{"id":22918,"date":"2026-01-07T01:50:35","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T08:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=22918"},"modified":"2026-01-06T16:53:02","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T23:53:02","slug":"a-new-year-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/a-new-year-puzzle\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Year Puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>BY HARRY WEEKES<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When we first start birding, I work to get my students familiar with their bird books and all the information they contain\u2014from 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. \u201cThat\u2019s a hummingbird\u201d quickly becomes \u201cWhat kind of hummingbird?\u201d And, \u201cThat\u2019s a woodpecker\u201d similarly becomes about identifying certain markings that help narrow down the search.<br \/>\nOf course, I like to throw in the little puzzles. \u201cIt\u2019s a ruby-throated hummingbird\u201d they will get to fairly easily. \u201cGreat. Where are you?\u201d Or, \u201cIf someone said they saw a red-naped and a red-breasted sapsucker in the same day, where might they be?\u201d<br \/>\nSo, here\u2019s an end-of-year puzzler: \u201cIt\u2019s 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?\u201d<br \/>\nRange maps turn out not to be that helpful\u2014you 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.<br \/>\nWhat 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.<br \/>\nEventually the answer becomes more nuanced\u2014an overlapping blend of everything: range, habitat, feeding, behavior, and weather.<br \/>\nThe 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.<br \/>\nThese birds both live here and they don\u2019t. Usually, snow pushes them to places with exposed ground.<br \/>\nOur 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. \u201cWe haven\u2019t had this little snow since 1976.\u201d \u201cWasn\u2019t it in the mid-\u201990s that the mountain didn\u2019t open for Thanksgiving?\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s 40 inches of snow at the Titus Lake snow stake.\u201d \u201cCan you imagine how much snow we\u2019d have if it had been cold enough?\u201d<br \/>\nMy 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. \u201cWait a minute, I thought migration was ingrained, does this mean birds choose?\u201d \u201cWhat was that robin eating?\u201d \u201cDo raptors have some geometric component to their vision where once enough surface area is covered in white, they leave?\u201d And most quizzically, \u201cHow do they know?\u201d<br \/>\nPaying 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\u2014good snow.<br \/>\nEach of the birds looked healthy and well-fed. Their answer to \u201cWhy are you here?\u201d obvious, \u201cWhy would I leave?\u201d This, even as they stay plump, because while I have no idea what the weather will bring, I hope that they do.<\/p>\n<p><em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2014from 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":22919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22918","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commentary","8":"category-science-place"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22921,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22918\/revisions\/22921"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}