There are more people interested in casual birding than we realize and you never know who that is.
So, last fall I went to Las Vegas with Non Birding Bill, Clay Taylor and WildBird on the Fly to film some digiscoping videos, I think I had my biggest geek out ever–bigger than the time I met Scott Weidensaul. I was a tad inebriated at a bar during an ABA convention and Scott suddenly walked in and all I remember is thinking to myself, “Act sober. Act sober. Act sober.”
I must not have been too bad because Scott still welcomes me with a hug when he sees me, rather than darting away in the opposite direction.
But due to some lucky scheduling and total generosity of Penn Jillette, we got to see the Penn and Teller Las Vegas show , hang out backstage (that’s Amy and me with Teller), and watch birds at Penn’s house–I got a lifer in his yard, a black-throated sparrow.
It was the most surreal moment of my life back stage. For one thing, it was the first time NBB has met some of my closest birding buddies. For another, how weird was it to be back stage with a bunch of magicians, the editor of WildBird Magazine and Swarvoski Optik–and we ended up talking about bees! Penn and Teller told us about a segment where they made thousands of bees appear on stage, you can watch it here (see if you can tell when they get stung).
I said, “Holy crap! How did you do that,” meaning how did they work with bees, but they told me how they did it, how the entomologist they consulted backed out because he got freaked out and how many stings they ended up with and how Penn had a rather unusual injury on a rather sensitive area of his anatomy–I’ll let you google that one, it’s easy enough to find or better yet, if you meet Penn, he will gladly tell you the story much better than I ever could.
Again, Penn had a lot going on that weekend, he was flown to another state to shoots a scene for a movie, had his own Vegas show and still managed to give us some time to talk hummingbirds (I got to make hummingbird nectar in his kitchen). Since we were dealing with brief time and when working with video things like cicadas and air traffic can get in the way it’s not perfect, but it’s still someone I think is cool showing an interest in birds.
I’ve also hesitated posting this because I was geeking hardcore on the inside during this segment and tried very hard to keep my geek in check. I think from now on, I’m going to have to just let my geek flag fly because trying to play it cool makes me look like a dork.
So here it is and thank you to Swarovski for making this possible and to Birdorable for making the perfect shirt to wear in Vegas and especially to Penn Jillette and his people for being so nice, so gracious with their time and allowing us a few moments to chat about birds.
You can do some awesome birding in Las Vegas. We still have one more video to go, but here’s a link to some of our adventures. Between this, testing Swarovski awesome new digiscoping adaptor in Kazakhstan, and climbing a volcano in Guatemala to see a giant tree chicken I can safely say that 2009 was hands down the craziest (in a good way) year of my life.
OK, that was cool. Very nice, and congrats on the Sparrow. I remember seeing them when I lived out west, but I am never sure if I should count birds that I remember seeing before I was really a “birder”…does that make any sense?
Now, time for small world connections.
Stay with me here.
You know Mr. Neil and Lorraine. Lorraine used to perform in a band at the Renaissance Festival there. She and I were mutual friends with, and her band opened for the variety act, Puke & Snot. You may remember when Joe “Snot” Kudla passed away. Well, Penn & Teller used to work the Renaissance Fest scene and opened for Puke & Snot as well. (Lots of folks from our fest, MD Ren, knew them, “back in the day”). Teller wrote the forward for Mark “Puke” Sieve’s new book. It’s hilarious. http://www.pukensnot.com/pdf/Foreword.pdf
Yep, it’s that whole six degrees of separation thing.
Wow, that post read like one of those strange dreams where random people and things from completely unrelated areas of your life converge. Penn Gillette…Black-throated Sparrows…who would have thought it? Very cool stuff–must have been an awesome day for you!
Neat.
I must admit–I’ve had irrationally negative feelings about Mr. Jilette. My on-camera impression is that he’s rather self-important and bombastic. This is re-inforced by a lot of their magic tricks involving thinking that someone’s physically in trouble. If all my senses are telling me that someone’s being hurt, even if I know that the vast likelyhood is that they aren’t, I still don’t enjoy it.
However, I know that Mr. Neil gets along with him, and he doesn’t have to hang around and discuss things with people that he doesn’t like, so I’d been hoping that I was wrong about Mr. Jilette.
And I’m glad to see that I was wrong; he seems to be a fairly decent fellow. He’s very funny and relaxed in this bit, and he’s very helpful in playing the everyman who asks factual questions so that you have an opportunity to explain things to the camera.
Congrats on the new lifer!
And bummer about the wind and airliners. That must be annoying.
A fun diversion on lunch break!
Craig Steffen
I remember that roadrunner vid! I had no idea they went after other birds like that. Very cool.
The lingering shot of the rock pigeon made me laugh. NBB’s aesthetic sensibility certainly comes through, there.
Fly that geek flag! Though you hid it well. (Much better than I did when I met you! I think Dorkosity was inevitable, there.
)
I’ve always liked Penn and that is so cool that he is into birds too. I have heard that Dennis Miller is also getting into birding.
This was a lot of fun to read and watch! I’ve lived in several different parts of America and have always enjoyed watching the various birds and other critters around me. Right now I’m living in Ohio, and one day during the summer my husband and I saw what he at first called a cardinal. I took one look and said “I bet that’s a scarlet tanager.” How I knew this, I don’t know. I knew it “weren’t no cardinal.” Perhaps I’m sort sort of avian savant? My husband and I ran and got the binoculars, arguing back and forth over what we saw. He is a scientist, mind you, PhD. “Maybe it’s a mutant oriole?” Mutant oriole my ass (nice scientific method btw.) We looked it up online, scarlet tanager! Again, really fun blog and video. I’m also a 20 year Penn & Teller fan so this was really great!
Cute, nerdy but nice and fun to watch the video, thanks!
Go B’chick!!
1. It’s awesome when you can get any celeb to look at birds on camera. Good job!
2. P&T are hands down the funniest Fellows of the Cato Institute and really showed what credulous dopes all us environmentalists are in the very first season of their long-running Showtime series. :/
3. The roadrunner clip ROCKED!
4. Could the hummer maybe have been a Costa’s?