Harris

Harris's Sparrow taken by Peter Schoenberger“Harris is still there,” Peter tells me.

This has been his report every few days, since the 26^th of November. Harris is the Harris’s sparrow he found on November 26 in Berks County Pennsylvania while we were visiting his sister in Kempton. Almost a full month later, and Harris is still there.

“And people are still going out to look for it?” I ask, a bit surprised at the determination of birders.

“It’s an important bird,” Peter says, as if stating the obvious.

Whimbrel, photographer unknownThe Harris’s sparrow is named for Edward Harris, who also gives his name to the Harris’s hawk, the dark western species of the Hairy Woodpecker (Dryobates villosus harrisi), and to the Yuma Antelope Squirrel. Born in Moorestown, New Jersey in 1799, he was the heir  to his father’s fortune, made in hosiery. Early in life he befriended Audubon by buying his drawings--Audubon “would have kissed him, but that is not the custom in this icy city [Philadelphia].” Later, he slipped Audubon a hundred dollar bill, explaining, “men like you ought not to want for money.” He accompanied Audubon on his 1843 Missouri River expedition. There, he shot a small bird, or a large sparrow (depending on how you see it) with a black crown and throat, ash colored cheeks and a pink bill. Audubon named it Fringilla Harrisii, though the bird had already been named by Thomas Nuttall in 1834. Where the bird was found was on the eastern edge of their wintering range; it’s a bird that breeds in Canada’s boreal forest. So the bird we saw was far east of where it belongs. Far east.

When Peter found the Harris’s sparrow we were walking a nondescript small back road, scanning wide farm fields hoping to see snow buntings. Peter noticed sparrows in the dense brush and after pishing, a few birds sat up. In an instant he cried out: “Harris’s!”

It’s not a bird that I had even heard of. Peter had seen one other Harris’s sparrow in his life. That he knew right away what it was stunned me.

“A what?” I asked. He was too focused on making sure he was right in his identification that he didn’t answer.  I stood and looked around at the vast fields, at the simple patchwork of small farms. I knew I should be excited. This wasn’t just an unusual bird, it was a rare bird.

“The rarest bird I’ve found,” Peter explained later.

Red Phalarope, photo by Peter SchoenbergerI cataloged the rare birds Peter had found just this past year: a LeConte’s sparrow (in Dutchess County, NY), a Henslow’s Sparrow (near Ames, NY), (notice the emphasis on sparrows), a Whimbrel (on the Hudson River south of Saugerties) and a Red Phalarope (in Dutchess County, NY). In each instant, I got right away that they were special birds. I understood their specialness, but also, I could feel it in my bones. But the Harris’s sparrow was not making my adrenalin flow.

Perhaps it was because the day before we had seen a snowy owl, a special bird that is also big and white and adorable to watch? I can’t say. Some birds move me, others do not.

But what excited and intrigued us both was what were the chances that we would drive this back road? Stop at this spot and notice the sparrows? How many other rare birds lurk in the nondescript brushy rows in Pennsylvania? The mind starts to bend with the possibilities.

When Peter found the Red Phalarope on a vast vegetable farm in Red Hook, NY, he posted it to the bird lists. People swarmed from near and far to see it and in that mass of people were some good birders. Who found other good birds while they were there, like a Nelson’s Sparrow and a Lapland Longspur. That’s when Peter found the LeConte’s Sparrow. This phenomenon is known as the Patagonia picnic table effect. In Patagonia Arizona one rare bird was found at a picnic rest stop. Birders congregated, finding even more good birds. This birding phenomenon happens frequently, or frequently enough to have been given a name (posted on Wikipedia, no less).

But no other special birds have been found near the Harris’s (one person reported pishing out a big orange cat). It’s just Harris, one special sparrow on an unassuming back road in eastern Pennsylvania.

Quotes take from From Audubon to Xanthus: The Lives of Those Commemorated in North American Bird Names by Barbara and Richard Mearns.

Christmas Bird Count 2011

“There are three things you can count on today,” I told Laura, who was along for her first Christmas Bird Count. “Around eleven in the morning you will wonder why you signed on to do this. Around three in the afternoon you’ll wish you were home asleep. And at the end of the day you will be elated.”

This was my second Christmas Bird Count and the memory of my first count was vivid for me. Last year had been exhausting and exhilarating and I had been looking forward to this day more than to Christmas itself. Like  for all good holidays, I’d spent the day before cooking so that we’d have good chicken soup to eat in the field. We’d gone to bed early and I rose at 3 am, full of hope, just as I had as a child when I still believed in Santa. Now, I believed in owls. To find an owl, you have to believe in owls.

