ABA Blog

"The New ABA." Are YOU Ready to Say It?

I framed my "Birding Together" column in the March/April issue of Birding with a joking allusion to the difficulty people often have in uttering those three little words: "I love you."

But the three word phrase that I was finally ready to utter, though not without some lingering trepidation, was, "the new ABA." As I noted in the piece, that's a phrase that I've often heard bandied about, but avoided using myself. Until now. 

You can read the whole column here. As usual, it's well under 1000 words, and so just about average ABA blog post length. 

 

My question for you is this: are you ready to say that we have a new ABA? Or do you think we've still got more ground to make up before we justifiably make that claim? Maybe you think the whole idea is superfluous or flawed, that there's no need for a new ABA, just an ABA for today? Perhaps you think that, as some do, that our goal should be an "old ABA," a return to some earlier era? If that's your belief, what are the key hallmarks of that era?

Let us know in the comments.

Also, the audit for 2012, mentioned in the column, is now available as a PDF on our website.

Whatever your thoughts about the ABA old or new, thank you for your support and for your contributions to the birding community.

Good birding,

Jeff 

 

Video: Releasing a Rosy-Finch; Looking Out for their Future

Michael Hilchey at the crest. Photo ©Raymond VanBuskirk

For many of us there, the high point, altitudinally and ornithologically, of the ABA's recent Albuquerque Rally was visiting the famous rosy-finch banding station at Sandia Crest. Above, you can see Michael Hilchey, one the dedicated crew from Rio Grande Bird Research that keep this valuable and challenging project going. At the far right, the feeder and finch trap are visible.

Below is a shot of Raymond VanBuskirk, another of the rosy-finch researchers, returning a just-banded Black Rosy-Finch to the flock. Check out the concentration on Raymond's face. These guys, along with all the RGBR gang, are fun, dynamic folks. But, boy, do they bring serious attention and care to the work they do. It's a pleasure to witness.

Raymond focussing. Photo ©Jesse Swift

I went up to Sandia the second of the three field trip days. Things started off very well, with single male Gray-crowned and Brown-capped rosy-finches visiting the feeder shortly after we arrived. A bit more waiting and some skillful trap operation, and we were fortunate to see one gorgeous male Brown-capped Rosy-Finch in the hand, a bird which had been banded there some years before.

Raymond VanBuskirk holds "our" Brown-capped Rosy-Finch. This species breeds almost entirely in Colorado. I wonder if it might be one of those that nest on the tundra of Pike's Peak, visible from ABA HQ?

 Once this lovely bird was quickly weighed and measured and otherwise processed, Raymond gave rally participant Pat Blyer the honor of releasing it. I shot a quick video of the event that I thought you'd enjoy.

 

After an eventful and exciting first couple of hours, our patience and cold tolerance got a bit of a workout. Though it was hardly a brutal day on the mountain weather-wise, it was chilly for sure, especially when standing still for long periods. But we still hadn't seen Black Rosy-Finch, ironically the most numerous rosy species wintering at Sandia.

So we waited...

And we waited...

And we huddled in the vans and ate our lunches. Then we waited some more.

But in an instant, the waiting and the cold were forgotten, as a squall of Rosies shot up over the ridge crest and settled in the trees above the feeders.

Rosy-Finches aren't exactly nervous...they can be incredibly confiding sometimes. But boy, are they ever active! We marvelled as the flocked flowed all around the feeders, and we used our newly-honed ID skills to pick out all three species, plus the distinctive gray-faced "Hepburn's" form of Gray-crowned. It was a thrilling couple of minutes.

We left Sandia Crest smiling and headed lower, where the birding was a little warmer and more diverse. But our time at the banding station was really something to treasure. I've known of the Sandia finches since the early 2000's, so getting to see them and the project members in action is something I've waited for quite a while. It was more than worth it.

As great as our time up high with Raymond, Michael, the rosy-finches was, in some ways we learned even more from the presentation they gave to the entire rally group Sunday night. In it, they shared not only some of the exciting discoveries they have made and important questions they are working to answer, but also how much the Sandia flock, both avian and human, has meant to the shape, direction, and quality of their lives. It was inspiring, all the way round.

