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The Piedmont Highlander

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Bird Calling Contest winners announced

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“Now, for the first place finishers of the 48th annual Bird Calling Contest…whose names will be inscribed on the Stanley cup of bird calling…the greater prairie chicken by Gabe Bolio, Eli Nash, and James Clifford!” announced Bird Calling Contest producer Ken Brown.

Last night, juniors Bolio, Nash, and Clifford took first place in the contest, followed by senior Dina Zangwill and then sophomores Jo Ireland, Becca Havian, and Amy Kelleher.

“The hardest part was probably finding time to practice,” Bolio said.

“Because we’re lazy,” Nash added.

The humor that the winners displayed was one of the deciding factors for the judges in selecting them. The bird callers were all judged on the accuracy of their call, the breadth of information they provided, and the originality of their presentations.

“One of our mutual friends suggested this as a skit, so we made some modifications to the idea then used it,” Clifford said.

Bolio, Nash, and Clifford’s skit centered around a famous greater prairie chicken comedian (Nash) being heckled by an audience member (Bolio) and feeling unloved by his father (Clifford).

“The original one we had wasn’t as good,” Bolio said of the selection process for the skit.

As for choosing a bird, Nash said that they researched calls online until they found one they could replicate after trial and error. The greater prairie chicken was also the winning bird last year, as interpreted by then-seniors Tlalli Moya-Smith, Sheli Shacker, and Cameron Anderson.

Runner-up Zangwill had a different path to finding her bird, the red-throated loon.

“I heard a call in my neighborhood that was similar, years ago,” Zangwill said. “I knew I could screech like that.”

Zangwill’s sketch featured Zangwill as a loon left behind during the mating season, becoming upset upon realizing that another female bird was attempting to steal her mate.

Second runners-up Ireland, Havian, and Kelleher used an approach more similar to that of the winners.

“We chose the gyrfalcon by listening to different bird calls online and looking up information on websites about which birds we could make a skit out of,” Havian said.

Havian played the gyrfalcon in the third-place skit, which also featured Ireland as an overly enthusiastic “Golden Eagle Scout” and Kelleher as a Russian falconer touring the Alaskan tundra.

The competition included a musical interlude from sophomores Apryl Hsu, Nako Narter, Lucy Faust, and Sofia Gotch. Jeff Sotzing, the president of Carson Entertainment Group and former producer of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, also spoke while the judges were deliberating.

“High school students doing bird calls in front of 20 million people, live…it was a gamble, but it was great,” Sotzing said. “We started that in 1976.”

Sotzing presented Principal Rich Kitchens and the rest of Piedmont High School with a framed copy of a contest poster that had been in Carson’s home and office for many years.

“We just wanted to thank Piedmont High School for providing us with so many years of education and entertainment,” Sotzing said.

Brown also felt that the contest has stayed true to certain qualities over the 48 years.

“What has remained constant is the kids’ lighthearted approach, and they’ve always represented our community well whether it was on Carson or Letterman,” Brown said.

“It’s a part of our culture and our climate, and it’s a part of our craziness,” Kitchens said.

The seven winners of the contest will travel to New York on May 20.

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Announcers juniors Alec Sieben and Eli Nash

Photo courtesy Michael Kelleher

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