Abstract
Victor Fazio of the Shaker Lakes Nature Center recalls his experiences at the Shaker Lakes beginning in the 1970s. Fazio, a bird-watching enthusiast, provides a wealth of information about the bird population at Shaker Lakes over roughly three decades, connecting ecological chages to changes in bird behavior and population. Also discussed is the history of "birding" at Shaker Lakes, which dates back "to at least 1905," emerging from the Conservation Movement of the early 20th century. Fazio credits his interest in bird-watching and environmental issues to his education at Shaker Heights High School, to the mentorship of ornithologist Jean Aiken, and to the community of naturalists in the region.
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Interviewee
Fazio, Victor (interviewee)
Interviewer
West, Julie (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Lakes Nature Center
Date
2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
122 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Victor Fazio Interview, 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 902015.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/230
Transcript
Victor Fazio [00:00:01] You ready?
Julie West [00:00:01] All right. Okay, Vic, thanks for participating. We’ve already met Justin Hons, and we’re going to be interviewing today Victor Warren Fazio III. And today’s date is November 6, 2006. Vic, did you grow up in the Cleveland area?
Victor Fazio [00:00:30] I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. My parents brought us to America in 1972, and that was to be a one-year thing, but it was in Boston and my dad was in training. As you know, he’s a surgeon, and he was recognized by the Cleveland Clinic as someone that they wanted to recruit. And we came to Cleveland to further his specialty again as an extension on this little adventure. Well, 30 years later, here we are.
Julie West [00:01:13] And when did you actually come to the Cleveland area?
Victor Fazio [00:01:19] 1973. We were in Warrensville Heights was where we first moved. And then approximately 18 months later, when my father took on a permanent position at the Cleveland Clinic, we moved to Shaker Heights.
Julie West [00:01:44] So that would have been in ’74?
Victor Fazio [00:01:45] Late ’74 sometime. Yeah, it would have been. I started eighth grade at Woodbury Junior High, so certainly I was here by the beginning of the school year.
Julie West [00:02:01] Describe an early outdoor experience that kind of sticks in your mind.
Victor Fazio [00:02:11] Well, as a young child still in Australia, I have these very flashes of memories, you know, that are generic in some sense. But I grew up on the seashore in Australia, and, you know, it’s very hard, it’s impossible to ignore your natural surroundings, especially in the vicinity of rock pools that I would poke about and with, you know, finding starfish and what have you, and inevitably bringing those home and putting them in some sort of saltwater aquarium and having them die overnight and stinking up the place. But my mother put up with it for a number of years, apparently. But in terms of a very vivid, a little more mature memory event that really set me on my path. It was actually something that took place right here in Shaker shortly after. It was that first, maybe the second fall was 1975. October 1975. Very distinct memory. I don’t know if you recall 1975 very well, but it was one of the extraordinarily warm seasons back before we really had a series of them, as we have had in recent years. It was actually an El Nino event I’ve later researched. But that Indian Summer that October was, I mean, it hit 80 degrees. I recall it very, very well. And I had just formally begun my notebook, my first bird notebook. On October 1, 1975, is my first entry, House Sparrow. We were living on Kenmore, and at the time, I actually had no idea that bird watching was done by people. I really, you know, I was clueless. You know, I didn’t have that sort of, you know, traveling around at that age when you might learn of these things or before. That just didn’t set in. And so- And I think I might have had- No, I didn’t. I did not have my first field guide at that time. What I was using was my interest of birds had burgeoned a few months earlier. Was one of those, you remember, it was very popular in the ’70s. You had these sticker albums, coloring albums that in the back you had stickers, you know, and I had one on birds, you know, and my dad had recently purchased. And honest to God truth, this is what happened. It was one of these very warm, like 10th of October, approximately. It was very, very warm for October. And a tiny little yard on Kenmore and basically is one tree in the backyard, one giant oak tree. And I’m there coloring in, just looking at stuff, you know, and there’s this tap, tap, tap on the oak tree right above me. I look up and there’s this bird that is just all these colors and it’s just nothing like I’ve ever seen what, you know. But then I was like, I just was looking at that and I went to the back of the book and there I’m literally looking at a bird and looking at a picture. And that was an epiphany for me that there was possible to have before you in a book a picture of something that you’re looking at right at the same time. I’m 13 years old and I’m like, wow, that bird was a yellow-bellied sapsucker, a male. And I was like, I can identify stuff. And there you have it.