Speaking of those discoveries and questions, as miraculous as rosy-finches and their extrordinary life histories are, there are many, many reasons to be concerned for their future. Climate change poses an exceptional threat to them, living as many of them do in tiny islets of tundra habitat which are shrinking rapidly. High altitude stocking of non-native trout and other game fish may also be having a serious impact on their survival. And there are the more prosaic but still essential issues of where exactly the rosies that winter at Sandia, their southernmost outpost, come from and go back to.

All of us from the ABA who got to visit with the birds and birders of Albuquerque came away with a deeper appreciation of the vibrant birding scene there. And we wanted to do our small part to help the rosy-finch study and the other ongoing projects of Rio Grande Bird Research continue. 

The final night of our rally, we passed a basket for donations to the finch study, collecting nearly $700 from the ABA audience. On top of that, the ABA donated $1000 to RGBR in support of all the great work they do, which includes not only rosy-finch project, but also banding in the bosque along Albuquerque's Rio Grande, and the painstaking study of Black-throated Warblers done by Ashli Gorbet, another of our primary leaders on this rally, along with her husband, Larry.

I'd like to invite you to participate in all the great times and sound conservation science that is being done by ABA members like Ashli, Michael, and Raymond. If you're able to contribute funds to support their efforts, you can send checks payable to Rio Grande Bird Research. Write Rosy-Finch on the check if you want to restrict your gift to that project. Mail to P.O. Box 6557 Albuquerque NM 87197

And if you'd like to join Raymond and Michael in New Mexico or elsewhere, check out their newly-formed tour company, High Desert Birding Adventures.

Additional info on the history of the rosy-finch project can be found at www.rosyfinch.com. For the most current updates go to the Sandia Rosy-Finch Project Facebook page. Audubon magazine did a great profile on Raymond, Michael, and the rosy-finches that you can read here.

Thanks to all of you in Albuquerque who welcomed the ABA to your patch! We're looking forward to seeing all the great things you'll do in the future.

Some of the RGBR gang at Sandia Crest. From left: Jason Kitting, Steve Cox (another of our core rally leaders and president at RGBR), Mary Ristow, Nancy Cox, Lee Hopwood, Micheal Hilchey, and Raymond VanBuskirk. Thank you ALL for welcoming the ABA! photo ©Jane Kostenko

Of Spark Birds AND People

Many birders have a spark bird.  But for some of us, birding starts with a spark person!   What does a 12 year old growing up in 1960’s small-town Iowa do all summer?  For me, it was getting on my clunky, red, one-speed Schwinn bike and heading out with my best friend, Reed, for the (very) nearby fields and woods to look for birds. Reed’s enthusiasm fed my own and the thrill of chasing naively about and discovering neat stuff has never gone away.

Before long, we had rigged a toy parabolic reflector ($14.95 for the Big Ear from Sears and Roebuck--"listen in on your friend's conversations down the street!") to a small Sony reel to reel 3 1/2 inch tape recorder.  We'd record bird songs and splice together the thin brown tapes with ordinary Scotch tape.  Inevitably, the spliced tapes would stick to themselves and become unplayable but it was magic while it worked. 

In the summer of 1965, during a family trip to the East Coast, I used some of my precious vacation spending allowance in the gift shop at Gettysburg battlefield to buy my first bird book: Chester A. Reed's Bird Guide to Land Birds East of the Rockies ($2.95 plus tax.)  I still have that book:



Equipped with this new resource, my young birding career gained momentum and I sat down in May 1967 and hand-printed on school notebook paper (the only options back in those days) a five-page life list.  The first page is reproduced here:

Forty-five years later, I get a kick out of this list.  First, it appears that I thought I'd seen a Raven during that trip through Pennsylvania two years earlier--it's the first species on this list.  I'm also guessing that I  made this list by thumbing through my Chester Reed guide since the list (like the guide) is "land birds only" and I wrote down a lot of birds in ID pairs (Hairy and Downy Woodpecker, Scarlet and Summer Tanager, and so on) as they appear on consecutive pages in the Reed guide.  I'll admit that some of these may have been mis-identifications but clearly I was into making bird lists.  I doubt that I called it "listing" back then--the ABA wasn't founded until the next year. 
 


