The Bird Lady of Sauk City

Though no two lives are alike, I believe everyone experiences moments they consider extraordinary. For me, the pleasure of meeting Edna Koenig, is an example.

I met her due to the misfortune of a bird.

It was spring 1976. I was living in Madison, Wisconsin.

My sons, Phillip and Jonathan, five and three years old, were playing in the yard and I was weeding the front garden when I heard Phillip yell, “Mom, come see what we found!”

The tiny, fuzzy chick sitting in the grass was easy to identify. A ball of black, gray, white and orange down, the Baltimore Oriole chirped in distress and looked up at me with round, dark eyes that seemed to beg for help.

The elm tree from which it had fallen was at least seventy feet tall, making it impossible for us to return it to its nest, but the boys and I couldn’t bear to abandon the poor thing.

Our past attempts to rescue baby birds, squirrels and rabbits found in our yard had, unfortunately, always ended with sad results. Though we tried to keep the creatures warm and in a safe place while feeding them little bits of bread crumbs or giving them drops of water or milk with an eye dropper, they all had eventually died.

Deciding to rely on expert knowledge this time, I called the local animal hospital and explained our situation. The staff person who answered informed me that they didn’t take birds, but suggested I call the ‘bird lady” in Sauk City and gave me her number.

I looked at a map and determined that Sauk City was about thirty miles away. Since the trip was feasible, I made the call.

When Edna, the ‘bird lady, answered, I told her that my little boys had found a baby bird and wondered if she could help. After an uncomfortable pause that made me think she was about to say no, she finally asked, “What kind of bird is it?”

“It’s a Baltimore Oriole.”

Apparently, our chick met her ‘bird victim’ criteria. She agreed to take it and gave me directions to her house.

Shortly after I made the call, my long-time friend Peggy and her two daughters, Michele and Nicole, similar in age to my boys, arrived for an expected visit.

When Peggy's girls heard about our discovery, they wanted to peek at the bird which, by then, we had put in a cardboard shoebox tucked in with a piece of soft fabric. The minute they saw the chick they wanted to save it too and I explained our only option to Peggy. Close friends in high school, roommates in college, weddings back to back, Peggy and I were up for a new adventure and agreed that a drive to Sauk City would be an interesting field trip for our children.

We loaded the kids and the chick into Peggy’s Dodge van, now turned ambulance, and drove forty minutes through rolling green countryside until we reached the ‘bird lady’s’ house at 215 Jackson St. in the middle of town.

Edna Koenig, greeted us at the door and invited us inside. Gray hair pulled back in a bun, she appeared to be my grandmother’s age, perhaps 70. Her husband wasn’t home.

I carried our feathered baby, now quiet in its box, while Edna gave us a brief tour, first showing us her small living room. The shades were drawn and in the low light, it took me a few seconds to notice that the furniture and floors were covered in towels. If there was any particular style of furniture, it was impossible to tell. The same was true for the spare bedroom. All the rooms were separated by hanging sheets, not doors.

I’m sure my jaw must have dropped when I noticed the small birds of different species perched or flying above our heads. Each time a bird flew over me, I bent to duck, but it wasn’t necessary. The birds avoided us.

Edna, grinning, told us that the birds were free to fly at large unless they needed care or were handicapped. I looked for signs of droppings, but didn’t see any. (She must have changed the towels often.)

As we trailed her into the kitchen, she pointed out designated areas on the counters. One section served as a nursery, another as an urgent care center. Both housed several birds, each in its own open plastic box. On another counter was a smorgasbord of worms, crickets, grubs, and seeds in plastic containers. She stopped and demonstrated how she fed the baby birds with tweezers. Our children, normally antsy after having to be quiet for more than a few minutes, were mesmerized like their mothers.

The basic tour over, Edna did not shoo us away. She said she liked having visitors, and that Audubon Society Members visited frequently. I could tell she was experienced telling her story since words rolled off her tongue as if she had told her story many times before.

She explained that she and her husband, Henry, had become interested in birds after he built a windowsill bird feeder in 1949. They enjoyed it so much that they began adding more feeders and eventually ended up with twenty-five. After that, they starting taking care of injured birds until they could be released in the wild.

When asked what kinds of birds they had cared for over the years, Edna mentioned orioles, cedar waxwings, swallows, cardinals, bluebirds, mourning doves, scarlet tanagers and more. She told us that in one year there had been an invasion of evening grosbeaks in Wisconsin and in another year purple finches which required a lot of seeds. At one point she said her husband had a weekly order of 10,000 meal worms from California and 1000 crickets from Baton Rouge.

Scanning the room and looking down at the floor, I noticed a medium size bird with a short neck, big black eyes, and mottled feathers of buff, gray, white and black and I asked her what it was.

“Nighthawk,” she answered.

I had never seen or heard of one of those before, especially not on someone’s kitchen floor.

  Finally, she told us about Robbie, a robin that never recovered enough to fly. She and Henry had kept him as a pet. Clearly fond of him, she said she had not realized how long robins could live in captivity.

Not wanting to take any more of her time, we thanked her, said good bye to our young oriole, and left, confident the chick was in good hands.

Years later, after doing some research on the Koenigs, I learned that Robbie became well-known countrywide and lived to be seventeen years, seven months and three days. Edna and Henry wrote a book about their experience, 215 The Bird House, published by the Wisconsin Audubon Council. The paperback includes stories about many of the birds they cared for including Robbie.

Edna Koenig had been more than humble about her history when we talked to her that day. A licensed birder, she was certified to properly identify birds. She kept copious notes that she shared with ornithologists which contributed significantly to the understanding of birds.

She gifted her visitors with an extraordinary experience and left me with a story worth telling.