When I went outside to scatter sunflower hearts on the porch, the cardinals were already waiting. They usually show up ahead of sunrise, long before the chickadees and woodpeckers.
It wasn’t always like this, with cardinals in Iowa. I know that because of William Ross. He recorded what was probably the first sighting of Northern Cardinals in Fairfield, Iowa. In his notebook, he wrote:
April 27, 1900
Saw our first cardinal today. Quite exciting. It was down the slough south of where the old sawmill was, west of Robt. Pattison’s. Two birds flew by which Gifford said might be crested flycatchers. I ran and jumped the slough to get near them. A bird flew on a limb and uttered a short note. I looked at it a moment through the glass and said, “It is a cardinal.”
William Ross was Fairfield’s Henry David Thoreau. He had an intense interest in nature and a gift for words. But he was not published in his lifetime. Years after he died, his sister-in-law, Ella Lamson Clark, made selections from his notebooks and in 1938 published them in Bird Notes from the Journal of a Nature Lover. She arranged the observations chronologically as if they were all from one year.
You can download a searchable PDF copy of the book here
Sometimes I open the little green book as if it were a magic window, to see what William Ross was seeing in my hometown of Fairfield that same day of the year. Most of the birds Ross saw still live here. A few are gone (Lesser Prairie Chicken) or rare (Bewick’s Wren).
But the cardinal, which just appeared during Ross’s birding life in Fairfield, is now one of the most prominent birds here all year around.
William Ross was an engaged citizen: a prominent lawyer, postmaster, golfer, politician, and trustee of Parsons College. He was a founder and trustee of the Fairfield Public Library. He participated in the Emerson Club, which met to discuss the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other 19th Century Transcendentalists.
He was also a passionate birdwatcher. He once climbed 45 feet high into a tree to see into the nest of a Cooper’s Hawk. On more earth-bound jaunts he included his wife, Carrie, and often some nieces, nephews, and friends. He hitched up the horse and buggy, and they went to see what could be seen at Crow Creek in winter, or to try their skill identifying migrant warblers in spring. “These excursions have caused the scales of blindness to drop from my eyes,” he wrote.
He has opened my eyes to a few things, too. He created a permanent record of a place and a moment in time. He made me see how significant one’s own observations can be.
Crow Creek, where Ross birded, flows through what is now my back yard.
The cardinals that greet me on a December morning link me to a person who birded the same ground more than a century ago. A writer never knows for certain whom they’re writing to. I’m sure William Ross never suspected he was writing to me.
I would love to read your comments. (Click the thought bubble icon.)
Maybe you have a story from elders who lived in Fairfield in the past. Or your own experience with discovering your own history.
Thanks for telling us about William Ross.
I feel as if I've met him now.
Diane, where were the Cardinals previously? Why was this the first time he’d seen them? Beautiful article, thanks!