Bakersfield.com: Kern County news, events, classifieds, shopping, & search

Fledgling birder takes flight with expert

The Bakersfield Californian | Saturday, Jan 28 2012 06:49 PM

Last Updated Saturday, Jan 28 2012 06:50 PM

Dave Hardt doesn't have much use for starlings. They're marauders, take over nests and generally could use better manners.

Hardt, who recently retired as manager of the Kern National Wildlife Refuge, offered me a behind-the-scenes tour of the refuge.

"Behind the scenes." I liked the sound of that. Perhaps a "behind-the-scenes" look at the refuge would afford me a bird's-eye view of a red-breasted sapsucker, a bird, that if it was half as fun to see as it was to say, would be worth the hour-drive from Bakersfield.

Sue gave me a pair of Eagle Optics binoculars for Christmas, my mother a Sibley bird guide. The other day, I made my first positive identification for a friend who found a duck in his pool.

Rob sent me a picture of the duck and asked what I thought it was. I consulted my Sibley. It appeared to be a northern pintail.

"Are you sure it's not a southern pintail?" he said.

Turns out, the duck was plastic. Rob had bought it for 50 cents at the swap meet. It was the finest example of a plastic northern pintail I'd ever seen.

Before meeting Hardt, I tried lacing the strap on the binoculars so I

could hang them around my neck, tried being the operative word. When I failed Birding 101, I tied them on using a simple knot.

I met Hardt at the refuge, founded in 1959 on 11,249 acres, replacing what used to be more than 800,000 acres of natural wetlands in the San Joaquin Valley. We took a ride in his white Suburban. After some perfunctionary conversation, I trained my Eagle Optics toward the birds.

"Why am I seeing brown rings?" I said, as we started down the road at a calming 5 mph.

"You have to unscrew each lens and extend them," Hardt said, giving both a twist.

I could see. Not only see, but see birds.

In addition to being a binoculars savant and recently retired manager of the refuge, Hardt, who grew up in Taft, worked at the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge and spent several years at the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, the largest bird refuge in the lower 48. He's been nuts about wildlife since he was 5.

Bird watching can be like surfing, and the birds like waves. No matter how many waves you catch, every wave seems as fresh as the first one.

We saw white-crowned sparrows, common moorhens, double-crested cormorants, snowy egrets, great egrets, great blue herons, white-faced ibis, black-neck stilts, mallards, lesser scaups, ruddys, gadwalls, buffleheads (cute as their name), green-winged teals, cinnamon teals, pintails, shovelers, red-tailed hawks, northern harriers, black-shouldered kites, roadrunners and American coots.

You don't want to be a coot, even an American one. Everything wants to eat you. Hawks look at coots like some people look at bacon-wrapped shrimp.

"We have few injured birds on the refuge," said Hardt, pointing to a red-tailed hawk circling one of the marshes. "We have quite a cleanup crew here."

Rarest bird he's ever seen?

"I saw a pink flamingo more than 25 years ago with Dave Walker, a biologist with California DFG, on some floodwater that was spread about three miles north of the refuge," Hardt said. "It was 105 degrees, we were in a boat and I thought it was a mirage. The bird probably escaped from someone's collection or a zoo."

Hardt always knew when an unusual bird was on the refuge because, in the morning, there would be one or two birders champing at the bit.

"They'd charge in, spend about 15 minutes looking around, check the bird off their list and then leave," he said.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hardt considers himself a casual birder. The competitive birder is like a wine collector with a huge wine cellar. He enjoys drinking wine but also likes the comfort of being surrounded by rare vintages.

Hardt wants to drink it all right now, and the next bottle is the best bottle.

"I've had some moving moments," Hardt said. "While working at Modoc, I observed Canadian geese goslings that had just learned to fly. Their aerobatics may have not been fully intentional but they were having the time of their lives. "What a rush it must be, discovering that you can fly and are no longer tied to the ground."

Water depth is important. Who knew that? Add a sheet of water to dry farmland, fuss with the habitat and watch the birds appear like sky magic.

"A water depth of 2 to 3 inches is a perfect foraging depth for puddle ducks (the majority of ducks on the refuge)," Hardt said. "Taller shorebirds find that depth OK, but the smaller shorebirds like shallower because they can't reach through deeper water to feed."

Later that morning, we drove to the Pixley National Wildlife Refuge, about 15 minutes away. Hardt spotted a flock of Sandhill Cranes before I could get my Eagle Optics out of the case.

"I think there are about 140 cranes," Hardt said. "In this job, you get good at counting. I'll go into an auditorium and find myself counting people."

At first glance, the sandhill cranes looked like turkeys, but I didn't say anything, given that people describe them as some of the most impressive birds on earth. I kept quiet, refocused the binoculars and saw how magnificent their feathers were when they ruffled in the wind and how powerful they were.

On the way back to the KNWR, we saw a ferruginous hawk on a telephone pole. Hardt was ebullient. It might as well have been the best bird he'd ever seen, and the first.