Julie West [00:06:16] How would you describe your own environmental or nature education?
Victor Fazio [00:06:23] I had no- Until ninth grade, I was exposed to no formal such thing. I mean, it really came about beginning at age 3, tracing my grandmother’s peacocks around in rural Australia. And in fact, I, I don’t recall it exactly, but my mother informs me that I pestered him just a little too much and was struck in the crown at age 3. And in fact, to this day you can feel a little lump right there. It’s the scar from getting a little too friendly with the peacocks, but that sort of, you know, very rural Australia. My mother’s father was, after the war, World War II, was retired from various things that he did, but he was a forester, what you would call lumberjack, perhaps today in very rural Australia. So you couldn’t get away from all manner of creatures around you. You lived with it very much in Australia. So that was really my upbringing and just being encouraged, being inquisitive. And it wasn’t until ninth grade that here at Woodbury I had biology. The first time I had a formal biology class of any kind. And the teacher was Mr. Flaum. I think that’s F, L, A, U, M. I can’t recall exactly, but he really took to me. And so he was really sort of my first mentor away from outside of the family. And he begun that year, I believe, a sort of field naturalist club, one of those out, you know, things you did, extracurricular sort of things. And Fridays, Friday afternoons, he would take the class or anyone who wished to, you know, walk across the street to Southington, what is now Southington Park. We called it Bicycle Jungle back then. And that was- Well, I suppose I must have been 12 when that begun. 12, 13, right in there. And it was, you know, he was not a birder per se, or anything, but he just, you know, would point to, you know, we’d walk about and look at this plant or those leaves and trying to explain things. I actually don’t recall seeing very many birds at all during those. But that was my first formal exposure to that type of mentoring.
Julie West [00:09:41] When did you first start coming to the Nature Center? Either the physical building or the lands around the Nature Center. And that includes, like, Lower Lake.
Victor Fazio [00:09:51] Right. Trying to get the timeline right because it was, I mean, Mr. Flaum, his outings to Southington Park were 1975-ish, I do believe, in 1976, the summer of 1976, as part of some sort of event associated with the Cleveland Clinic, a picnic for residents or some such that we- There was a Horseshoe Lake picnic. And it was my first time at Horseshoe Lake. And we were still on Kenmore at the time, so I wasn’t really that close to me wandering over there, but it was my first realization that there was more than, you know, there were lakes. You know, I hadn’t come over here, so that was kind of neat because it was summer, so you don’t really get a full sense of the size of something fully vegetated as it was. But even so, I thought, I thought, wow, this is cool. You know, all those little back swampy bits, you know, jungles that, you know, a kid can roam around, you know, get lost in, I imagine, all manner of things. So that was my first time at one of the lakes. Now, early the next year, we moved to- My parents moved to South Woodland, where they remain to this day. Corner of Attleboro and South Woodland. It’s a five-minute walk to Horseshoe Lake. So now I was becoming very interested formally, sort of formalizing my study in my mind. I’d had a couple of years of notes under my belt, you know, just note taking, sort of experience and refining that sort of thing. And so that fall, September, late August, September of 1977, was my mother saw something about the Nature Center and that they had junior naturalists program. Showed up on a Saturday. That was kind of tough because I was into soccer and soccer matches were on Saturdays. But I would come down here and get a couple hours in and then go do my soccer match in the afternoon. But that was the beginning of that. That was when I met Cindy Schwartz, that sort of thing.
