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Go DeeperBohart Ranch
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Human Nature: Drawn to Prairies
An Artist Finds Her Place
By Saraiya Ruano
This is where we want to be,” says Susan Craig, a bird bander, nodding toward the sandy road winding out across the prairie.
This is where we want to be? On desolate land prickled with shortgrass and littered with tumbleweeds, with rattlesnakes lying in wait beneath every rock, with no shade to shield us from the unrelenting sun? We want to drive on treacherous roads, mud caking up beneath the tires?
Yet, who wouldn’t want to be out here?
The sandsage prairie, decorated in shades of yellow and muted green, beckons. The prairie becomes a schoolroom for the curious mind and a playground for the avid birder. Lark buntings fill the space with their buzzy serenades, burrowing owls rest in shaded holes beneath the sun-baked ground, and large-bodied Swainson’s hawks watch over their kingdom from the tops of telephone poles.
Craig is on a mission to band loggerhead shrikes at Bohart Ranch. My mission is to draw them. The working cattle ranch, which is also a preserve, is protected by The Nature Conservancy in cooperation with the ranch manager, Dick Tanner. To get to the Conservancy office, we drive the long, sandy backcountry road, bordered on either side by scenic prairie and beset by foraging horned larks—they flush only when the bumper is nearly on them. Behind the office stands a short tangled juniper, a shrike’s nest hidden in its branches. Compact and tight, the cup of fat twigs and straw lies vacant. Nearby, two juveniles perch, calling in short, insectlike chirps.
Craig sets a trap, her own invention. Baited with a single white mouse, the circular metal wire contraption lies partially hidden in the grass. We step back. Minutes pass. We hold our breath, watching the two adults fly and the two youngsters fluttering anxiously in the juniper. No catch. A mockingbird in the field behind us sings, praising the loggerheads for their feigned intelligence and mocking us for our stupidity.
Loading the trap in the car, we drive down the road to Tanner’s place for a second shot. Susan sets her trap, baited once more with our faithful white mouse. We head behind the house to photograph some fledgling great horned owls. Returning to the trap, we discover a shrike inside. Craig reaches in and grabs the struggling creature, inserting it into a closed-end toilet-paper tube to calm the bird and to avoid being bitten.
I had seen shrikes many times before from a distance, but their charm intensifies in the hand. I’m here learning to sketch birds; holding one teaches more about anatomy and feather structure than a photo ever could. Our bird is cleanly marked in bold black, white and bluish gray. Equipped with a hooked beak powered by an unproportionally large and muscular head, it peers from large black eyes. Craig measures the tail and wings, blowing on the belly feathers to determine sex (this one is a male). Later, she’ll send the stats to the Bird Banding Lab, a national database in Maryland. Here in the shortgrass, the shrikes appear to be doing well, says Craig. In the tallgrass, they are in decline.
After banding the bird with a single, steel bracelet around its scaly tarsus, Craig gently tosses the bird into the air. Free once more, the shrike returns to his beloved prairie.
Our beloved prairie. As we turn to head back to Colorado Springs, I realize just how full of majesty, how full of birds, the prairie is. Here, I can let my curiosity about bird life run free. Superficially, the prairie is unpleasant. The grass is bristly, the earth cracked and the air dry. But it is wild, completely claimed by nature. This is where I want to be.
Pictures (top tpo bottom): Illustration © Stan Fellows; Photo courtesy Saraiya Ruano
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