Shorebirds!
Of all the fruits: cherries. Of all the months: October. Of all of the holidays: Thanksgiving. Of all of the birds: Rusty Blackbird. But--of all the groups of birds: shorebirds.
All birders have his or her favorite group or family of birds: the raptors in migration or the sparrows in a field. For many it’s easy: warblers in spring. For me, it’s shorebirds. Perhaps because I do associate them with water, the shore. Perhaps because I have spent so little time with them, the birds here in the Hudson Valley uncommon except in migration and even then there are few. Perhaps this group of birds retains a certain mystery because they are so elusive to me. And so when my friend Peter started reporting big numbers of shorebirds—a dozen Pectoral Sandpipers, a White-rumped Sandpiper, plus over forty Snipe at the Vly, a swamp in the northern edge of Ulster County, I had to go.
Of all the fruits: cherries. Of all the months: October. Of all of the holidays: Thanksgiving. Of all of the birds: Rusty Blackbird. But--of all the groups of birds: shorebirds.
All birders have his or her favorite group or family of birds: the raptors in migration or the sparrows in a field. For many it’s easy: warblers in spring. For me, it’s shorebirds. Perhaps because I do associate them with water, the shore. Perhaps because I have spent so little time with them, the birds here in the Hudson Valley uncommon except in migration and even then there are few. Perhaps this group of birds retains a certain mystery because they are so elusive to me. And so when my friend Peter started reporting big numbers of shorebirds—a dozen Pectoral Sandpipers, a White-rumped Sandpiper, plus over forty Snipe at the Vly, a swamp in the northern edge of Ulster County, I had to go.
The wind funnels through the Vly like a natural wind tube, making paddling a challenging event. For the past few days white caps flecked the Hudson River and trees knocked back and forth, leaves in gold and red splashing to the ground. Peter explained that the Vly would be even rougher. Still: I wanted to go. Early in the day Peter texted “If you went out today we’d have to put you in an institution.” I laughed and hoped the wind would settle. It didn’t. The idea of paddling into that wind alone I could face, but I knew that the wind would make identifying the shorebirds that much more difficult, if not impossible. I didn’t want to attempt that alone. “Ok, let’s go, but be prepared,” Peter conceded.
Usually in fall the place you find Peter is in a field, searching for sparrows migrating south. His persistence pays off: every year he finds good sparrows. But this year he decided to focus as well on the Vly, a forgotten bit of swamp and woods where he and his wife recently bought a piece of land. Early in the season he saw good shorebirds, at first the usual then some amazing finds like a Stilt and a Bairds. After a lull a rush of birds once again. The birding community buzzed with excitement over his finds.
As I slid my kayak into the shallow muddy water, Peter pointed to the far shore where it looked like the land itself was moving. Birds! This is one of the great delights of shorebirds, the way they animate a seemingly empty landscape. The place was alive with birds, four Pectoral Sandpipers, a Dunlin and a Lesser Yellowlegs pulled worms and danced through the muddy flats. “If you take a few strokes, you’ll coast up on the flats and can get close,” Peter said. This too is one of the joys of shorebirds: they are often less skittish than other birds, so intent on a meal they trot in front of you, careless of danger.White-rumped Sandpiper
The sun rained down and white clouds scudded across the sky along with Crows on a mission. We pushed out of the sheltered cove where we had launched and through a patch of phragmites. On the other side: the wind tunnel. The wind plowed in broadside, knocking me in the face, freezing my hands that gripped too tight around the paddles I feared might sail off.
We both hunkered down, shoving out into the water, past muddy flats that emerged to ground my slim boat. I looked up to scan for birds from time to time, squinting into the sun that reflected off of the water, the water lilies turning brown. And thought: there’s no placed I’d rather be then there, pummeled by wind looking for shorebirds. “What we won’t do for love,” Peter called into the wind and I laughed: indeed.
Peter stopped paddling, his kayak skidding south with the wind as he put his binoculars to his eyes. “There!” Peter called, his face lit up, “A Black-bellied Plover!” A new bird in his long list of shorebirds found at the Vly. A bird never recorded before in this odd, special spot.
I found it hard to breath, whether from the wind or the excitement of the birds I couldn’t say. I tucked my paddle between belly and knee and wobbled my binoculars to my eyes. Sure enough, there was the plover, long necked with that petit black bill dancing around with his shorebird cohorts. The bird, unlike us, seemed unperturbed by the wind as it went about his plover business of finding food. Had this bird or other plovers ever before visited this lonely swamp on migration? Or was it that no one had before had been silly enough to venture out and lucky enough to see it?
This is what intrigues me about birding: for all we know about birds, and migration, for all the eyes and ears out in the field recording what we see, there is infinitely more that we don’t know. That is a good enough reason to go out and get knocked around by the wind.
“We’ll never know,” Peter said in answer to my questions.
But what I’m sure of is that every fall from here on out Peter will be combing first the fields for Sparrows, then the Vly for Shorebirds. And I will continue on my quest to get to know this group of sturdy un-shy birds with long legs that pepper mud flats and shorelines carrying out their secretive, magical lives.
