Cabinets discovered in an Iowa farmhouse sheltered both a labor of love and an avian treasure chest. During the past 20 years, I have had the opportunity to visit great birding destinations — Costa Rica, Peru, Patagonia, Kenya, New Zealand. One of mygreatest birding trips, however, was to my hometown. The visit to Zearing, in central Iowa, took me back 100 years to an era when birding was very different from what it is today. It was May 2003 when my brother Don called to tell me about his friend John Handsaker. John was getting married, and the Handsaker family was remodeling an old farmhouse on their property for the newly weds. The house had previously been the home of John's greatgrandfather, Ralph Handsaker. When Ralph died in the late 1960s,the farmhouse was boarded up and left with all the furnishings in place. When John showed my brother around it, Don was amazed to see two large cabinets filled with thousands of bird eggs. My brother knew I would be interested, and he arranged for me tovisit John on my next trip to Iowa.
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