Rita Halbeisen

What's going on?

Yeah.

Why aren't we seeing bigger numbers now that we're catching the cowbirds?

And we thought, well, we finally concluded it must be just there is not enough habitat.

Only you can prevent forest fires.

The wind came up suddenly, something nobody could predict, and it took the fire across the road into a stand of mature jack pine and took off.

And the worst part about it for all of us was that it killed one of the Forest Service employees, a very young wildlife technician who was very well loved by his co-workers.

A guy named Jim Swiderski.

Jim was a good friend as well as an employee.

Oh, the press was having a heyday, just tearing into the Forest Service for what had happened.

The townspeople were very angry at the Forest Service.

Eight to ten years after that Mack Lake burn, it just seemed like everywhere you turned around, you'd stop for a listen.

There were five or six birds.

A tremendous number of warblers.

That was the answer to the mystery.

The fire.

Oh, take a look.

Take a look.

I got him.

I've never seen one.