Julie West [00:12:51] What kinds of things did you do as a junior naturalist?
Victor Fazio [00:12:57] Well, that was before the boardwalk. And you remember the late winters of the ’70s, ’76, ’77 onwards, were heavy snows and so the spring flooding was exceptional and I think remains exceptional from what I’ve seen over the decade, past couple of decades for that period. Four here in fact. I think one of those floods, you can go back into the newspapers and read about one of the floods that basically put Coventry underwater, but that pretty much rearranged whatever trails were in place, which of course were marked by railroad ties. And if there’s nothing more fun for a 14 year old to do is to pick up an 85-pound railroad tie and see how far he can walk across the parking lot in front of the girls, you know. So, yeah, we had a lot of fun. Trail maintenance, I would say, was 85, 90% of what we were doing in the two and a half years I was here.
Julie West [00:14:23] So most of your time was spent outside as opposed to inside learning?
Victor Fazio [00:14:28] Yes, you know, towards after the first year or so, there was a little more opportunity for indoor care of exhibits or the animals. And it was sort of given over to you as an option of how much time you could balance with that. You know, I came into a real neat group of guys. It was just a really neat coincidence of personalities coming together. We’re all 15, 16 years of age and I remember them fairly well. And we were a tight bunch, about four or five of us. And we, you know, pretty much did what 14, 15, 16 year olds do and, you know, bond through challenging each other to the max over everything. And so, yeah, we remained outdoors pretty much and had a lot of fun with it.
Julie West [00:15:45] And did everybody- It seems like you have a high interest in nature and wildlife- [crosstalk]
Victor Fazio [00:15:51] Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And in particular, birds. I mean, what- You know, we were all bird watchers and the- Well, the five of us, anyway, that sort of were tight were maniac birders. I mean, you know, manic about it. So that was the tie that bound us.
Julie West [00:16:27] So did you spend time either with them or on your own here in this area, other than when you were doing the junior naturalist?
Victor Fazio [00:16:38] This really was our base of operations. This is what brought us together. There really was very little opportunity outside of this experience to get together. Most of them were Cleveland Heights School District. I was Shaker, so I didn’t know any of the- There was one other younger one that was about three years behind me who came up, Chip Freund, who was Shaker, but Chris Lee, Chris McCulloch and Mason Flint. Actually, Mason was in Shaker, too, but he must have been in a different school, not Woodbury. And so this was really where we got together, you know, without transportation or anything like that. We weren’t going to be going anywhere else.
Julie West [00:17:37] And you mentioned a Cindy?
Victor Fazio [00:17:39] Yeah, she was the-
Julie West [00:17:41] What was her role in the Nature Center or the naturalist?
Victor Fazio [00:17:45] Well, she coordinated the naturalists and she was our- From time to time she would have an assistant. Particularly later in the first year or two. We really didn’t have a great variety of activity other than what was done right here. But Cindy did everything she could to support us and encourage us. And it was really her who saw to it there was some sort of implemented a reward system which I don’t think was in there, in place in earlier years, whereby at the beginning of the next school year or something, rather there would be a field outing, a special trip out of state, I believe, Hawk Mountain one year. And if I recall correctly, there was a visit to see the cranes at Jasper Pulaski in Indiana. I was not on either one. There were conflicts with soccer or some such thing. But I do know that they took place. I was on one. Oh, that’s right. We went to Cornell University, Laboratory of Ornithology. That was the one I could make that was special because that wasn’t merely for the sake of just visiting the lab during my senior year. So when I was 17, through a quirk of Australian U.S. education calendars, I ended up a year ahead. I graduated high school shortly after I turned only a couple weeks after I turned 17. So actually I was still 16. I was still 16 when I went to Cornell. And that was a consequence of having taken the homeschooling program in ornithology that was offered brand new by Cornell Lab at that time, only the year before. And it was a fairly expensive thing. But Sydney. Excuse me, Cindy. Through, I believe, funds of the Nature Center paid for a course and then photocopied 10 of us who went through it. So that was brilliant. I mean, I really appreciated that at the time. And to end, to conclude the course, we actually took a trip to Cornell that was ultra cool.