Yellow-bellied sapsucker taken in 2010 by Peter SchoenbergerBelief took us far. We started with the eerie call of a screech owl in the low fields of our count sector; a quick trip up toward dense pine trees brought a saw-whet owl that came in and soared over our heads; a barred owl hooted from the dark, and a great horned owl did the same.

Then the sun rose, a marvelous display as we roamed the fields looking for snow buntings (with no luck). And our daylight hours began. It is hard to top hearing four owls in such a short period of time. But six hooded mergansers with their striking white hoods that puddled about in an open pond cheered us on as we rounded up the chickadees, tufted titmouse, and cardinals to our list.

Despite the owls, by eleven our spirits were flagging. Birders are addicts, looking for the next bird high. Our last one had been at 5 in the morning, six hours ago. I was hungry. My body already felt tight from getting in and out of the car, walking a few miles, driving many more.

As we cruised through a dense woods on a one and a half lane road, Laura said, calmly, from the back seat: a big bird. Laura’s keen eye had already brought us many red-tailed hawks at the edges of fields. Peter braked, backed up. And the big bird was sitting in a tree, staring back with its barred owl eyes. That gave us the adrenalin we needed to get us to three, when again my spirits flagged.

“Big bird,” Peter said pointing to a dot, impossibly high in a blue sky. An eagle. “Let me be sure it isn’t a golden eagle,” he said. A scoped look made us all conclude it was a golden eagle and we had another rush of excitement (analyzing the photos later, however, told another story—it was a bald eagle).

We continued our counting, little marks next to the crows, blue jays, a flicker, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, many downy and hairy woodpeckers. A reliable kestrel waited until 4:30 to make an appearance. And then after driving 100 miles and walking 5, our day was over. We gathered for food and drink with others from our circle, also red-faced from the wind and sun of the day, also tired but happy. There were reports of some good birds, like the stocky white-winged scoters from the Ashokan reservoir. There was the discussion about the enormous flock of grackles that moved from one sector to the other: how should they be counted. The total tally of birds was somewhere around 10,000. That, above all, cheered me. When I think of all the animals I see crushed on our roads, or read of birds that collide with buildings and into windows I worry about declining populations of all creatures in the wild (except starlings and house sparrows, perhaps).  As I ate the food prepared by friends, and listened to the chatter about birds, all I thought was these birds are the real gift of this season.

Arctic Dreams

 “Sometimes there’s an owl, and sometimes there isn’t,” explains Pa in Jane Yolen’s beautiful book, Owl Moon. And what I want to add is: those “sometimes” are not of equal weight. It should read: very infrequently there is an owl, but every now and again when you are super lucky there is an owl. But that is too clunky and it’s important to keep hope, especially for children.

I am a person of hope, which means I spend a lot of time looking up pine trees for owls. I have been rewarded a few times, especially last January when I found a long-eared owl. But if I clocked the number of hours I look for owls, I would be embarrassed.

Come winter I start to hope for something really special, like a snowy owl, that gorgeous, large, white owl that brings news from the Arctic. My goal is to find one, but short of that, I was happy to go see one that had been posted to various bird sites for a few weeks now. It was hanging out near a reservoir on the New Jersey, Pennsylvania border. So on the day after Thanksgiving Peter and I decided to try and find this wintering bird.

MeadowlandsWe had spent Thanksgiving morning not helping with cooking the family feast, but rather birding in the Meadowlands. I’ve always been intrigued by the Meadowlands—a grassy, tidal area that I whiz past on the New Jersey Turnpike, usually rushing to Newark Airport. It doesn’t sound particularly appealing, with a capped dump nearby. But on a sunny, calm day, it was beautiful. In the distance we could see Manhattan, and in front of that the steady flow of traffic on the Turnpike. But what we focused on were a series of ducks: a black duck, a set of ruddy ducks with their erect little tails, buffleheads, with their dramatic black and white heads, and a duck with a black butt—a Gadwall. We then threw in our weight with the pumpkin pie (both making and eating).

Black Friday, while some had already spent a few hours shopping, we were speeding toward Pennsylvania, passing right by the Merrill Creek Reservoir near Phillipsburg, New Jersey. No one had posted a sighting of the owl in the past few days so we headed out with scope, cameras and only a little bit of hope. The parking lot had a line up of cars; all were intent on seeing the owl.

