Nature `s Serendipity - Thorne Nature Experience

BOULDER County Kids
Kids’ Planet... with Thorne Nature Experience
Drawing by Kara Priest
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Nature ’s Serendipity
by Dr. Oakleigh Thorne, II
erendipity is a great
word. It was coined
in 1754 by Horace
Walpole after characters
in the fairy tale The Three
Princes of Serendip, who had
a gift for finding good things
accidentally. Put another
way, it is the faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident,
according to the dictionary.
I like to say that it is being
in the right place at the right
time. This applies especially to being out in nature
because you never know
Ruffed Grouse
what surprise you will accidentally stumble upon or
what discovery you might
make. That’s why I call it
the “serendipity of nature.”
Let me give you some
examples.
In June of my sophomore
year in college I was asked
to do a breeding bird census of the Audubon Center
in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Since it was an area of
about 350 acres, I usually
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did 20 acres a day. I was out
at 4:30 am each morning to
hear the first bird songs. Only
the male bird sings to stake
out his territory, so a singing
male means a breeding pair
most of the time.
One morning at dawn’s
first light, I was standing at
my starting post. There was
a big log in front of me.
Suddenly a Ruffed Grouse, a
large pheasant-like bird, flew
in and landed on the log and
started to “drum.” A grouse
makes this drumming noise
by beating its wings. The
old-timers used to say that
it sounded like cranking up
a Model T Ford. The drumming sound will carry for a
mile, and it is the way a male
grouse attracts a female or
challenges another male if it
gets too near his territory. I
had often heard this drumming at a distance, but here
was a grouse only three feet
in front of me, and I could
watch the whole process.
The bird obviously did not
notice me because of the low
dawn light. He kept right on
drumming until I finally had
to sneeze and he flew away.
That experience was indeed
serendipity! Nature surprised
me that morning.
Two other good examples were when I was leading a Field Ecology field trip
at Naropa University and
we had stopped by Boulder
Creek to observe some
ducks. Suddenly a beautiful
Peregrine Falcon flew right
past us, close up! We could
have been there a hundred
times and not had that particular opportunity. But just
a few minutes later we were
walking on the Bobolink
Trail off of Baseline Road
when we spotted a big raptor
sitting on a tree in the distance. We were able to walk
right under the tree where
this bird was roosting, and
it didn’t fly away. It was
an adult Prairie Falcon. We
looked up at it, and it looked
down at us, but it didn’t fly.
Then after a while, it dove
into the meadow right in
front of us, caught a vole and
flew away with it. This was
exciting for the students to
see. Again, we could have
been on that trail many times
and not seen such a dramatic
event.
If you go out into nature
enough times, you will also
discover its serendipity,
because it is always springing surprises on you, such as
a beautiful sunset, a flock of
honking geese or Sandhill
Cranes overhead, an amazing
cloud pattern, a hummingbird at a flower, or the lovely autumn color of a nearby
tree. Leave your iPods and
computer games behind, and
turn on all your senses as
you go outside and look for
nature’s serendipity.
Dr. Thorne is founder and honorary
president of Thorne Nature Experience
(formerly Thorne Ecological Institute)
in Boulder. They have connected kids
to nature for over 55 years. For information about their classes for children,
please check www.thornenature.org or
e-mail [email protected] or call
(303) 499-3647.