the boys would be more cooperative if I let them watch a few hours of SpongeBob Squarepants while their morning’s cereal milk dried on their chins.
Turkeys are widespread in the rural areas of northeast Ohio, where we had celebrated the holiday feast the night before. In fact, my niece reported that she saw a turkey only five minutes away on Bell Road.
According to Birds of Ohio
So the family and I set out south and east and eventually west, combing a bunch of rural roads that linked Punderson State Park, The West Woods of Geauga County, and Squire Valleevue Farm.
We kept our eyes glued to the roadside, but didn’t traumatize the kids by suggesting a hike. The air was cold and windy, and the none of us were dressed appropriately owing to the recently mild weather. Besides, I needed to prime them slowly–I needed to mount their tolerance level if I plan to repeat this charade next November.
In future years, I imagine the kids could really get into this. I see them geared up in camo pants, night vision binoculars, and a Recon CS6 nerf gun blasters, smashing their lips against a FRS radio while whispering “Enemy in sight, 12 o’clock” in deep tones. Either that, or they’ll be surfing my BirdsEye iPhone app for the latest turkey sightings on eBird to make the morning as quick and painless as possible. (I will discuss BirdsEye in a future post.)
Good thing our first annual turkey hunt was a test run. We came up short on turkey, though if we were desperate, we could have had our Christmas goose a bit early. We cut our losses and headed home.
But if we HAD seen a turkey, it would have looked something like this:
What bird-watching traditions does your family celebrate?
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Laura, you are so cunning. I still get my daughter Luciana out without problems although the attention is of course not always on the birds. She is not 3 yet..so I will have to learn all the strategy you apply.