Learning the Birds
All weekend Peter is singing, quietly, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.” We are birding at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in northern New York State. The land is flat, grasslands, with pools and mudflats. The Refuge is known as a stopover for shorebirds heading from the Arctic to their warm winters in the south. We were there to see these birds, and to attend a workshop on identifying shorebirds.
As Peter sings, I realize I have no idea what the song is referring to. The not knowing adds to the overall sense of the weekend: I know nothing about this song or the history behind it (though it’s not hard to find this information); I know nothing about birds.
We are up before dawn after a sleepless night in perhaps the most bedraggled motel room I have ever stayed in (the bathroom door had been punched in; the shower curtain sagged; the smell of stale smoke and sadness was so thick I could not sleep). The three-mile drive near the Montezuma refuge headquarters sits just south of route 90. So as we look across the foggy fields trying to spot shuffling little birds, the sound of semis roaring east and west joins the faint peeps that rise from the dark soil. We see them, the smallest of shorebirds, the least sandpipers moving across the ground, foraging for food; we see killdeer, a fat little plover, not as cute as his cousin the semipalmated plover.
All weekend Peter is singing, quietly, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli.” We are birding at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in northern New York State. The land is flat, grasslands, with pools and mudflats. The Refuge is known as a stopover for shorebirds heading from the Arctic to their warm winters in the south. We were there to see these birds, and to attend a workshop on identifying shorebirds.
As Peter sings, I realize I have no idea what the song is referring to. The not knowing adds to the overall sense of the weekend: I know nothing about this song or the history behind it (though it’s not hard to find this information); I know nothing about birds.
We are up before dawn after a sleepless night in perhaps the most bedraggled motel room I have ever stayed in (the bathroom door had been punched in; the shower curtain sagged; the smell of stale smoke and sadness was so thick I could not sleep). The three-mile drive near the Montezuma refuge headquarters sits just south of route 90. So as we look across the foggy fields trying to spot shuffling little birds, the sound of semis roaring east and west joins the faint peeps that rise from the dark soil. We see them, the smallest of shorebirds, the least sandpipers moving across the ground, foraging for food; we see killdeer, a fat little plover, not as cute as his cousin the semipalmated plover.
American Golden Plover photographed by P. Schoenberger in Kingston, NYWe run into three birders also combing this vast land for birds. They have heard there is an avocet and we all want to see it. So we join forces. Two are young men, 18 and 22, and can see a duck in flight and identify it. That means they know what they are doing. The other is a middle-aged man, a veterinarian from New York City who has embarked on a New York State big year. The avocet will push his list up one more bird.
We drive down a pot-holed dirt road, park and pull out our scopes, peering into the distance. There is the bird, far off, a speck of white with an elegant long bill. It’s thrilling and not. Thrilling because I recognize I’m seeing a rarer species, and not because it’s so far away. I enjoy having a bird fill my binoculars so I can see feathers, and the color of the eye.
We spend long hours, eye to the scope, picking out dots moving across dirt. It’s not satisfying, this museum-like viewing. When an osprey sails overhead, against a perfect blue sky, I am happy. Here’s a big bird I can recognize.
Because I am a teacher, the process of learning is one that interests me. I take a physical approach to learning everything: to be a writer means you have to get up every morning and write. I make this analogy for my students: if you want to run a marathon (ie: write a novel), you don’t just get up and do it. You train, you practice, you stretch, you run every day. That is what it takes to be a writer. I have taken this on with learning about birds. I walk every morning, binoculars at the ready. On the weekends, Peter and I spend long hours in the field, he coaching me, pointing out details of a bird to help me remember. There are lots of nifty mnemonics to help a person remember the songs of birds. Over the past two years of birding, I have developed a vague competence with my local birds. Vague is the correct word. Despite my time and devotion, I am like that diligent student who writes and writes but will always write wooden sentences, or stories without real punch.
Knowing all that you don’t know can have a marvelous effect: a hunger to learn. I felt that hunger when I first began to explore the Hudson River while writing my book. I wanted to read more, explore more; the not knowing was great incentive. Here, realizing all I don’t know has another effect: I’m a tad overwhelmed, the desire to learn replaced by a hollow sinking feeling.
The osprey I do recognize; photo by Peter SchoenbergerThe workshop at the Audubon Center is both entertaining and informative. The teacher, Kevin McGowan, works at Cornell and is an expert on crows, as well as shore birds. He takes us through the basics of shape, size, and behavior. I take notes and think that learning these birds might be possible. He points out the way that the killdeer looks like it is hiccupping, the way that the yellowlegs strolls and picks; the dowitcher is like a sewing machine with its bill in the sand, its head always down.
The next morning we head into the field as a group. We spill onto a dirt road and look long into the distance. Two sandpipers are side by side. Kevin coaxes the details out of us as we peer through our scopes. Does the tail bob up when the bird forages? What color is the chest? What sort of patterning? Slowly we tease it out so that we know we have a Baird’s sandpiper on the right, and a Pectoral sandpiper on the left. I walk away, not entirely satisfied; there is no ah ha moment here.
And I wonder: does it matter that I know this? Maybe a few more years into my birding life it will. But for now what I want is to have an expanse of green in front of me, a blue sky overhead, and the beauty of a bird fill my binoculars. That bird doesn’t have to have a name.