This bird was in my field guide along with Ivory-billed Woodpecker and Wheatear--I was disappointed not to be seeing all of these on a regular basis. Luckily they don't appear on that 1967 list!

Fast forward to 2012.  I never dreamed when I started birding that I'd one day find myself sitting on the board of the American Birding Association and starting up the Iowa Young Birders (talk about coming full circle!)  I'm trying very hard to call on those distant memories of my own start as a birder to help spark today's young birders.  But I will admit that it's hard.  I'll sound like many others who automatically begin by saying that things are different today.  Well, they are and they aren't.  Obviously today's young and beginning birders have resources we couldn't even imagine back then: countless excellent comprehensive field guides; great, inexpensive optics; digital bird song playback AND recording; inexpensive super-zoom point-and-shoot cameras, and so much more.  And you certainly don't have to rely on home-made, handwritten lists on notebook paper (see eBird and the new ABA Listing Central.)

But what strikes me most after all these years is that birding, for me, is still more about people than about birds.  It started with two young pals on bicycles and continues today as I make new friends and shared experiences by getting involved with the ABA board, the Pledge to Fledge program, and Iowa Young Birders.  So, I'll say it again: birding is more about people than about birds!

One of the things I've always enjoyed most about looking back over the various lists in my file cabinet is that so many of the entries remind me of the birds, of course, but just as vividly of the people I was with at the time.  For example, this extract (below) of my life list encompasses 2 1/2 years of birding in six states but, more importantly, even 25 years later it conjures up dozens of faces and friends. I can still see their field marks and hear their voices--birds and birders alike!

 

Each line on this list triggers a flood of images and memories of the family, friends, mentors, role models, trip guides, and fellow travelers who shared that moment or, in many cases, made that moment possible.  To me, this is the difference between birdwatching (you watching a bird) and birding (an active pursuit--often undertaken with others.)   Admit it, for most of us, even birding solo is spiced with the possibility of finding something interesting to share with other birders.

Writing this today is helping me see more clearly why starting a group for young birders has felt like the right thing to do.  It's just so much darn fun to share birding with others and, looking back, I can understand today how those experiences as a young birder will literally last for a lifetime.

Iowa Young Birders field trip on September 1, 2012 with a likely future ABA member!

 Leave a comment and tell us about your spark person!

Do You See What I See? A New Visual Search Tool from Google

 

Here are two truths:
1.Some people are always looking for easier ways to do hard things.
2.Technology can be amazing.

There are a lot of people anxiously waiting for WeBIRD, the promised birdsong equivalent to Shazam and MusicID, but they may have to wait a little bit longer. Music databases can make a match to a digitally produced song, but they can’t match you singing exactly the same song. The variations in the human voice make that kind of analysis a less than exact science. A person can recognize that you are singing Happy Birthday; Shazam can’t. Similarly, there is enough variation in birdsong that it’s very difficult to get a computer to recognize the nuances. You can teach one to recognize some of the songs some of the time, but a reliable tool is not available yet.

But can we use technology to recognize visual cues and help us to ID birds? New birders are being encouraged by some to post their birding photos to the Internet in order to get an ID, instead of using field guides or birding mentors. Crowd-sourcing identification is certainly one way to handle it, but it would  be much “cleaner” if we could somehow get the computer to do the work for us, wouldn't it? Enter Google Search by Image. Seriously! You can upload an image or provide a URL to images.google.com, and Google will search for similar images. How cool is that! Just click on the little camera at the right of the search field and follow the instructions.

When I learned of this, I knew an experiment was in order! I uploaded a picture of a Hermit Thrush, clicked “Search” and waited to see how Google would handle the difficult Catharus species challenge. My uploaded image shows at the top of the screenshot below:

Can you say “Epic Fail”? None of these pictures is even close, except for the background colour tones. None were even of birds, let alone thrushes. I guess I should have expected that. Maybe it was much too challenging. How about something simpler, like a Barred Owl? The Internet is crawling with owl pictures. This should be easy!

