ISABELLA— Steve Wilson has always wanted to be a bird brain.
Of course, it’s not what you think. While the term has long been lobbed as a pejorative, Wilson, who has been fascinated with birds since he was a kid, knows what most people don’t. Ounce-for-ounce, bird brains are, in fact, packed with far more synapses than a human brain.
“One wag once said that if birds had brains the size of humans, they’d rule the world,” Wilson likes to note.
This is all, in part, to explain why Wilson likes having birds, sometimes a whole flock of them, on his head. Or his arm, or his shoulder, or in his hand. “I’m hoping that if I can get close to them, a little of their bird brains will rub off,” he says. “Besides, it’s just plain flat-out fun.”
Wilson, now well into his 70s, started feeding birds at the age of 11, at a time when birdwatching wasn’t the epitome of cool that it is today. His grandmother, who lived in Duluth’s Morgan Park, was an avid feeder of birds, and Wilson remembers she even had individual names for her favorite visitors. While most of the birds were the usual variety, he was there one day when a male blackburnian warbler lighted on a window feeder. It’s the kind of sighting that can leave even the most jaded of human beings momentarily gob smacked with the realization that such a thing exists, but for Wilson the impression lasted a lifetime. He’s fed birds ever since, yet up until a few years ago, he fed them the way most of us do. You put food in a feeder and watch the birds that come to take advantage.
“I think most people who feed birds don’t realize there’s a whole other dimension to it,” he said. For Wilson, that includes feeding birds by hand. Call him the St. Francis of Isabella.
Wilson, who grew up in the Twin Cities, spent two years at Macalester College before moving to the North Country in the early 1970s to work on Lynn Rogers’ bear study. He then worked seasonal jobs for the U.S. Forest Service for several more years before returning to the Twin Cities to finish up an interdisciplinary major in forestry, fire ecology and management at the University of Minnesota.
But he soon came back north, to work on a DNR moose study before taking a long-term position as regional director of the DNR’s Scientific and Natural Area program in northeastern Minnesota, a program he ran for 22 years until his retirement several years ago.
He lived in Tower for most of that time, and that’s where he first experienced the “Wilson Way” (trademark pending?) of feeding birds. It was a winter when redpolls, a small northern finch with a bright red cap, descended on the area in large numbers and they quickly filled his backyard by the hundreds, consuming pounds of sunflower and thistle seeds in a kind of feeding frenzy. So, one mild late winter day, he tried lying back on the snowy ground and sprinkled thistle seed over his arms and shoulders, just to see what would happen. It was immediate bedlam, as the redpolls quickly descended and spent the next several minutes devouring the seed, much to Wilson’s amusement.
For Wilson, it started the wheels spinning in earnest, and once he moved to a remote lake near Isabella, his experimenting with his newfound passion only grew. While many folks who feed birds are aware that chickadees, nuthatches, and gray jays are relatively easy to hand-tame, Wilson soon realized that most birds can quickly become accustomed to the presence of a human, particularly when there’s the lure of food.
“There is a process,” he said. “First, get them used to your standing there,” preferably next to a popular feeder. Once the birds are comfortable feeding in his presence, which typically takes five to ten minutes, he moves the food so they have to come to his hand. So far, he has gotten 15 different species of birds to feed from his hand, even blue jays on occasion, which are notably among the most skittish of songbirds in the region.
For Wilson, his favorite is the male pine warbler he’s dubbed “Piney,” that took up summer residence in their yard a few years ago. He found that the insect-eating bird, which typically arrives in late April or early May for the breeding season, would come to his hand for peanuts, but found this past year that he had a real predilection for live meal worms. It’s expensive fare, but Wilson figures its worth its weight in gold for the entertainment value. After a few seasons of the routine, Piney knows the score and during the summer months he’ll often seek Wilson out now when he’s out in the yard. Last summer, while Wilson was outside caulking up a seam on the house, Piney landed on his shoulder. Then, as soon as he saw he had Wilson’s attention, he flew to the deck railing where Wilson regularly feeds him. “He’s gotten very demanding,” said Wilson.
Even so, he says feeding Piney never gets old. “It’s like having a feathered jewel on your hand, but it’s alive and with a personality.”
The nuthatches and chickadees can hound him as well, which Wilson naturally encourages. “We (which includes his very patient wife Mary Shedd) never leave the house without a pocket full of peanuts,” he says. “We have so many chickadees and nuthatches, and the second the hand comes out of the pocket there’s a nuthatch right there.”
In the past couple years, Wilson has started to document his interactions with his bird neighbors and posts them to his own YouTube channel. That’s where you’ll find the video of him feeding sunflower seeds to a flock of hungry purple finches from the top of a flat-topped, otherwise frumpy, old hat. There was a time, of course, when bird feathers were often used to adorn hats, a fashion that led to stunning declines of many bird species. Wilson prefers his “bird bling” alive and preferably munching contentedly on sunflower seeds. You can find a link to the video on our website or go to: https://www.youtube.com/@stevewilson9854/videos.
While most of his internet offerings get a few hundred views, mostly from friends, a photograph of a chipping sparrow grabbing a mealworm from a tiny carved wooden nest, complete with nestlings, went viral, generating nearly 150,000 views on reddit.
While Wilson likes coming up with inventive ways to have fun with birds, he also has a serious side on the subject. He founded the Isabella Christmas bird count more than 40 years ago and continues as the organizer, compiler, and general entertainer of that popular bird count. He has also, for decades now, has completed annual breeding bird surveys across large portions of the Superior National Forest, a rigorous commitment that requires hours of intense listening and the ability to identify virtually any bird sound at dozens of stops. It also brings an early wakeup call, usually about 2:30 a.m., so observers can be awake and at the start of their route in time for the 4 a.m. dawn chorus.
Wilson spent years personally studying boreal owls, a tiny, reclusive owl that only comes out under cover of darkness.
In addition, he’s been a longtime and active member of the Minnesota Ornithologists Union, has written papers for the group’s publication, The Loon, and for many years chaired the MOU’s Savaloja Committee, which reviewed small grant applications for bird research, education, and appreciation. All topics that hit close to home for Wilson.
It seems he has a bird brain after all.