Julie West [00:20:47] Any other memories in terms of specific things that you did or that happened to you when you were in this junior naturalist program?
Victor Fazio [00:21:08] [long pause] No, no, I really can’t say. You know, I mean, I have specific memories of the guys, but, you know, birding. But no, nothing really jumps out.
Julie West [00:21:24] You said that.
Victor Fazio [00:21:26] Well, there is, I mean, the one little thing that we would participate in, in fact, were crucial for was the fundraising, the seed sale of seed, bird seed. That was in fact, I think it was part of those funds that we ended up depending on how much seed was sold and so forth. Juniors naturalists were funded to some degree from that, but that was a big deal. There were two such events, I think two such sales, one approximately about now in November, and then one a little later. And we would haul thousands of pounds seed and people. So that was another thing that would be our event.
Julie West [00:22:24] So when you say haul it, you would just get it into people’s car? Or would you have to go sort of get it?
Victor Fazio [00:22:27] A full-size 18 wheeler would come in. I mean one immense- And it was packed to the ceiling, I don’t know how many tens of thousands of pounds. I mean, enormous amount. And quite literally, people who had pre-ordered, you know, would simply to be just a train of cars coming in one way, going out the other. Someone would pick out the train coming in, someone pick out an order form, go in, they would process it. It would make its way out to those of us at the trucks. You had guys in the back that were just bringing it to the, you know, one end and then people picking it off. And then you had the car by that time, you know, ideally you would have it in their trunk and it was nothing to handle, any one of us, 2,000 pounds of seed in an afternoon.
Julie West [00:23:34] What changes have you seen in the Nature Center or the grounds over the years that you’ve been coming here?
Victor Fazio [00:23:44] Well, quite a few, I guess. Things really started to change dramatically from what I had taken to be the norm. Norm is what I was accustomed to from exploring every square inch of the parks. And I mean, literally, I’ve walked every possible, not just path, but everywhere. So in the late ’70s, I became fairly familiar with the vegetative structure throughout, what it should look like throughout the season, what the water levels are and so forth. And I’m probably not going to remember exactly year to year but in the early ’80s, roughly in the ’81 to ’83 period and I was at Wittenberg University at the time, so a lot of these things happened while I was not precisely here. I would see their aftermath. And you had- I think it first started with Horseshoe Lake. If you imagine the north tributary coming in at Horseshoe Lake and the back there, the back area, it was a through road at one time but it’s been blocked off long since. But they, that was a very wild area, very overgrown. The stream was completely, you know, the riparian corridor was intact. You know, I mean it was a young growth, secondary growth. It was probably no more than 40 years old at the time. But even so it was the type of situation that I came to learn harbored a great many birds in migration, but in particular in winter it became the place that we would go to look on Christmas bird count, for example, for something that shouldn’t be there. Some half hardy species like Towhee. One year we had a Catbird even if we didn’t. Yellow-rumped Warbler would be another example. Even if it wasn’t terribly rare. There were species that at the time checklists and any birder would tell you should be quite uncommon throughout Cleveland for example. White-throated Sparrow. White-throated sparrow. Nowadays with the weather as it has been, winters as they have been mild, is not terribly uncommon. Wintering even here in Shaker. But in 1979, 1978 it most certainly was. And for you to report 10 or double digit figures was rare bird alert time. And yet there was an occasion when in early December I think it was 1979 or 1980, I recorded 128. And it was a combination of this tremendous cover, this microclimate that made things milder than the surrounds. And also several of the estates above on the hillsides were prolific for feeder contributing to feeders. So they had the energy source and you had the cover So it was a wonderful little spot. Well, sometime I think it was 1981 or 1982, a new power line, telephone poles and the whole bit went in and removed. They left much of the understory intact. But anything was a dead snag gone, several substantial 60- to 70-foot oaks gone. And that was sort of that marred the situation. But it still was not quite the final insult for that particular spot because about 10 years later I’m not really sure, may not have been that long ago actually they further improved the embankment which requires removing any vegetation. And subsequent to that, only a few years ago the bridge itself, the bridgeworks, the original sandstone bridgeworks gone and now you have a very nice, clean, modern-looking bridge and absolutely no vegetation anywhere around it. And so that, that was a very real loss there. I have in the past three winters part of the Ohio breeding, excuse me, Ohio Winter Bird Atlas visited that area and it simply no longer supports that winter avifauna, not even remotely close to, simply cannot. So that’s one tiny example.