Sigh… Not even a little bit better. More diversity in the selection of “matches”, but still no birds and certainly no owls. Maybe the whole bird has to be visible. Here’s a Burrowing Owl, Google. What can you do with this?

Um, no. But it’s interesting to see how many celebrities resemble Burrowing Owls. Brangelina? The algorithm seemed to be focussing on color-matching. What about a bird with a distinctive color and shape? Easy--Great Blue Heron!

Eureka! It matched one! Admittedly it’s the fifth image the program chose, and it somehow thought that a better match for my heron was a staged suicide scene ( in the top row), but at least it got a bird, and the right bird at that!

I was prepared to completely dismiss this function as useless, but then an interesting thing happened. A birder from Ontario sent me a picture he took while visiting Vancouver to see the Red-flanked Bluetail. It was a great photo of a bird that he (and those I showed it to) identified as a Veery, an almost unimaginable bird to be in Vancouver this time of year. But with a Brambling and a Bluetail around, never say never, right?

People send me pictures all the time, but there was something about this report that made me suspicious. Spidey-sense, some people call it. I asked for more information, which did not come. I did a little online detective work and didn’t find anything reassuring. So I posted the report--along with my reservations--on the Vancouver birding bulletin boards, mindful of those who think that all rare birds should be reported and not wanting anyone to miss out on this potential rarity. Then I remembered the Google Search by Image tool. I uploaded my suspect image--another Catharus--and guess what? Here are the results:

Epic win! The person reporting this bird was a prankster (very funny-not!), my spidey-sense was on the mark, and within seconds, Google found the image in an almost-two-year-old blog post from Massachusetts. I don’t know what motivated the hoax, but I’m delighted that the perpetrator was found out before an onslaught of inevitably frustrated birders wasted their time.

For bird ID, Google Search by Image has a very long way to go. There are some things that humans can still do better than our current technology. But today, I, and all my lookalikes below,  are giving a big alula up to Google!

Open Mic: More Than Just a Number

At the Mic: Tom Leskiw

Tom Leskiw lives outside Eureka, California with his wife Sue and their dog Zevon. He retired in 2009 following a 31-year career as a hydrologic/biologic technician. His essays, book and movie reviews have appeared in a variety of  journals. His column appears at www.RRAS.org and his website resides at www.tomleskiw.com

 --=====--

Saturday, 15 January 2011. 9:15 am. Estero Llano Grande State Park, World Birding Center, Weslaco Texas. Sue and I once again worked the area where the White-throated Thrush had been seen yesterday. A light rain was falling, as were my hopes for relocating this notorious skulker. Rain jacket and pants seemed a bit overkill for this semi-tropical woodland, but experience had taught me that long hours in damp clothes, well…they dampen one’s spirits. And I was determined to get this bird, even if I had to continue my vigil until darkness fell. I snuck a glance at another birder who was working the far corner of the open area, when a birder wearing flip-flops and track shorts burst into the clearing. “I’ve got the bird!!” he whisper-shouted.

We raced to follow him down the narrow gravel lane that bounded the preserve. A man and woman stood there—not celebrating, but, rather, looking sheepish, nonplussed. Then, came perhaps the most-dreaded phrase in a birder’s lexicon. “It just flew,” they stammered. “Somewhere off to the left.” “How far?” Flip-Flops wanted to know. “Did you see it fly across the lane?” “I don’t know. We lost it,” was the reply. So, we started scanning for the bird, searching high and low in the dense, shadowed woodland. After some time passed, I figured it would be best to not have all eyes looking in the same general area, so I made my way slowly back down the lane. “There it is!” said someone. I moved back to where the throng of birders had assembled. There, wet and sodden, was my life White-throated Thrush. Flip-Flops—sorry, I’ve forgotten your name—smiled broadly, winked at me, and spoke. “And just like that!” And just like that, indeed, I said to myself. Then, aloud: “My 700^th bird for the Lower-48 states!”

