Growing up in the southwest corner of New York State, I never came across Horned Larks. For one reason or another they aren’t typically in the area. It’s sad to have missed out on such a great bird! Gazing through field guides as a kid, I’d dream of seeing showy birds like the Painted Buntings and Vermillion Flycatcher, but I somehow overlooked the uber-cool Horned Lark. Despite their lack of “flash,” they are lots of fun to watch, especially midwinter when there is often less to reliably enjoy. Upon moving to the Midwest, I discovered how fantastic these birds really are.
My brothers and I grew up in a small town south of Buffalo. Winters were hard, long and full of snow, and daylight seemed to be in oppressively short supply. My parents insisted (wisely) that the surefire way to enjoy winter and avoid cabin fever was to get outside as much as possible. You can’t change the weather, so you might as well embrace it. We spent our winters downhill and XC skiing, making snow forts, having “Lord of the Flies” snowball fights, skating and playing hockey on local ponds.
One favorite activity was sledding, frequently done at night because of the shorter days. We had family friends, we’ll call them the G’s, who had a ton of kids. Floodlights illuminated their backyard sledding hill with flickering incandescent light. The G’s had ten kids of their own on the hill plus three from our family. Additionally, a swarm of neighborhood kids flew over like moths shortly after the floodlights appeared, a visual broadcast that the G’s hill was open for business.
In the daylight it wasn’t an intimidating hill by local standards, especially compared to other runs with the obligatory nicknames like Suicide. What made their hill tricky was the fact that it was very narrow and treelined, which accentuated the feeling of speed at night, especially when combined with an almost complete lack of steering on the sleds. A wild card at the bottom was the family’s RV, parked way too close for comfort. A speedy deceleration was crucial to survival—or at least to avoiding stitches.
Adding to the degree of difficulty, and perhaps to the fun, if you had a sadistic side, was a rather odd set of “rules” that went with the hill. It was considered fair play to leap onto and body slam a descending sledder as they careened down the narrow, icy slot. This was generally reserved for the biggest kids, but it often inspired the younger ones to act like their older “role models.” Fortunately everyone seemed to have amazingly strong bones. Occasional mass starts inevitably meant carnage on the descent, as the sleds smashed into each other like particles in the Large Hadron Collider. One night some of the older kids thought it would be fun to stretch a clothes line across the path so they could yank it up as the sleds went zipping past. Just one victim was snagged, luckily across the chest and under one armpit, not at the neck.
We were friends with the two oldest boys. The youngest G sibling was usually in on the fun, despite being about 8 years younger than the eldest G. He was a seemingly indesctuctible lad, blessed with bones of flubber and a insatiable desire to keep up with whatever mayhem his older brothers could dream up for him. And dream they did. One night they decided to give the little guy a “Bionic Shove” start that would be the envy of any East German five-man bobsled team. The little guy went rocketing down the icy path at what seemed like Mach 5, with his snow hat jostling around like a bobblehead as he let out a maniacal scream. Everyone stopped to watch because he was picking up more and more speed as he got closer and closer to the parked RV. It was obvious to everyone but the sledder himself that the collision was inevitable and would probably be deadly. We screamed at the top of our lungs while running down the hill, expecting to hear the sickening thud of a head against the sheet metal. When we reached the bottom of the hill, his sled’s path went right up to the corner of the RV… and under it. He had ducked down at the last minute and shot under the edge. We found him laughing uncontrollably on the other side. Maybe it looked faster and closer from where we were on the hill, but if he ended up being a Hollywood stunt man, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.
Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt during our time there, although perhaps some of the sledders are in therapy because of it for all I know! I don’t remember seeing any bones in the woods by the hill with mittens on them, so I assume we all survived intact with fun stories to share.
After a hard night of sledding and physical abuse, we’d go into the house and extract our wet socks from the front of our rubber boots, where they had migrated hours before. We’d compare the blisters on our heels and expanding haematomas from the crashes and body slams while Mrs. G served us hot chocolate and marshmallows. The winters of my youth were long, cold, harsh and sometimes painful, but seldom boring.
So what does all of this have to do with Horned Larks? In Mid-Michigan the winters are just as long, but with less snow and fewer hills than western New York, we have fewer snow sports to enjoy. In addition to XC skiing and skating, we head out armed with binoculars and cameras in the hopes of finding Horned Larks, Snow Buntings, Snowy Owls and other great critters. Having winter visitors such as these certainly helps us appreciate the changing seasons—and beat cabin fever—much more than holing up inside for months!
