My Life’s Birds: #335

August 19, 1994 – Flint Hills NWR, Ks – I wondered if this would happen when I began this series. Notice the date? The incidence I’m about to relate to you now happened exactly 15 years ago today. Funny how things work out like that.

My dad refers to this bird as the $250 lifer. The story is as follows… Our wildly successful, from both a bird and family perspective, trip to Kansas was at an end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to wring a little bit more out of the sunflower state. Kansas has a reputation, not undeserved incidentally, for being pancake flat. While that’s undoubtedly true in the western 4/5ths of the state, the eastern part, the part that runs up against Missouri is as hilly as anywhere. This area is known as the Flint Hills for the sedimentary bedrock that lies just beneath the fertile Kansas topsoil. In the heart of it all lies Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge

We didn’t have a whole lot of time, but the plan was to drive some of the backroads of the refuge to try and pick up Upland Sandpiper or some other cool prairie bird, so we pretty much hit the jackpot when we flushed up a Greater Prairie-Chicken from the side of the road. Success! And a life bird besides, at least for me since my dad had remembered spooking up Prairie Chickens in his youth in fields much like this one. So it was flush with the excitement of a new bird that we passed through the tiny town of Hartford Burlington, Kansas, on our way back to the highway, and rolled through that stop sign.

The policeman was apparently not a birder, nor sympathetic to the binocular tribe, and he ticketed my dad not only for the moving violation but for speeding besides. I remember my dad being somewhat peeved at the time. A life bird can cure many of life’s ills, but apparently a run-in with Johnny Law is beyond its powers.

photo by designatednaphour via flickr