For The Birds |  |
Finding inspiration from these heavenly creatures
By Bill Cox
Page 1 of 2
As far back as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by birds. I remember sitting on the beach during family vacations to Venice, Fla., as a kid of seven through 13, entranced by pelicans in ones and twos patrolling the roiling Gulf of Mexico surf for fish. The big-beaked birds seemed to have total command of the sky, gliding soundlessly or climbing for an instant with hardly a movement of wing, then diving straight down into the water faster than I could think about it. Their movements seemed so effortless and automatic that I assumed airplanes must be similarly maneuverable and easy to fly.
The local seagulls were equally talented in their quest for food, much of it offered by tourists, including me. When Mom would have old bread to throw out, I would have her save it, walk the half block to the beach and see how many seagulls I could attract by breaking the bread into crumbs and throwing them into the air. It didn’t matter if there seemed to be no gulls around. I needed to only throw one handful of crumbs, and the birds would materialize from every direction. By the second handful, they’d be fighting to snag the precious crumbs in midair. I never saw any seagulls with the talents of a Jonathan, but some of the birds’ aerobatic maneuvers were, nevertheless, hard to believe.
Birds continued to intrigue me through every phase of my flight training. I knew it was dorky, but I studied them in junior high and high school. While working toward my private ticket in a Champion Tri-Traveller out of Long Beach, Calif., I used to practice slow flight in loose formation with a variety of birds that patrolled the rugged Palos Verdes cliffs hard by the Pacific south of Los Angeles. I’d sometimes sneak off to Catalina Island and fly the backside of the mountains, looking for bald eagles alleged to frequent the high hills.
I never saw any eagles over Catalina, but my first close encounter with the type was also in conjunction with a flight rating. I was flying a Skyhawk on floats with my buddy Butch Patterson in southern Oregon. Patterson was a former Vietnam Navy fighter pilot who had dropped out of conventional aviation and elected to become a bush pilot. Today, he’s a game warden in Kodiak, Alaska, but in those days, he had forsaken instructing and selling Mooneys, Tigers and Maules in favor of offering seaplane rides out of a small lake in Florence, Ore., and guiding the occasional student to the water rating.
Patterson knew most of Oregon’s coastal lakes and reservoirs like the back of his hand, and when I dropped in for a visit on a ferry flight from Kerrville, Texas, to Seattle, Wash., he put me in the left seat of his floatplane and directed me to a lake where there were two eagles’ nests. I landed, shut down and dropped anchor, and we watched for two hours as those magnificent birds flew with the dignity of kings. We felt privileged and humbled to witness their incredible command of the sky.
