Christmas Bird Count from Santa’s Sleigh

Audubon, "Snowy Owls"

Audubon, “Snowy Owls”

The Bates Christmas in Sewanee, which normally involves anywhere from 8-18 family members, was quiet this year as my brothers and their families stayed at home, having visited in October for my father’s memorial service. Therefore, only my mother, Julia and I gathered in the family homestead.

As my father was a passionate bird watcher and as the 114th annual Christmas Audubon bird count is currently underway, here’s a poem where he imagines Santa’s reindeer involved in the tally. The bird lover and the poet seem to be egging each other on in the poem, and I’m not sure which delights my father more, the birds themselves or their names. The German you’ll encounter is a Mozart title meaning “a little night music”:

The Annual Christmas Bird Count of Blitzen the Birdwatching Reindeer

By Scott Bates

Pole to Past Hudson Bay
16 hours On our way
Weather conditions Fine
Temperature Minus 50
Cloud Cover None Moon Full
Wind speed 39
Pack ice a trifle shifty
Stars bright and beautiful
First sighting of the night
A Snowy Owl in flight
Low on an icy hill
Flying in formation
With its shadow on the snow
Ground fog thick at Churchill
But Gulls on the weather station
And 3 Ravens in a row
Asleep on a snowmobile
Southern end of the Bay
4 Brant on an open floe
King Eider Glaucous Gull
6 Murres and a Goldeneye
Clear water at Moosenee
With a raft of waterfowl
But flying too fast to see
Except for two Old Squaw
And a ghostly Great Horned Owl
Perched on a ragged tree
With a dead Mink in its claw

Quebec to Laguna Beach
Far too busy to watch
So had to listen instead
The chilly-chalky screech
Of a Barn Owl on the prowl
Down below Hilton Head
A tardy Warbler’s squeak
The sneeze of a Short-eared Owl
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Of various drowsy Rails
A lot of Songs without Words
By moonlit Mockingbirds
A Limpkin’s banshee wails
A Long-eared Owl’s refrains
Out on the Texas plains
The trill of a Whiskered Owl
Near Colorado springs
And the sound on the Hassayampa
Of a Black-crowned Night Heron’s wings

Baja to Tierra Del Fuego
Fell in with Hummingbirds

Buzzing down the coast
Of Northwest Mexico
2 Anna a Rufous a Costa
And 4 Calliope
raced them to Guadalajara
Over the open sea
Won by a kilometro
And moved on down the Highlands
To Upper Panama
Couldn’t see much in the jungle
But woke up to a Tody Motmot
As we left an Indian’s hut
And—TOP BIRD OF THE NIGHT–
A blazingly beautiful Quetzal
Asleep on a jungle vine
Dark red and blue and green
With tailfeathers two feet long
Like the crest of an Indian Queen
Or a burnished Aztec shrine
Gleaming gold in the moonlight
Under the moon’s great gong

Colombia Venezuela
Steaming with tropical rain

Paramibo Dam Cayenne
And up the Amazon
Weather cleared again
Just in time to see
A sleepy Sickle-winged Guan
Perched on a Poui tree
A fat-faced Tinamou
And a little farther on
A species of Curassow
A long-nosed Jabiru
And a startled Spectacled Owl
Eating a watersnake

The Andes
Notable sightings
200 sleeping Flamingos
With their heads tucked under their wings
On a lonely mountain lake
And a giant Andean Condor
Standing inscrutable
Like an ancient God of War
Or an Incan sentinel
High on a mountain wall
In northeastern Ecuador
Penguin on the coast of Peru
A screaming Fly-by-Night
In a marsh in Paraguay
A Crested Tinamou
A specacular Swallow-tailed Kite
On a pole near Cordoba
Nighthawks at Santa Fe
And out on the Argentine plain
7 big running Rheas
Scared up by a railway train

Cape Horn to Port of Spain
Storms at Tierra del Fuego

So missed the Steamer Duck
And in Chile the Tero Tero
But had a bit of luck
Above Talcahuano
When a Pomeranian Seedsnipe
All frazzled and weatherworn
On its way to Santiago
Hitched a ride on my horn
Weather continued bad
Through Lima and Bogota
(Air pockets tricky as tundra–
We were jumping like Caribou)
Till we got to Trinidad
And the night turned suddenly calm
With a breeze as sweet as rum
And a single Giant Potoo
Escorted us into town
Over a tall date palm
With a flock of 15 Oilbirds
Hovering over its crown
Like so many helicopters
Or moths on a moonglory vine

Miami to Mary’s Igloo
Everything going fine
Except for the usual smogs
Slums like dirty zoos
Garbage festering
Roofs like coffin lids
Dodging all those dogs
And missing telephone wires
But far too busy to mind
Or think of anything
But getting the stuff to the kids
So it wasn’t till after Nome
When we saw the first Eskimo fires
Under the Borealis
Like curtains on our play
That we had time to think of home
Our beautiful crystal palace
And time off with extra hay

So back to the Pole again
As we left the last fisherman’s hut
East of Tuktoyaktuk
A waking Arctic Loon
Was stretching its wings by the quay
And a Shag (or Ugazhuk)
Was crossing the setting moon
As we headed out to sea
Last birds observed at dawn
Coming over Land’s End
A Willow Ptarmigan
Long-shadowed in the sun
And as it set again
Two Ivory Gulls downwind
As we were coming in

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