Online Extra. . .
Birders’ Delight
Find out what’s behind the birding boom, and why boomers, especially, are flocking to this increasingly popular hobby.
By Jennifer Uscher
Originally published on AARP The Magazine Online in July 2006
For the past 16 years, while his neighbors spent their vacations relaxing on balmy Caribbean beaches, Larry Cartwright has been enjoying a different type of trip: stalking Great Gray Owls in 40-below temperatures in Minnesota and hiking a mountain in darkness at 4:30 a.m. in Nevada to see a Himalayan Snowcock. Cartwright, a 55-year-old Department of Defense employee from Annandale, Virginia, believes it’s worth enduring the predawn wake-up calls and frigid weather in order to witness amazing natural spectacles that few people will ever see. In the rolling grasslands of Colorado, he recently visited several “leks,” or display grounds, where male grouse and prairie chickens show off for the females, as if at a chicken disco.
His tour group arrived and set up their scopes when it was still dark out, taking care to keep quiet and still so as not to disturb the birds. “I was fascinated from beginning to end,” says Cartwright, who was bundled up in long underwear and several layers.
Read the whole article at AARP The Magazine Online
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