Julie West [00:29:41] What about down at the, at the Lower lake and closer here to the Nature Center? What have you seen in terms of changes?
Victor Fazio [00:29:51] Well, in keeping to the timeline, I’ll say about two years later or so, ’83, ’84 is when the dam works at Horseshoe Lake were improved. And it’s a very nice walkway today. And if you’re there today, imagine yourself right at the dam at Horseshoe Lake looking downstream. You are now set away from the woodlot below you approximately 25 meters. Prior to that the woodlot began 8, 10 meters at the most from you. And I’m not talking about a little understory, you had quite suddenly 80-foot, 90-foot oak trees, a beautiful wall of them. And as a consequence, and of course you were elevated and to the extent of 20 to 30 feet and closer to this canopy. The thing about high canopy oak is in the fall it is rich with leaf foliage, masticating insects, inchworms and such. And if you really wish to see, you know, I mean this area is famous for its Spring Warblers but it really has just as many species and individuals, if not more individuals in the fall. But they are canopy, you know, they’re very hard to see, they’re very difficult. And so in a fall Warbler watching is this just that much more difficult? But here was an opportunity and a horseshoe in general, this is true. But it was fabulous Warbler watching because of your proximity to the canopy both in terms of the trees just a few meters away. And I remember some wonderful, wonderful observations there. But that, you know, the riprap went in, you suddenly were- The canopy was taken much farther away from you at the same time, of course the earthen support was greatly expanded. That actually gave us grassland as a habitat type in Shaker which we lacked prior to that. I had, I mean to encounter even a Field Sparrow, briefly in April migration you would get, five would be great and one peak day. But something like a Savannah Sparrow that was really a true grassland species where somebody somewhere would get one bird accidentally be spotted, you know, but suddenly he was this grassland across from the school, the school there, you know. And I went out and, oh, there’s 13 Savannah Sparrows, you know, and pond, you know, those, you know. So, you know, things change and, you know, there’s things, you know, one you take away from one thing and you add to another. Now, concurrently, I think it was just a little after that, but about then you had Lower Lake drained. I’m not exactly sure about that because I know in 1984, you know, those, those floods back to 1979 really did quite a bit on as far as depositing silt, tremendous amount of silt. And to this day there’s that little bit of mud that you see right off the Larchmere bridge that did not exist prior to about ’80, ’81, ’82 is about when it really, it surfaced as a consequence of those floods. And by 1984 it was quite substantial. So much so that I routinely, that summer of ’84, routinely in July and August during the shorebird season, visited because daily we would get an overturn of shorebirds and uncommon shorebirds for here, not merely the few Yellowlegs or Solitary Sandpipers and Killdeer, but the first record, I believe, of the Shaker Lakes park of Western Sandpiper I had in July of that year on that little spot because it was attracting upwards of 10 or 15 someone, sometime I think as much as 30 of these little peeps, you know, and mostly Least Sandpipers. But, you know, we did get a Western Sandpiper record out of it. And so that was, I think it was its max and it was getting quite overgrown with vegetation. I mean, the vegetation had come in and then of course that silts in even faster. And I think then subsequently that came in and dredged and then took that opportunity