BY HARRY WEEKES
When we first start birding, I work to get my students familiar with their bird books and all the information they contain—from field markings and identification, to behavior, to habitat, to range maps. I like to throw out a picture of a bird and let them work through drilling down from the general to the specific. “That’s a hummingbird” quickly becomes “What kind of hummingbird?” And, “That’s a woodpecker” similarly becomes about identifying certain markings that help narrow down the search.
Of course, I like to throw in the little puzzles. “It’s a ruby-throated hummingbird” they will get to fairly easily. “Great. Where are you?” Or, “If someone said they saw a red-naped and a red-breasted sapsucker in the same day, where might they be?”
So, here’s an end-of-year puzzler: “It’s the last week of December and you see an American robin, a Northern harrier and an American kestrel, all within five days and a quarter of a mile of each other, where are you?”
Range maps turn out not to be that helpful—you will see that each of these birds lives everywhere. And so, students are forced into a different kind of thinking. Is it habitat? Each of these lives in our area, so occupies those spaces between forests and open ground, and there is a lot of that in the United States.
What about behavior and feeding? Harriers and kestrels eat small mammals and insects. Robins also eat invertebrates and different kinds of plant materials, from buds to berries. There happen to be a lot of these, too.
Eventually the answer becomes more nuanced—an overlapping blend of everything: range, habitat, feeding, behavior, and weather.
The above three birds? I saw them all in Indian Creek in the last week of December. The harrier did his characteristic low gliding over the open fields. The kestrel dipped quickly, then hovered above patches of sage. And the robin perched on a cottonwood on the edge of the Hiawatha Canal.
These birds both live here and they don’t. Usually, snow pushes them to places with exposed ground.
Our December, the wrapping up of 2025, felt nothing short of peculiar. A year ending like this, in a place that celebrates winter, the general becomes obvious, and quickly, everyone is a naturalist. “We haven’t had this little snow since 1976.” “Wasn’t it in the mid-’90s that the mountain didn’t open for Thanksgiving?” “There’s 40 inches of snow at the Titus Lake snow stake.” “Can you imagine how much snow we’d have if it had been cold enough?”
My goal with birds is for students to pay closer attention. To look out at the world, to make observations, to ask questions, and to wonder. “Wait a minute, I thought migration was ingrained, does this mean birds choose?” “What was that robin eating?” “Do raptors have some geometric component to their vision where once enough surface area is covered in white, they leave?” And most quizzically, “How do they know?”
Paying attention to my skier friends starts the answer. I hear stories of how awesome the top of the mountain is, about pockets of snow in hidden stashes, about trips to Galena and deeper into the backcountry, about all the slight tweaks and changes to behavior that get them in the right place—good snow.
Each of the birds looked healthy and well-fed. Their answer to “Why are you here?” obvious, “Why would I leave?” This, even as they stay plump, because while I have no idea what the weather will bring, I hope that they do.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
