Susan Peterson - Avid Birder and Admin of KMUN, a local radio station

Susan Peterson is an avid birder. Some might even say she has bird Tourettes!

She is also the administrator of KMUN, Coast Radio, our local nonprofit, volunteer operated radio station.

Here are some links to birding information from the podcast.
Merlin app
Pacific Northwest Birders
Portland Audubon

Also links to articles on extraordinary living.
5 Ways Successful People take Control of their Life
How to Live an Extraordinary LIfe

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

Jan Johnson  00:57

Okay, welcome to Women of the Northwest. I am fortunate enough today to have Susan Peterson here with me. This is gonna be a fun interview with her. She is the head of km un radio now. She's a birder. She's got just a lot of fun stories to tell. So let's dig in. Welcome, Susan. Thank

01:21

you. Lovely drive out here this morning. Yeah.

Jan Johnson  01:24

And the sun shining? Yeah. Yay. So things. What kind of birds Did you see on the way

01:29

out? Well, I saw a Cedar waxwing I love them over the wire. And I identified a clip swallow. That was a bird for my bird list this year. And then after I saw the one I saw hundreds. There's a nice flock of windmills that landed between or off of Jackson road. What's a window look like when Brill is shorebird? It's kind of a large shorebird with a bill that goes down like this and stripes on its eye.

Jan Johnson  02:01

I don't think I've ever seen one of them.

02:02

Yeah, normally, well, later in the season, you'll see them at the ocean eating all the time. But now while the fields are wet, they kind of split their time. So

Jan Johnson  02:11

okay, I saw there's a killed deer down the driveway there, you know, and they'll just like, you gotta kind of watch because sometimes they'll lay right in the middle of the driveway. And then it's like you move them do you not? Do you hope the car goes? That hard decision? Yeah, yeah. As to how they're gonna be. And yeah, and then I just saw the yellow finches out there just came for the first time.

02:36

Yeah, your your, your fence along your driveway was filled with them? Oh, gosh, I find something good to eat here.

Jan Johnson  02:43

So pretty between that and the Redwing blackbirds, you know, I just love them. It's good living that little bit of little spider read there. And another thing that's fun, I think is watching. You know, if I put up the suit, then the Blue Jays are coming to that. But see in which varieties, it's interesting to see how they don't they kind of co-habit, you know, they don't really care who's there, they'll go take the turn and then come back.

03:14

Well, birds live on a very economy of eating, you know, they can't eat too much that they can't fly away, because that's their only real defense. And their metabolism is so high, their hearts beat so quickly that they their metabolism is very high. So they eat a lot of small meals, but a lot of them during the day. They don't just gorge like we do. So they come and go a lot. And that's how that works. Because yeah, the you know, the bigger birds or might, you know, chase off a smaller bird or vice versa. And but it's all you know, they're all just getting their little snack and then moving on.

Jan Johnson  03:53

Yeah, that's fun. I saw a video somebody a friend had posted the other day with a heron that had actually caught the fish and they you know, saw it. You don't usually see that kind of you know, they do but you know, when we see that happening, and then after the interview that the house that we have down there with a blueberry farm has Osprey spray Nesic Yeah, so

04:19

I know right where that is. Yeah, roulette wheel. It's a hotspot for burning and in Yeah. Brown. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah.

Jan Johnson  04:27

And they're really fun to watch, too. I think one of them must have been there was a dead bird in the driveway. And I think it was kind of big or some kind of thing. It might have been one of the babies or something. Oh, yeah. Because it was, you know, good. Forehand sides. Yeah. But they're fun all the different sounds. I like the different sounds and and what was it you were telling me about an app? A bird app?

04:49

Why you several bird apps. The one I was telling you about is Merlin it's for identifying and you can put in like where you are and when One day and time you saw the bird, short description of the colors of the bird. What it was doing? Was it on the ground was an entry was it flying? Some really simple questions like that, and then it'll come up with a list of birds in your area. That might be the bird you saw. Oh, so you can go like Nope, that wasn't it? No. Yep. Oh, I think that was it, you know, and you could tap on it, and it gives you much more information.

Jan Johnson  05:25

And so but okay, and identifying, which is the sounds too

05:32

and then this and then there's another feature they've just started about a year ago where you hit the recording sound ID and it records all the sun all the sounds that the birds that are bird sounds, and I can't use it by the ocean. I live in Seaside so I have to cuz it's too much white background noise, but when it hurts, here's a song or one of their location notes or whatever. It will identify that bird immediately and, you know, comes right up on the screen like that's a yellow warbler that's about Redwing Blackbird and it's really a wonderful thing.

Jan Johnson  06:07

Is that a free app or it's free? Oh, even better? Yes. Okay, that's all darlin. Yeah. Merlin. Okay. I will put a link in the show notes for that one. Okay, that will be fun. What got you interested in birds to begin with?

06:22

Um, I've always liked being outside. I grew up in northern Minnesota where we had a cabin and we spent a lot of weekends and holidays there. And we were just an outdoor family. We camped we, you know, and I never really had an interest in identifying birds. I've always liked looking at birds. And then when my parents retired and moved out to a lake from our, you know, town from our home in Hibbing. I grew up in Hibbing Minnesota. They were surrounded with you know, there was a lake and a creek and a field and they just start seeing all these birds and they started identifying birds, which is what a birder is someone who identifies the birds and wants to know What is particularly that one is. So my, my dad was really the big birder in our family and my mom, he stopped driving, and my mom got tired of driving him around the bird. So they had, they followed me out to Seaside so they were living in Seaside at the time. And so I would, you know, to spend time with my dad, who was a great dad. I started driving him around. And one day we were out with Mike Patterson and Steve Warner and all these guys that get together every well we used to before COVID, the first Saturday of the month and go off birding somewhere, and I just went, Hey, this is kind of fun. Yeah, I should do this more often. It gets you outside, it gets you move, and it gets you seeing things you maybe haven't seen before, you know, not only Oh, yeah. It's really great. So that's, that's how it happened. And boy, I have just, sometimes I have trouble focusing on other things. Instead of instead of birds, I'm always like, oh, yeah, like we were doing. We were talking earlier, and I was kind of looking over your shoulders while you were there. I think that's the bald eagle soaring around out there. It could be a turkey vulture. Like,

Jan Johnson  08:16

let's see, I think Albert said that. You might have bird Tourette's. Oh, yeah.

08:20

I say that a lot. And I'm a super funny story about that. So it was my mother's birthday. And we were all at my house having a very lovely meal. And my husband used to insist that I sat I sit with my back to a window the window so that I don't get distracted. Well, my sister and I, my sister and I had started a bird list, you know, the day bird list for that day. And we were looking at birds and we were out on the back porch and then thinking like, where the How come we're not seeing like parent, the peregrine falcon and all these birds and stuff and, and we're sitting at the table. Everyone sat down before me and I ended up sitting in the very best spot where I could see out these windows here and there's windows here and and out of the corner of my eye. I could see of a flock of birds coming in and I knew they were Banfield pigeons. Oh, and I got up. I pulled the tablecloth slightly with me. As I got up. I kind of crashed into my daughter who was sitting to my right on my way to the window.