Joann Merritt's Essays

Harris’ Orchard Revisited
August, 1994

I bless the day that Frances loaned me her book Birding from a Tractor Seat by Charles T. Flugum. Good ol’ Charlie philosophized that since God was responsible for birds being at a certain place at a certain time it would be alright to occasionally miss church services to go see them. Even though the Chuck-will’s-widow might still be in the orchard on Monday, Rose Marie would not, and we needed her assistance to locate this new-for-the-county bird. She knew its haunts and habits. She and Sara had so many encounters with him during their Harris’ Tank “After Party” that they were on a first name basis with Chuck.

Don and I arrived at the orchard early Sunday morning and David greeted us with the news that we were 24 hours late for the field trip! When Rose Marie, Betty Rae and Frances arrived we walked and/or drove the perimeter of the orchard, then while criss-crossing the interior we observed a white-spotted fawn resting in its bed of grass. We also saw many resident and migrating birds including male Vermilion Flycatchers, 8 female Orchard Orioles and a Yellow Warbler, but no Chuck-will’s-widow.

Frances returned home, but we continued our quest. We decided to search the orchard methodically, each of us taking two rows at a time. To me this was reminiscent of chopping cotton two rows at a time, but was much more enjoyable. Harris’ pecan orchard has 2,000+ trees, but such was the magnitude of our desire to see the Chuck-will’s-widow that we determined to check each tree. Toward the northeast corner where the trees grow bigger and thicker Betty Rae saw the bird when it took flight from her row of trees. We saw it flying two more times and considered our quest a success.

Rose Marie wanted us to see Chuck’s field marks and patterned plumage while it was perched as she and Sara did on Saturday, but we were definitely not disappointed, au contraire!

There’s no doubt we wanted to see this Chuck-will’s-widow, we walked for nearly four hours. Thanks, Charles Flugum. Thanks, Rose Marie.