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.

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.

Brigantine Birding

dawn at BrigantineThe Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, referred to by some as Brigantine is 47,000 acres of protected land along the Jersey Shore. I’ve been to Brigantine twice before, always on my way somewhere else—Cape May, Chincoteague. In other words, this wasn’t a destination, it was the second best stop. This is often how I feel about New Jersey: it’s the state I drive through.

I have several close New Jersey friends—that is, they were born there and they believe still that it is the best place. One even edited a book celebrating his love for the state (that, ironically, I contributed to). The idea that New Jersey is for driving through will cost me.  So let me state that this weekend Peter and I have decided to make it a destination. As we drive south, we realize that a million others are also making it a destination. The traffic is dizzying as we navigate through thunder, lightening and a torrential downpour.

We are up at 5 the next morning and standing in the parking lot near the visitor’s center before 6, listening to a great horned owl hooting into the dark. The main feature of this preserve is an eight-mile one-way dirt road that loops out, salt water on one side, fresh on the other. We drive out a ways, then park to walk, the sun inching up in the horizon.

Baby clapper rail. Photo by Peter SchoenbergerI peer into the reeds and grasses and see the thin bird skitting along the edge. A clapper rail! It has the shape of a narrow chicken, with a tiny head. We watch it in the still half light until it vanishes without a sound into the grass. A few steps further I see something rail shaped, but smaller and dark. “What is that bird?” I ask. It’s a question I ask a lot, but this bird is so odd looking there’s something in my voice suggests this is something truly special. “A dinosaur,” Peter responds, binoculars to his eyes. We both laugh and look and conclude that our dinosaur is a baby rail.

The sheer number of birds is intoxicating: thousands of semipalmated plovers, semipalmated sandpipers, great egrets, snowy egrets. The sky swirls with gulls, herring, great black backed. There are yellowlegs and dowitchers working the sand. And then special birds as well, like the Black-bellied whistling duck that belongs in more southern climates. It’s a beautiful landscape, flat, with views extending to the horizon.

And that horizon includes Atlantic City. The lights of the city are still on. It’s hard not to imagine what is going on in the city. “People are drinking, gambling, over there,” Peter says. Yes, there’s lots going on in that city that I don’t want to think about as I watch a common tern hover mid-air, then plunge into the water looking for a fish.

Black Bellied Whistling Duck. Photo by Peter SchoenbergerBlack Crowned Night Heron

American Golden Plover

Golden Plover. Photo by Peter SchoenbergerCouldn’t the officer tell that we were in a hurry because we wanted to see and to photograph the American Golden Plover? What would the world be like if that might be an excuse for making the U-turn where the sign with the red bar across it tells us not to. I wanted to tell the officer that this was a bird just passing through, one that had spent the summer in the Arctic, perhaps raising its young. It was now heading south, off the continent of North America. Could he understand that this was a special bird, worthy of an illegal U-turn?

The bird waited for us, gathering its worms on the rain-drenched end of a driving range in Kingston. It went about its business while Canada geese waddled nearby. But it was alone. This, I thought, was wrong. Early accounts of the bird have them traveling in the millions. Audubon on March 16, 1821 heads out with his gun “to see the Passage of Millions of Golden Plovers Coming from the Nort Est and going Nearly Oest—the destruction of these innocent fugitives from a  Winter Storm above us was really astonishing.” That is, he watches a man kill 63 dozen. That’s 756 birds.

American Golden Plover. Photo by Peter SchoenbergerHere was one. And it was beautiful with its speckled back, a beautiful pattern.  It had a large black eye, staring into the world, and a grey chest above grey legs. The bold beauty of the bird was worth that illegal U-turn. Peter crouched to the ground and photographed the bird while I looked through my binoculars, wanting to absorb the spirit of one lone bird heading south.

Leaving Estampes

me heading out with scope. photo by Lisa RedburnCousin Lisa has just returned from a ten day safari in Tanzania, where they got up every morning before dawn to see elephants, lions, giraffes and more. So it doesn’t phase her when at 6 the alarm goes off and we head out into the night to look for birds. In fact, she’s not interested particularly in birds, but she’s game for an adventure through the French countryside and she wants to take photographs.

We drive south toward Trie. Our drive in the coming light reminds me of when I drove this route with Stanis back in the mid-eighties. Then, Trie called itself the largest pig market in the world; we were hauling a pig to market. We drove in Stanis’ small white Peugeot without speaking, Stanis tugging on a cigarette, his beret pulled down on his forehead. We made our up the winding hillside above Estampures, then shot down the main road into Trie. Selling the pig lasted less than three minutes—there was some conversation spoken in Patois, a shake of hands, and we walked off.  By 7:30 in the morning we were in the local bar, filled with peasant farmers all dressed in black or blue pants, berets over their ruddy faces. Stanis ordered a glass of wine; I had some coffee.

On this morning, I have my scope at the ready, my binoculars poised. We are heading toward the lac Puydarieux. Neighbors told us about the lake—that it is a birding spot—just the night before. So though it’s my second to last day in Estampes, I want to see this spot. We turn toward Castelneau Magnoac and after missing the turn to the lake arrive a little after seven. There’s an information board with an impressive list of birds seen in the past week, included a booted eagle, a hobby, black and royal kites, and purple herons. I practically run to the lake. The first bird I see floating on the dammed lake is a great crested grebe, with a striped black and white baby begging and bobbing beside it. The lake is littered with birds, mostly mallards. But there are plenty of horned grebe, grey herons, coots, and gulls, which I can’t identify. We walk the edge of the lake, then across the dam as two men launch a boat to fish.  I spy cormorant and teal, and then, to my delight, a hobby with its sharp elbows flies overhead (hobby in French is Faucon Hobereau, I learn). I find Lisa sitting on the dam, her camera to her eye, photographing flowers and dandelions and contemplating how she can capture the feel of this special spot we have found.

After an hour and a half, I’m ready to move on. We drive around the lake, and as I pass a dirt road between corn and sunflower fields I spot something on the ground. I brake, back up, and there they are, three little birds. I inch down the road, without the birds taking off. Soon, the mother shows up and peeps them into the corn, where they vanish. At first I imagine these birds to be quail, but my photos say they are something different, perhaps a special bird. But I will never know. 

There are much more scenic views of the water, and some lapwings at a pull out on the southern end. We stand for a long time, looking and photographing the herons, the cattle egret, some lapwings working the shore and another shorebird I can’t identify (if I were at home I’d say yellowlegs, but I’m not sure here). Then we make a dash toward Mirande, where it is the marche, market day.

Lac PuydarrieuxIn 1978 I attended spring semester of eleventh grade in Mirande. I missed my friends at home that spring and summer, isolated in Estampes with my mother and father and my maternal grandmother, who fell ill on arrival and spent much of the time in bed asking for tea, or to be brought this or that. It rained every day, making the house both cold and damp. But Mondays were always a treat. My mother would come in to the market and then we’d meet for lunch in town. She’d show me what she’d found at the market: strawberries or the walnut bread made by a friendly baker. It was our time, away from the house, from a grumpy grandmother and a father who was lost writing his third novel. I have always loved the marche de Mirande.

Lisa and I find strawberries, very ripe reine claude, the small green plums that are all sugar, white peaches, two kinds of gorgeous tomatoes, and then a runny sheep’s milk cheese that makes us happy. The whole day makes me happy in detail—the birds, the beautiful lake, the fresh fruits and vegetables, the company of my cousin. But lurking is the knowledge that I’m leaving tomorrow, and so every gesture, every plum eaten, every view, every bird seen is tinged with a faint melancholy.