to also do probably the greatest shoreline vegetation removal that I’ve seen here, and that is down there at Coventry, at that end of Lower Shaker Lake, where, how can I say it, that entire end was forested. It was very thin, it was only three trees wide, but the entire bank was treed. A number of trees had fallen into and lay as logs. It was some 60 feet long. In some cases. Those trees that were standing were generally only about 30 to 35 feet tall. But what that offered was one, a significant buffer against the traffic of Coventry. And so in terms of just diminishing the noise as you walked about Lower Lake, it was significant. But more than that, in the ’70s we started to see some cyclical changes, significant ones with regard to the state population of Black-Crowned Night Heron. And sometime in the early ’70s there was a famous roost that I believe it was at the, somewhere on the Cuyahoga. I’m not really certain I know the- I know there was one at the Zoo. I’m not sure if it was that one or another that for aesthetic reasons was removed. And I believe you can find that mentioned in the literature. Now whether that was really that was coincident with. But I’m not really sure it was cause and effect. But certainly it correlated with Lower Shake Lake being used as a fall post breeding dispersal staging area.[background noise increases] And we actually came to know where these birds came from by virtue of the fact that we had this first year bird with a patagial marker, a red flag attached to its shoulder in black lettering. A-7. Well, A-7 was to return for the next two years. And his origin was West Sister Island. Not surprisingly that would have been approximately ’78, ’79, ’80, those three years. I think I have a photograph of him, I think still somewhere. But he was one of up to typically 30 Black-Crowned Night Herons that would come every fall. Generally 7th to 10th of July would be the first one to show up. And almost- And every year really it was pretty consistent, peak around the 1st of September and then you would get a cold front and then just about all but one would disappear. So it was really this staging area post-breeding from the western basin of Lake Erie. Very few would be adults, but of course that was entirely removed and we did not see any in the late ’80s. I was here in 1989 because I was about a five-year period there where I really wasn’t based in Shaker very much. But in 1989 I spent the entire year sort of looking around again at the changes. And sure, three or four, maybe five could be found up at the Larchmere bridge end, you know, but that roost gone just did not support that cover, you know, it was no longer there. And of course I had consequences for simply not allowing waterfowl a certain amount of respite from hikers, joggers, dogs, not that they were specifically flushed or you know how it just by virtue of having that buffer there. If you were to find something that was not a Mallard, something a little more interesting, a Ruddy Duck or you know, 1979 with White-winged Scoter and a few things of that, you know, some interesting things, they would invariably be found down in that little nook pretty much, if you think about it, farthest from most any other source of disturbance that you might find. And I just don’t, you know, it’s. This is my impression now. I don’t really- Can’t say for certain, but my impression is I just don’t see that type of waterfowl, divers and such, resting in that area. As long things are coming and going. Whereas before they seemed to rest for a week or two. And so that’s possible consequence there. And subsequent to that, you then had, you know, again, the bridgeworks. So, and I mean-
Julie West [00:42:16] At this end of the lake? Or down at the end? Coventry.
