Counting Birds

Last March Peter spread detailed road maps of the mid-Hudson Valley across his dining room table. He spent hours with a compass, analyzing roads and the Hudson River, bays, marshes, cities. Finally one day he plunked down that compass on the town of Glasco, right on the banks of the Hudson River and drew a circle with a fifteen mile diameter. It covered both sides of the river, Ulster and Dutchess counties, with a smidgen of Columbia county in there as well. There were rich sections in this circle like the north and south Tivoli Bay and the Esopus Bend Preserve in Saugerties. But above all, the count circle included the Hudson River. And thus, a new Christmas Bird Count circle was born. Mark DeDea was the inspiration for the circle; Peter was the map man. Forty eight of us headed into the field on December 28 to count.

I joined Peter in sector D, an area in Dutchess County that includes the vast Grieg farm where several special birds were found this fall: a Red Phalarope, a LeConte’s Sparrow and a Nelson’s Sparrow. We rose at 4:30 to find owls. The first two locations we called left us with the deep silence of night. A final try brought two Screech Owls singing their crazy song from one side of the road, with a chorus of a Great Horned Owl hooting in from the other side.

At seven, we were joined by Cathy, a newer birder, so I instantly had sympathy with her. “Ask questions,” I encouraged. “Make sure you see the birds that are being called.” Also along was Vanessa, a post-doc in wildlife biology, who grew up in the Hudson Valley but was now living and working in Georgia. She got out of her car and her face lit up, “Horned Larks.” She had said she birded well by ear and she wasn’t joking.

We pulled on mud boots to walk across the Grieg Farm to find White Crowned Sparrows in the brambles near the barn and Pipits in the far field. The Pipits were in the furrows of the field, rising and vanishing so fast, their busyness dizzying. The sun hid behind gray clouds, and the temperature hovered just around freezing. Movement kept our spirits and temperature up.

The day unfolded like the treasure hunt that it is: the Cooper’s Hawk we for a moment thought might be a Goshawk; the Yellow-Rumped Warbler that flew off before we all got a good look; the Canada Geese that in fact were an enormous flock of Wild Turkey; the Bald Eagle that flew over the car; the Red Shouldered Hawk sitting serene and nearly invisible in a field; the chorus of Grackles, 2,500 strong; the Swamp Sparrow that Peter knew would be hiding out in a far swampy area of Grieg Farm.

Except for Grieg Farm most of the area we were counting in is rural, farmland,  ragged forests,  or small pockets of development in what was once an apple orchard. It’s not a place you’d come to in order to bird. And yet here we were, finding a wonderful range of birds—forty-eight species by the end of the day.

We got in and out of the car a hundred times, walked over five miles in fields and on roads, got cold, then hot, ate snacks to keep us going and talked about birds as we peered out the window looking for movement, shape, scoured the sky for a Vulture. “This is where we should find a Shrike,” we said again and again as we passed open, busy areas. But, the Shrike was not where it was supposed to be.

At the end of the day I had my eye on the map. What roads had we not driven/walked/scoured for birds. There is one short road at the edge of our sector, a nondescript road through the woods, with a cell phone tower looming nearby. We had half an hour before quitting time and to be thorough I thought we should at least drive down Whalesback Road. We got out of the car, and immediately were aware the woods were active: two Downy Woodpeckers, two Flickers, lots of Robins. We had a small surge of excitement over this find. Cathy, who had been quiet most of the day, had her binoculars to her eyes. “What’s that black bird?” she asked calmly.

Vanessa followed Cathy’s gaze and smiled. “A Rusty Blackbird!” A great find late in the day. Perhaps our best bird. I was delighted to realize how all four of us were needed to see, to identify, to count these birds. We were a great team.

