The man on the phone identified himself as Don Paulson from north of Hutchinson, he reads my column regularly and he told me “I have something I think you’d like to see.” It seems he had a wild catbird that would take mealworms from his hand. Before I had made a commitment to go see him, he called back and said he also had a bunch of purple martins in his houses that were busy getting their young to fly and that they might add to the show.

The next morning I arrived at Don’s just after 7 AM. Don and his family own and operate Nickerson sand and Gravel Inc. at Nickerson, Kansas, and his house and property are truly befitting of someone in the business of quarrying rock, gravel and sand. Uniquely shaped boulders the size of refrigerators dotted the property both along the driveway and beside a beautiful backyard pond, and the front of the house is built from stone hauled a truck load at a time from an Ellsworth county pasture. Hibiscus and sunflowers beamed at me from various small gardens and patches all around.

Don talked at length how he had grown up farming, been in the military, graduated from Kansas State with a degree in economics, married his sweetheart and gone to work, fresh out of college for her father-in-law, JE Steele, owner and operator of JE Steele Sand and Gravel in Hutchinson. JE Steele supplied all the sand to build the famous mile-long grain elevator on the south-eastern corner of Hutchinson. After a couple years Paulson rented a sand and gravel business for a time at Nickerson and in the late 1960’s bought what is now Nickerson Sand and Gravel Inc.

Paulson’s love of birds began some 25 years ago years ago when he began building and hanging bluebird houses around his acreage, one year he knows there were at least 30 young bluebirds fledged from those houses. He began buying mealworms to help feed the hungry younguns’ and found that by putting mealworms in a cup near one particular bluebird house, he could entice the adults to come get worms from the cup. He kept moving the cup closer to where he sat and over time got the birds to come within 4 feet of him to take worms. Three years ago as he sat at a metal patio table out in front of his garages feeding mealworms to the bluebirds, another bird strange to him darted in from out of nowhere, snagged a mealworm from the driveway and flew off.

After a time he was able to identify the cheeky bandit as a catbird. Gray Catbirds are robin-sized members of the mimic-thrush family and are named for the “mewing” sound they occasionally make that’s reminiscent of a cat. They are a bit more slender than a robin and are a slate-gray color with a black cap and reddish colored rump. Although my Kansas bird book tells me catbirds do not repeat phrases like mockingbirds and thrashers, they are known to copy sounds of other birds and string them together to create their own repertoire. As Paulson told me the many stories of his catbird, I asked him if he had her named. He replied with a smirk “What do you name a bird; I just call her Tweety-Bird.”

Out in his workshop, Paulson showed me the mealworms he feeds to his hungry birds. He keeps them in long plastic containers with lids and feeds them wheat bran, newspaper and vegetable peelings, much like fishermen feed to night crawlers. Last year he bought and fed 3,000 of them to his hungry bluebirds and to Tweety Bird and her mate for their chicks. After gathering a few worms in a small plastic container, we sat down at a metal patio table on the concrete drive in front of his 3 garages. Purple Martens by the dozens filled the air around 4 big marten houses sitting along his vegetable garden as they tried to entice young fledglings to hop off the small porches of their houses and begin their flying lessons. Once we were seated, Paulson tapped the worm container loudly on the table a few times to let Tweety Bird know he was there with snacks.

Paulson believes a predator got Tweety’s mate this spring, as he found a handful of grey feathers on the ground near a water hole, and know she only appears alone. When she didn’t show for awhile, we went and fed the Koi and catfish in the pond, then returned to the table. Every few minutes Paulson tapped the container on the table, and after awhile as we sat there talking, Tweety appeared and sat on the table. He held out a worm in his fingers and she hopped toward him, but I think the strange sound made by my phone camera spooked her and she flew to a nearby perch. In less than a minute she was back on the table, but would not take the worm from his hand, so he tossed it on the concrete just a few feet away, where she grabbed it, plucked off its head and chugged it down in one gulp. That was the last we saw of Tweety Bird that morning, but Paulson said when she was feeding her own hungry brood earlier in the spring, she would gulp 3 worms every trip, often from his fingers and returned numerous times at each setting.

During my short visit with Don Paulson he told me more stories about his interesting life than I can remember. Like how he, his wife and 4 young kids put a few belongings in a homemade trailer and drove an old Ford station wagon 4000 miles in the 1960’s to live in Alaska for 6 months with his sister, and how his pond was dug so he could supply a particular kind of clay soil for the building of the skating rink on Lorraine Street back in the day. And then there was Tweety Bird’s appearance to highlight the morning …Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].

Each spring’s cycle of birth and renewal reminds me all mothers are essentially alike. One look at a momma cow with her calf tells you don’t want to mess with her baby.

Over decades, my students wrote many essays detailing the results of interfering with young animals. Mothers aren’t only tender. They’re tough when necessary. Just a few days ago, a family of fledgling wrens reminded me how mommas fuss over their babies and that I should stay out of their business.

After a recent rain, I explored my yard to see how plants were growing under the unusual wet conditions. Until the downpour, our section of the creek had gone dry, and our buffalo grass couldn’t have been more dormant. An old grape vine growing creek-side particularly interested me.

While I counted clusters and imagined future jars filled with wild grape jelly, a rising crescendo disturbed my reverie. Since we have a wren family living off the back porch, I recognized the “shirring” sounds. However, I had never heard so many little birds in an uproar at one time.

Evidently, I had interrupted a mother and her fledglings as she taught them to find their own insect dinners. Not six feet behind me was a rotten log loaded with morsels to feed her and her babies. I interfered not only with her lesson, but also with quality dining.

Not meaning to threaten them, I quietly turned to watch this wary protectress with her offspring. Apparently, my statue-like presence created a menace because she admonished even more intently. Like children I’ve seen at the grocery store’s candy counter turning their backs to ignore scolding parents, these juvenile wrens did exactly that. They looked at mom and at me. Then they returned to devouring crunchy bugs.

This drove Mrs. Wren nuts. She dramatically flitted back and forth. If wrens can fling heads and wings, she did. With each dart, her tone intensified an octave. I’m not of her species, but I clearly understood her meaning. Finally, all but one of the babies reluctantly left the dinner table to fly to shelter. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear mom and fledglings’ raucous comments. Nobody in that tree was happy.

That left one little wren at the log. Like most families that have one child who marches to its own drummer, this fellow wasn’t a bit concerned at momma’s and siblings’ fussing. Despite louder warnings, the youngster didn’t give its guardian a second look.

I know how Momma Wren felt since we also have fledged offspring. As our daughters moved into adulthood, I found myself apologizing to my mother as well as thanking her for her patience and care. It’s no easy task letting children go, especially those with independent spirits.

Finally, my heart couldn’t take that mother’s frantic cries any longer. Since her baby refused to respond, I left, removing her imagined peril. As I walked away, I recalled my own mom’s wish for me and thought I hope that baby wren has a young one just like it.

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.