Baby owl bed check is dangerous duty

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com 

NEW LONDON -- I've seen Don Baumgartner hold a bald eagle in his lap, the huge bird's treacherous talons stretched out in front of him.

I've seen him handle an adult osprey – a fish-killing missile – without breaking a sweat.

So when I saw fear in his eyes as we approached the nest of a great-horned owl, I knew this was dangerous duty.

Not dangerous for me. I was hanging back by the entrance to a large metal building shooting photos. Don – wearing two leather jackets, arm-length gloves and a European-style firefigher's helmet – prepared to climb a ladder up to the nest of a great-horned named Ms. Harvey and snatch her off of her three babies.

Great-horned owls are more aggressive than eagles, he said. "They kill everything." Ms. Harvey, in fact, smelled of skunk.

Don has volunteered with bird rehabilitator Pat Fisher for more than 20 years. We are in the woods behind Pat's home near New London. This is also the site of The Feather, her nonprofit shelter for injured birds.

The purpose of this fool’s errand was to check the health of the owlets, weigh them and band them so their movements can be tracked as they grow and leave the nest.

One stray cat quickly becomes a colony

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com 

We didn’t seek to become one and we’d rather we weren’t.

Somehow, we’ve become a certified feral cat colony up on the sand hill we call home.

It started innocently enough. This multi-colored cat from somewhere in the neighborhood moved into our barn. She had two babies. We had them fixed. They and their mom disappeared almost right away.

Mom came back carrying another litter. Before very long, her babies started having babies.

I can see how a kindly, older woman is discovered to be living with 50 cats. If you aren’t willing to send feral cats to pretty certain death at a shelter, and can’t spare the $100-plus a vet typically charges for spaying or neutering, it can happen quickly.

We’re not up to 50, but, unaddressed, it wouldn’t take long. The experience gives meaning to the term “exponential growth.”

The old farmer’s way of dealing with excess cats involved either a .22 rifle or a gunnysack and a pond. We don’t have that in us.

Instead, we fed them, gave them toys, old dog beds and a heated water bowl. I just don’t understand why we can’t get them to move out.

Ideas on roads, wolves need rethinking

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com 

From time to time, a columnist needs to purge his notebook and produce a mishmash of this and that from bits too little to be a column but too much to be ignored.

Complete streets
I attended the annual meeting of the trail advocacy group Fox Cities Greenways and
heard a presentation by Jack Zabrowski of the La Crosse County Health Department,
who coordinates the county's "complete streets" efforts.

It is a term I had not heard before. The concept is to commit to designing streets not just for automobile traffic, but for all of the functions they serve — safe routes for bicycles, pedestrians and school children. That means more than adding bicycle lanes, Zabrowski said.

It may involve building in such features as bump-out crosswalks as in downtown Appleton, raised crosswalks that serve as low-grade speed bumps, curb cut ramps at intersections, shared bicycle and parking lanes and bike-only lanes. In rural areas, it may be as simple as paved shoulders and 14-foot-wide traffic lanes.

Area communities have done a good job of insisting on recreation trails as part of major highway projects. This is the next step.

Wolf River eagles ready for their closeup

By David Horst   sandhill7@gmail.com

New London -- Last winter, productivity slumped in offices across the country during feeding time at an eagle nest in Decorah, Iowa, where three eaglets became webcam stars.

Since this nest-eye view went online in February 2010, the site has recorded more than 212 million views from more than 20 million unique viewers.

This season, a new show comes to a URL near you featuring a nest in the backyard of a Shiocton-area family. The people behind it are hoping for even a small share of Decorah's visibility.

I went along the Saturday before Christmas when Pat Fisher, who runs the New London bird rehabilitation center The Feather, led a small, mechanized crew of volunteers to wire up an 80-foot-tall white pine for the season premier.

The installation came courtesy of Gary Bunnell, known to area fishermen and hunters for his underwater fish cams and deer cams at WolfRiverCam.com. He got an assist from a bucket truck and crew provided by Great Lakes Line Builders in Greenville, a division of M.J. Electric Inc. The conservation group Shadows on the Wolf helped pay for the camera.

"It's a three-way deal," Bunnell said. "We're able to educate and entertain, and help Pat and help Shadows on the Wolf."