But what I also realized is that as a person who associates animal life, bird life with natural places—with the Tivoli Bays (where they found nine Screech Owls!), for instance—that birds in fact are everywhere, anywhere. I’ve learned this again and again, that sometimes just a slice of good habitat is all a Rusty Blackbird needs. But this is so counter to all of my romantic notions of nature and its sacredness, my desire to see huge swaths of wilderness for the birds, other animals, for us. Seeking birds on count day takes me onto roads and fields and in these moments wild and what I consider human or built merge or alternate.  The line isn’t so clear out there. I like that the lines of my thinking need to be redrawn as well.

Of course the birds don’t know of these distinctions I make between what is nature and not. They just know where they can find food, shelter, a place to spread their wings. Is that not what I do as well? What we all do?

There’s something to learn from counting birds; there’s something to learn from birds.   

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.

Last of the Season?

First of the season is easy to mark. The first warbler, the first crocus up, the first paddle. We know we have been deprived and the first arrival or event is a joy, the mark of more to come. But last of the season is tricky. Sometimes it passes without realizing that was the last climb, the last rose in bloom, the final hummingbird at the feeder (or, the last kiss…). I was afraid I had already paddled my kayak for the last time this year. The trouble is, I didn’t remember that paddle, had not cherished each minute as it needed to sustain me for several months. So when a string of warm, sunny November days arrived, I decided that this was my chance. My final paddle of 2011.

I drove to the Tivoli landing at 3:30, late for a November paddle. The dock was underwater at high tide. “Four and a half feet of tide,” a motorcyclist loitering by the water’s edge said. He then asked if I had any matches.  I shoved onto the water as I smelled the distinct sweet smell of pot float out onto the water with me.

Just south of Callender house, a long, yellow mansion that grins down onto the water, I saw a mature bald eagle perched in a tree. A twin to this bird stood high in a pine tree at the northern tip of Magdalen Island. This seemed good luck.

The tide was so high I could barely slip under the railroad bridge and into the North Tivoli Bay. But once I squeeze through an even greater calm took hold. I realized I would be paddling into dusk and hoped for an owl—why not?—to come out and join me. 

I meandered past the dried cattails, the reeds now dusty beige. A swamp sparrow hopped up to look at me. I took my time, savoring the texture of the water, the clear coolish air, the quiet. Then I heard a shuffling along the shoreline, in the leaves. I imagined a beaver there, or some other animal coming to drink. To my surprise, there shuffled a pair of wood ducks. I had never been so near to these beautiful, vivid ducks,  with their magnificent colors—the glossy green of the male’s head and the distinct white circle around the female’s eye. I slid away, whispering to them: don’t move, stay right there. Still, they took off,  a rush of wings. They took to the air and looped south. I paddled on, unsettled that I had flushed these birds. And then: a shot rang through the air. I stopped paddling; my shoulders hunched. My wood ducks had been shot. I looked to the sky to see if one tumbled to ground. One duck lagged behind the other—perhaps wounded?—but they were both winging north. I watched until they disappeared on the horizon. I would never know what happened to those ducks. But my first thought was: I killed these ducks. If I had not flushed them they would be safe on shore in the north bay. And in that moment I vowed not to paddle in the bays during duck season again. This is not what I had in mind for my final paddle of the season.

I couldn’t bear to paddle on, so I turned around, heading back for the river. The sun made an indecent display as it sunk behind the Catskills. The colors were so wild, so vivid, for a moment I forgot my sadness over the ducks. I loitered in the wide bay by the tracks where a man stood, a pole extended into the water.

“Do you fish here often?” I asked.

“I do,” he said without looking toward me.

“Do you ever hear owls?” I asked.

“Not owls,” he said. “I saw one once, but it was hit by a train.”

No, this was not what I was looking for on my final paddle of the season. I coasted out of the bay and back onto the river, then chugged my way north. As I pulled my boat out at the dock—now above the tide line—darkness set in. And I thought: this can’t be my final paddle of the season. Though it is often the complexity of the river that intrigues me—tug boats sharing the water with kayaks, industry next to snapping turtles—on this final paddle I wanted only the good. So I will go out one more time looking for an outing that leaves a cleaner taste, a happier memory.