Happy April Fools' Day

A reminder that today is a day when we celebrate pranks, tall tales, and practical jokes.

Today has me thinking about a birding experience years ago, when I was out walking with my buddy, Sidd Finch. When we got together, the conversations were mostly about baseball since Sidd and I played on the same team in high school in Ohio. We’d walk by the banks of the Calahooga River, near the steel mills.

We were walking along, probably discussing the finer points of the Calahooga pitching staff, when we saw a little feathery blob descend from a wood piling and plop into the water. It swam right toward us, as if it expected us to be looking for it. Now despite Sidd’s surname, he isn’t an expert birder. But he does know a thing or two from growing up in Sussex, near Piltdown. And that’s when he blurted out, “DIPPER!” The echo of his voice hangs in the air to this day, somewhere over Calahooga Heights.

The little blob was a perfectly round, tiny songbird, brown and white, swimming with its needle-like black bill held high. I couldn’t believe what I saw through my 3X opera glasses. This wasn’t just any dipper, but it was clearly an interloper from the other side of the pond—a White-throated Dipper.

Before I could get out my Polaroid, there was a whooshing sound in the water, coming from the spot where the Calahooga empties into Lake Eerie. That could only mean one thing, it was the Lake Eerie Monster approaching! The 20-foot sea serpent leapt through the water toward the little blob, which was helpless in its sights.

At this point Sidd jumped in the oily water and put the ol’ monster in a headlock. It was like Beowulf facing Grendel, or Ahab squaring off with the white whale. They thrashed about a bit while I grasped the frightened dipper, its little heart pounding.

I’ve always known Sidd was a gifted athlete, but I have to say I didn’t realize he could swim like that—or wrestle. If he hadn’t intervened, that little dipper, so far from home, might have been in trouble.

We decided to take the dipper to a better place, the rushing headwaters of the Buckeye River. There it would find the sort of habitat it might have encountered in Scotland south of Loch Ness. Sidd’s certified to handle wildlife in 36 states and most Canadian provinces, so we had no worries about transporting the lil’ swimmer.

I suppose we could’ve just let the bird go down by the ferocious Lake Eerie Monster. But you’d have to be a fool to do that.

Happy April Fools’ Day!