A Soccer Practice Surprise

    A typical Tuesday involves soccer practice, and walking the dog around Beverly Hills Park.  Most walks around the park are uneventful, filled with podcasts, and picking up the odd piece of trash blowing around in the wind.   This Tuesday, I spotted a piece of plastic fluttering up ahead on the path.  "Who could have possibly dropped this blaze orange chunk of plastic and not noticed it?" I thought.   As I got closer, the plastic started to dance in odd ways, defying the physics of the wind.   It fluttered in and out of the puddle ahead, and that's when I realized... it was a bird!  

    I had never seen such a brightly colored bird in my life.  Did birds like this even live in Wisconsin?  I wasn't sure.  I closed in to get a better look, and it was very fun to watch the bright orange bird with a black head, dance around in the puddle.   When I got home I did some internet searching, and figured out that I had sighted a Baltimore Oriole.   This is one of the key sightings that led me to get more interested and involved in supporting birds in our community. I wanted others to see such brightly colored and beautiful birds more often, right in their own back yards.    

By: Andy Glassman

Photo By: Doug Greenberg