     The birding bug bit me in 1983. At the time I was a landscape photographer who spent a portion of the winter in desert locations that included Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument. Before I knew it, I’d purchased a 300mm lens so I could photograph the birds that frequented saguaro “cactus condos.” However, upon my return to California, I didn’t know any birders, and trying to see birds in the low-light, dense confines of redwood forests never caught my fancy. Thus, my interest lay fallow for a time.  

    Then, in 1987, I read that Gary Lester was leading a field trip to Elk Head to look for Tufted Puffins. I had entered the wrong date in my day planner and missed the trip. However, Gary returned to Elk Head with me the following day, my first inkling into the generosity and sense of sharing within the birding community. Later that spring, I took his bird field seminar that was offered through Redwood National Park. Gary, Lauren and their family lived several blocks from me, so the next several years were frequently punctuated with his impromptu phone calls. “There’s a male Costa’s Hummingbird on our fuchsia.”… “Black Swifts are passing over the house again.”… “I’m looking at a Cape May Warbler in our birch tree right now.”

    Following an Audubon Christmas Bird Count (circa 1990), I asked John Sterling and John Hunter if I could tag along to chase some local rarities. A year or so went by, and I began to dream about reaching 300 bird species in Humboldt County. Somewhere along the line, I began to envision that 700 species in the ABA area might be attainable. Later, I began to ponder if it might be possible to reach 700 in the ABA area without going to Alaska. I have absolutely nothing against Alaska, somehow, it just never seemed in the cards to get there.

     But I’m getting ahead of myself. Throughout this sometimes crazy, (nearly) quarter-century quest, I’ve tried to focus on the experience itself, on the goal of learning—as intimately as possible—about this great country of ours. I saw only one of my ABA area birds in Canada and I’ve still yet to make it to Alaska. It’s difficult to put into words, but my reason for steering clear of the “Land of the Midnight Sun” had something to do with loyalty. Because Alaska’s union with these “united” states is merely a political fluke (Attu being situated west of the east tip of Siberia), tallying the birds there seems somehow unfair, contrived. Furthermore, limiting my search to the Lower 48 allowed me to focus on the amazing biodiversity to be found here.

    I’m reminded of lyrics from Dave Mason’s “Can't Stop Worrying, Can't Stop Loving”:   “A man needs the challenge or a man couldn’t be.” Not a few times during this past decade, I reconsidered the wisdom of excluding Alaska from my census area. Maybe it can’t be done, I’d concede. At least not unless I drop everything and do a Big Year, which wouldn’t exactly “Play in Peoria,” if you know what I mean. 

    It’s only human nature to dwell on the one that got away. In this case, the one that eluded me wasn’t a bird, but, rather, a boy—a potential birding convert. I was in Texas’s Big Bend National Park, retracing my steps along the Window Trail, jubilant and basking in the glow of having found my life Lucifer Hummingbird. A group of boys caught up with me. Elated, they recounted the incredible view from the Window and how they’d just witnessed a snake swallowing a frog. One of them pointed to my bins and asked me why I’d traveled to the canyon. I explained that I’d come in search of a hummingbird, as the area—at least at the time—was the most-dependable place in all the U.S. to see it.

     As some of the other boys began to sidle off, the inquisitive one asked what the hummingbird looked like. Quickly, I sized up their group. Red-faced and sweating, they clutched their empty (pint!) water bottles. Clearly, the rest of the group wanted to beat the heat, get back to camp. I considered just how difficult it can be to get someone onto a hummingbird and how easy it might be to turn a group of tired, hot boys against birding. Just then, their leaders appeared. “Let’s hit it, guys,” they said. If only there’d been a little more time… maybe I could have gotten the kid onto the Lucifer.

    It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. I’ve shared this journey with many good friends, birding acquaintances, and guides across the country. I never would have realized this goal without your help. There isn’t room here to mention you all, but know that you have my thanks.

     As I studied the Texas Rare Bird Alerts this winter, I realized that I lacked a bird-finding  guide for the Lone Star State. So, I contacted my birding compadre, Erika Wilson, who agreed to lend me her brand-new copy of the ABA guide for the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Paper-clipped to the guide was a note: “Have a great trip! Keep me posted on all your bird finding as you go.”