Victor Fazio [00:42:18] Well, no, down, downstream end. Yeah, that’s, that’s more modern, that’s more recent, you know. You know, to take you back to 1978, April 1978, from that, the old dam, the old bridge. I have a vivid memory. 13th April 1978, you could look up Perry Peskin’s bird records, because it was a bird walk. It was one of them. It may have been my first bird walk. I’m not sure. I suspect so. And there was a crowd, 30, 40 people. And right there on the shoreline looking down is a Sora. Sora Rail. And that was a life bird for me and quite a few other people. That’s the type of thing that you could find wandering about the edge because of the cover that we had. We once had little reeds, a little patch, tiny, nothing to look at, you’d think. And you can still see some remnants of it down in the north side of the lake. But it was larger. And at that time, when it was larger, Snipe could be routinely flushed from there in April. And if I may go back, because I skipped it, what you see today, for that matter, what you saw beginning sometime around again, the mid or early ’80s in what was the flower garden, or I’m not sure what the formal name used to be. But in the late ’70s, you still had that little stretch between Coventry and the Lower Lake. That little patch was a tremendous depression. You can see a tiny patch of depression, but that’s nothing [compared to] what it was. And there’s a structure down there - it’s been buried, you know, I don’t know what that was exactly, but that depression - and it was always water in it, was always much cooler. The microclimate down in there was substantially cooler than- So on a warmish day in May, it was strange, but it would attract the rarities. If you go through the bird records and you see records, and particularly in the ’70s and the ’60s, because I gather some of this from Dave Corbin, very, very active birder at the time. If there was a Connecticut Warbler, if that was a Worm-eating Warbler, these southern overflights, these Summer Tanager, there’s a Blue Grosbeak record for Shaker in 1955 that is from that specific spot. It’s the only record for Shaker that I’m aware of. And so it was always a delight. The highlight of the walk around the lake was to venture into there to see, okay, what are we going to find now? I know for a fact that there are dozens of birders from that period who they got their best looks of a Connecticut Warbler because they, down in there they just were approachable and what have you. So that was the first during that wave of dam reinforcement concurrent with that of Horseshoe Lake is when that was buried. So that was a disappointment.
Julie West [00:46:39] Other changes that you’ve noticed?
Victor Fazio [00:47:02] You know, there are specific site little changes that, you know, you come to. I mean there was still quite a surprising number of empty housing lots in the late ’70s, to my mind, some of them fairly large. I mean, you thought, I mean I would think to myself, here’s this massive mansion here and one there and here’s enough room for two more. And in particular I’m thinking of the just up here on South Park and Lee. If you come back towards this three houses I believe, I believe it’s a fairly large white mansion. If you look at that, that did not exist when I was birding here in the ’70s. And in fact you could walk from there all the way to Shaker Boulevard. That had to be 150 meters or more, maybe 200 meters. Plus, I don’t know, 60 meters wide. It was quite a small. And it was grass, it was mowed. Except that they would mow it once maybe and then let it go the rest of the summer. Well, that was a routine- It was a regular location for Woodcock displays in March in the spring. You could go there and up to five or six males are displaying around. You know, it was, I mean, I mean to be here in Shaker and have Woodcocks just- It was just amazing. And when I first encountered that, I just took it to be, well, surely they couldn’t nest here. I mean it’s just a transient thing. But during my breeding atlas work I did in fact locate a nest on- It was located here in the woodlot across the street from there, directly across right about where I found some marijuana growing one time when I was birding. I mean, yours truly sees these potted plants, they were along the- I would use- Because they were so thick across the growth, I would use the stream as a means to bird. You know, I just get white waders on and that was that. I would walk from here all the way to Lee. That was one of the best birding treks you can do in the spring. And I came across these three or four potted plants. And I mean, I was like 14. I was naive as anything. I hadn’t- It’s like, what in the world are these? And do you know, I mean, here I am as naturalist, I plucked some of the leaves and I came down here and keyed ’em out. [laughs] It’s like cannabis, what’s that? Oh, well. [laughs]
Julie West [00:50:19] The little known fact.
Victor Fazio [00:50:20] Oh, yes, I have seen some odd things, probably left better unsaid.
Julie West [00:50:29] What about any recollections regarding the trails when they were put in either the boardwalk or the Stearns Trail in back?
Victor Fazio [00:50:42] Well, that was about the time that I- Well, I was in college at Wittenberg, so I wasn’t sort of firsthand privy to it. And I just sort of showed up one day and it’s like, oh, this is cool. I mean, I knew, you know, it had been in the works. [phone rings] Sorry, it had been in the works, I think for several years at least. Talked about or, I mean, basically, I think it came out of the, again the ’78, ’79, you know, because as much as we, I mean, we saw all that work with the railroad ties get washed away a couple of seasons in a row, you know, and that got a little old. And so, yeah, the idea of a permanent elevated boardwalk was pretty much in t
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