Riding for the Birds

Amy Lauterbach, fellow rider and lover of all things feathered.

Every morning before dawn, one of our riders, Amy Lauterbach, slips out of camp and starts down the road as soon as it's safe to ride. The 47-year-old Californian is an ardent birder, and, she says, "the best time for birding is in the early morning. The birds do their dawn chorus." During the heat of the day, she says, they usually hunker down to bathe and preen.

As she pedals, she looks and listens. So far on this trip she's identified 106 different birds. Usually she can identify individual birds by sight from her bike, but sometimes she only hears a call. She couldn't see the Great Horned Owl one morning, for example, but she heard its unmistakeable loud hoots.

Amy's modest about her skill as a birder. Compared to the most devoted birders who keep precise life lists of birds they've spotted, "I'm way below average," she says, though she certainly seems like an expert to me. On this trip, she's added one new bird to her life list, a Sage Grouse. And for only the second time she's spotted an Upland Sandpiper. Most sandpipers live around water--you can see them running along ocean beaches--but the Upland Sandpiper is common to relatively arid areas like those we passed through in Montana and South Dakota.

When not birding, hiking, or biking, Amy became an expert in another field. For the past 11 years she helped develop Intuit's Quickbooks, the ubiquitous program used by millions of tiny businesses to keep track of their cash and customers. 

Comments

[Ron Anderson]

Well, about time you made another appearance. I was getting a bit worried that you had tangled with a band of Yankton Lakota on your way out of Huron and were being held hostage. Had you swung south about 30 miles out of Huron you would have been in my birth country around Mitchell, the fabled Corn Palace City. In New Ulm you are about the same distance from a whole pod of cousins in and around Worthington. Two of Mom's sisters married brothers up there and each produced about six kids to the farm population. Enjoyed the piece about Amy and the birds.
Keep on Truckin'.
Ron

[Rich Thomas]

Bill: Your account of your ordeal sweating across the blazing Dakota bad lands makes delightful summer entertainment on screen in a room refrigerated to 74 suitably dehumidified degrees while looking out into a hundred shades of green in Sigrid's beautiful garden. It's 97 outside as I write. But I would never know that except for the thermometer as the sweetly cooled air laves my forearms and titilates my nostrils.
The Dakotas in mid summer are suitable only for wheat growers in their air conditioned harvesters and prairie dogs in their naturally cooled holes. Any fool gladly undertaking a bike ride--and one who was born and raised in the Dakota's to boot--must consider checking himself into the next asylum to be examined for a case of the simples. Or terminal masochism.
Ahem. I've refrained from daily commentary on your diary because I assume you are too exhausted to read anything when you wobble in each night anyhow. I've also refrained because, despite this note, I am speechless in admiration of your moxie. Rich

you got a whiff of what Edna FerberHead north for goodness sake to Paul Bunyon country. Babe the Ox

[Rich /Carol Scearce]

Bill, We continue to follow your journey across America. We find your blog so informative. Had dinner with Ben and Diana
Sunday night and Diana is looking ver-ry
pregnant. We wish you the best with
visions of D.C. in the distance.
Rich and Carol

[HippieShop]

Most young people believe that dolphin sounds with music is for old hippies but I find things like whales singing or dawn chorus spiritually refreshing.

[bracelet]

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Never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.
You are really something.