Susan Fox Rogers 9/21/11 Susan Fox Rogers 9/21/11

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.

Susan Fox Rogers 9/9/11 Susan Fox Rogers 9/9/11

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

Susan Fox Rogers 9/8/11 Susan Fox Rogers 9/8/11

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.