MEET DOROTHY HAINES!
Dorothy Haines sits on the Browne Prairie Bench at Goose Pond Sanctuary. She turns 100 years old in January 2022. (Photo by Madison Audubon)
I was in touch with nature from the time I was a little kid. My dad worked hard in the city so we lived there during the week, but we had a cabin out on Lake Monona for the weekends. There were hardly any cottages out there, and we started with a boathouse that had no water or electricity. We were always finding crayfish and all sorts of things in the lake, if you took the boat out you could catch lots of perch. They make the best fish fry!
I was involved with nature exploration in a lot of ways. I did a lot of canoeing with the Sierra Club on the river—it’s good to have a lot of people so that someone can have a car down at one end and another car at the other to bring us back!
Lots of people in the area were leading great outdoor trips. Jim Zimmerman took us to a lot of places all over. We visited a campground in northern Wisconsin where he pulled off his shoes and socks and said, “I’m going walking in the bog!” So we all went walking in the bog.
At some point, Jim mentioned wishing there was an organization dedicated to protecting the waters and marshes. Rosie Meinholz, who I met at International Crane Foundation, and I helped Jim when he was starting the Wisconsin Wetlands Association. We had 40 members and $40 and that was it, but just look what they’ve done!
I also used to attend the programs that National Audubon put on here. They used to have big speakers that would travel through, like Roger Tory Peterson, that would fill a big lecture room on campus. I started going to Madison Audubon meetings monthly and helping with the newsletter, typing it out on a mimeograph machine. All the members would come together and we’d print and mail them all out ourselves. It grew and grew and grew from there.
What is your ‘spark story’—how you first got into birding?
Dorothy sits with Mark Martin at the Wingspan Observation Pavilion at Goose Pond in 2018. (Photo by Madison Audubon)
Oh well that’s too far back! My mother took a course in ornithology and graduated from the university in 1918. She taught me the songbirds in the neighborhood. I got connected with ICF some way or another and was part of a group that was counting cranes. While there I mentioned I knew a lot about songbirds but not much about ducks. Then a voice behind me came up and said, “Oh, I can teach you about ducks!” It was Mark Martin [now a resident sanctuary manager at Goose Pond].
If you could encounter any bird in the world, what would it be?
The Baltimore Oriole! I love to see them, but they don’t always stop by often.
Favorite places to bird?
Cherokee Marsh is a great place and UW-Arboretum is also very nice. I met Aldo Leopold once, he wasn’t famous when I met him. A group of us once went up to the Leopold Shack up near the river there. That’s a really beautiful place.
What advice would you share with new birders?
I like slow birding. I recommend trying that sometime instead of focusing on how many birds you can see in an hour, or in a certain location. Spending the time learning how they live—I think that kind of learning is so important.
I also have a nice bird feeder setup, and learn new things about birds all the time. It started out with a chickadee or two, then I kept putting out a lot of food that I knew they’d like, like safflower, and soon there were so many visiting.
Remember, birding is for everyone! Know someone (maybe you!) who’d like to be featured in our Meet a Birder series? Send an email to Kaitlin at ksvabek@madisonaudubon.org.
Cover image: A Baltimore Oriole feasts on an orange. (Photo by Michael McGough from Pixabay)
