Bird Aficionado Sets Her Sights On Sky

Editor’s note: Part of Close to Home was inadvertently left out of Friday’s Idaho Spokesman-Review. The column is running again in its entirety.

Walk into the woods anywhere and listen carefully. That cheery and high chirp, chirp, chirp that drops into the lower registers before it stops might be a yellow warbler.

If you don’t recognize bird songs, invite biologist and teacher Kris Buchler to walk with you. She knows her birds by ear, from the jay’s raucous nag to the Townsend warbler’s sweet music.

“Oh, there are people who know much more than I do,” she says.

That may be true, but Kris is the one who teaches people to know their birds. She’s the local Audubon Society’s education chairwoman, and she takes her job seriously.

“That’s a nuthatch,” she says, nodding at a fluffy bird with a black and white striped head. It’s pulling suet from a feeder outside the kitchen window of her Potlatch Hill home. Kris has seen hundreds of nuthatches, but she’s still fascinated.

She has no doubt that birds enrich human lives. Bird-watching sharpens senses and leads to a deeper appreciation of nature, she says.

“I go places most people never go,” Kris says. “Into cedar forests, old-growth forests.”

She takes her message to people of every age, from grade school children to grandparents. More than 3,000 Panhandle kids each year take time to listen to the birds in their schoolyards with the Audubon Adventure kits Kris brings to their teachers.

Twice a year, she offers “Birding by Ear,” a noncredit class at North Idaho College.

With the help of bird song CDs and field trips, Kris helps gardeners, hikers and anyone curious to recognize some of the 100-plus varieties of birds in the area by their sounds.

“Birds are easy to hear, hard to see,” she says, except her expert eye has no problem finding a camouflaged Northern pygmy owl on a snowy bird-counting day at Mica Bay.

She also offers programs to older students through Elderhostel, special educational courses for seniors.

Her nest collection is intriguing. She has a hummingbird home the size of a peanut butter cup and a pouchlike vireo nest suspended between two forked branches.

The more people know, the more they’ll care, she says.

With any luck, she’s right.

Extreme weight loss

Jason Tinsley lost 40 pounds and his brother Ryan Tinsley lost 30, but few weight loss programs promote their method.

The two Fairbanks, Alaska, men kayaked 1,100 miles through the Arctic in 69 days last year.

They fought mosquitoes, starvation, fatigue, bears and cold while they navigated flatwater, whitewater, the ocean and a 200-mile upstream drag.

The Tinsleys will share their adventure at a free slide show at 7 p.m. Thursday in North Idaho College’s Todd Hall. Take a notebook. They’ll have some good ideas for your next vacation.

Oceans of fun

If you like mental workouts as well as travel, check out the special presentation on Semester at Sea at 7 p.m. Friday at Coeur d’Alene’s Unity Church, 4465 N. 15th St.

Semester at Sea is a ship that offers college students a round-the-world cruise while they study. It’s a University of Pittsburgh program. The ship stops in China, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Israel, Turkey, Italy and Morocco.

There are usually spots aboard for adults who want to join in. Two adults who just finished the ship’s 1998 cruise will show slides and talk about their experiences.

To get into the show, bring a nonperishable food donation for the Coeur d’Alene Food Bank. For details, call 664-1125.