Dr. Robert Rosenfield holding a bird specimen
Photos by Jennifer Lazewski and Rebecca Gilman
By Jennifer Lazewski
WSO Executive Director
WSO had a great couple of days learning and birding in Wausau and Stevens Point Oct. 18-19. Members came from several counties, and many attended all three events. It was a great chance to get to know some of our fellow members and share some experiences.
Enjoying an off-hours tour of “Birds in Art” and its “The Tipping Point” exhibit at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum
We joined with the Wausau Bird Club for a personalized tour of the “Birds in Art” exhibit at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum after hours. The director, staff and WSO member Andy McGivern (who formerly worked at the museum and has been involved in the exhibit for many years) led small groups to view and discuss some of the internationally-selected art. The stunning and diverse sculptures, paintings and multimedia works incorporated birds in many different ways. Some are so realistic you expect the bird to fly out, while others are fanciful, colorful or thought-provoking. Appreciative birders engaged in wonderful conversations, and we highly recommend the exhibit. https://www.lywam.org/birds-in-art/
Local WSO members Lynn Barber and Dan Belter hosted 12 birders the next morning on a chilly, cloudy day at two locations around the Lake Wausau section of the Wisconsin River. DC Everest Park has great views out onto the water for waterfowl and gulls, but the early weather limited the birds. Bluegill Bay County Park in the shadow of Rib Mountain proved more hospitable. We walked through a variety of habitats with water, shoreline, ponds, woods and grassland edges. A beautiful red fox yielded one of the highlights of the morning, and a Merlin that swooped in at the end chasing some Blue Jays provided another.
Dr. Robert Jadin, holding the first issue of WSO’s The Passenger Pigeon. Some of the bird collection.
Then we traveled to UW-Stevens Point to visit their ornithology collection and hear about Cooper’s Hawks from a near lifelong expert. The ornithology collection is managed by Dr. Robert Jadin, a herpetologist also interested in birds. He took us through several natural science collections, including fish and parasitology (faculty study duck parasites among others), before reviewing the ornithology collections -- including the very first issue of WSO’s The Passenger Pigeon.
Dr. Robert Rosenfield’s life is a great example of right time, right place, right people and the value of persistence (including entertaining visitors for a while during a campus-wide power outage). He has been able to study the incredible adaptive success of Cooper’s Hawks since their low point in 1970s. By choosing to pursue every detail and possibility while focused on breeding birds, he has accumulated a trove of information and made some surprising finds about these birds. For those who want to learn more about this increasingly common bird, Dr. Rosenfield has written The Cooper’s Hawk: breeding ecology and natural history of a winged huntsman.
We look forward to the next adventures of WSO’s in person programs but hope to see you at virtual programs in the meantime.