The reservoir is a beautiful, vast lake, a few ring-billed gulls loitering overhead. A pair of bald eagles perched in a tree. We walked down a wide dirt path then along a breakwater. A jumble of scree lined the breakwater that held the water back. And somewhere in that scree sat an owl. In other words we were looking for white on light grey.

We passed a trio of birders heading home.

“See the owl?”
“No owl,” they reported. And I felt my heart sink.

But they had seen a red-necked grebe. My heart lifted a little.

There is a bird in there!The other birders scanned the scree in search of the bird. So did we. The slope was vast, tundra-like, exactly what this bird knew best. And then I put my binoculars to my eyes and there was a rock that moved. That had black spots. That was shaped like an owl. That was an owl. My hands shook in excitement.

A snowy owl hunts at dawn and dusk. And for the rest of the day it rests, in the sun. And that is what it did while we watched, and photographers took thousands of photos of every yawn and fluff. And it watched us as well. And then we left it to sleep, to carry on its Arctic dreams.

Photo by Peter Schoenberger

Perfect Fall Days

Perfect fall days are a particular torture.

            Perfect: Blue sky, cool, sun, a crisp snap to the air. Apple days. Cliched days.

            Torture: You know they won’t last. There’s nothing you can do to properly celebrate them, short of being outside all day. And even then a sense of desperation tugs at my skin.

When I was younger the only way to do justice to these days was to rock climb. Sitting on a ledge, looking down into a valley of yellow, orange and red tinged trees, while the turkey vultures soared below me was heaven. The pull and tug of climbing, the sore fingertips, the dusty smell of chalk on my hands all aligned with the wrestle with the day, which was the wrestle of my soul. The way I knew I had taken all the day had to offer was walking out at dusk or in the dark, the clank of climbing gear a sort of music. My climbing partner and I were always hungry and tired and satisfied.

Now, since I climb little, I am learning new ways to swallow these days. On Saturday Peter and I started our bird search, which was really a sparrow search, at Southlands, a large horse farm south of Rhinebeck, New York. There are fields of uncut grasses, and in them sparrows sprung up, allowing us a peak: Savannah, White-throated, Field, Song, Chipping, and one special Lincoln’s. A kestrel—my favorite little falcon—soared from one end of a wide field to the other. We heard pileated, red-bellied, downy and hairy woodpeckers in the woods. It was beautiful. And after three hours of walk, it wasn’t enough.

So we drove north to Rockefeller Lane. This road runs beside Greig Farm, which in this season is putting up beautiful lettuce, celery and not much else. Some of the fields are left fallow. From all of the rain earlier in the fall, puddles remain. Just as we were following a few pipet-looking birds, a flock of five shorebirds circled in front of us. “Those are good birds,” Peter said as we followed them with our bins. “Keep an eye on them.” They circled and circled. “Land,” Peter whispered, willing them to ground. And sure enough, they landed in a large puddle about 150 feet in front of us. I stayed put with the scope, while Peter inched forward with his camera. I saw two pectoral sandpipers and a least sandpiper (that shorebird workshop paid off!). And then there was something else amidst these birds. It had blue grey wings, a white belly, a dark stout bill. A phalarope. But what sort. Phalaropes do not frequent this part of the state, so it’s not a species Peter knew well. Peter’s first guess was a Red, and countless emails and analyzing his photos later he decides the first instinct was correct. 

A red phalarope is an uncommon bird anywhere, and in this area, downright rare. Seeing the phalarope added to the exhilaration of the day: there were treasures out there to be seen! So after a short break we had to be out once again. We drove to the road to Cruger Island. The passageway there was thick with mud. We walked out with a duck hunter wearing camouflaged waders; duck season has begun. Out by the island a tin boat lurked with four hunters waiting near their decoys. In the distance the shot of a gun. This wasn’t how I intended our day to end, with the birds I had sought all day being shot from the sky.

We walked the train tracks, skirting the South Tivoli Bay. Mute swans graced the far shore, mallards hid, a few blue herons stood stock still in the shallow water. Five coots, unusual at this time of the year, bobbed together, their white bills evident from a distance.

The sun headed west. We headed home. A fat moon rose. A perfect day had ended as it should: walking out in the dark. There was no clank of gear or smell of chalked hands, but rather the squish of our rubber boots in the mud, and the silence as we listened for owls.