     In 1992, an event occurred that prompted me to resume writing after a lengthy sabbatical. Doc Harris, the dean of Humboldt County, California birding was poised to record his 400^th species for the county, the first to accomplish what was then regarded as an improbable feat. So, I chronicled the occasion in the Sandpiper, our local Audubon newsletter, starting contributions to this and other venues that continue to this day. My writing has improved during the intervening years. I’ve tackled many subjects, but birds, birding, and bird chases remain at the core of what inspires me to write. It struck me that Erika’s note applied, not only to the Texas trip, but also to my writing in general: recording my experiences in the field—for me, and to share with others.   

    Looking back, I think of all the out-of-the-way hamlets, urban parks, wildlife refuges, fish hatcheries, sewage treatment plants, sod farms, migrant traps, people, islands, and oceans I would never have experienced, were it not for birds. The images emerge, fade, and are renewed in my cerebral cortex’s own PowerPoint projector: Black and Brown Noddies, Masked Booby, Sooty Tern, and Magnificent Frigatebird soaring above the azure waters of the Dry Tortugas. And later, a Swallow-tailed Kite and Stripe-headed Tanager with Wes Biggs. A Thick-billed Murre in Humboldt Bay—thanks to a timely call from David Fix. Machias Seal Island for Atlantic Puffin and Razorbill followed by the Bluenose Ferry to Nova Scotia for Great Skua and Wilson’s Storm-Petrels with Brian Patteson and Ned Brinkley.

    And solo, a long night trying to sleep upright in a Jeep Cherokee near the Lesser Prairie-Chicken lek near Campo, Colorado. Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl with Jeff Gordon in the oak mottes of the King Ranch. Slaty-backed Gull, courtesy of Rob Fowler and Matt Wachs. Running alongside Guy McCaskie after hearing the shout that the Fork-tailed Flycatcher had been relocated. White-tailed Ptarmigan—and Grizz!—at Logan Pass in Glacier National Park with Jude Power. Green Kingfisher along the San Pedro River and Montezuma Quail and Five-striped Sparrow in Sawmill and Sycamore Canyons, with Troy Corman.

     The adrenal rush of confirming a beyond-improbable, second-hand report of a White-winged Tern at the Arcata Marsh one sunny Saturday morning. Island Scrub-Jay on Santa Cruz Island with John Sterling and the rest of the merry band of “Vagrants.” Great Gray Owl in a Yosemite red fir forest with John Hunter. Streak-backed Oriole near Tacna, Arizona with Erika Wilson and Elaine Emeigh. Craveri’s Murrelet and Baird’s beaked whale with Debi Shearwater. No one could forget the olfactory affront of the Brownsville Dump for Tamaulipas Crow with Joseph Brooks and Garry George. And a two-fer, the day before #700: a Crimson-collared Grosbeak amid the restored splendor of Allen Williams’s backyard in Pharr and the clockwork-like 4:45 pm appearance of the Black-Vented Oriole at the Bentsen Palm Village RV Resort.

    Each phone call, every set of directions I obtained from folks I might never meet face-to-face reinforced my belief that I’d joined a continent-wide community. Some of the fond memories center around birding comrades who are no longer with us. Running into Stuart Keith and Arnold Small while searching for the Crescent-chested Warbler at the Patagonia sewage treatment plant. Chasing the Lesser Sand-Plover with Luke Cole while attending a meeting of the Western Field Ornithologists in Humboldt County. The pilgrimage to Scheelite Canyon on Fort Huachuca for Mexican Spotted Owl with Smitty (Robert T. Smith). Swapping stories with Northcoast Environmental Center’s executive director Tim McKay at a Del Norte CBC compilation.

     Yes, 700 stories and more. All tangible, memorable, genuine. No tepid, pixilated, ersatz excuses for real encounters in real places. If the legions of those mesmerized by Wii and Xboxes only knew…    

Zickefoose: The Bluebird Effect

The Bluebird Effect 

by Julie Zickefoose

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012

355 pages, $28–hardcover

ABA Sales / Buteo Books # 13621

Here is a book whose graceful prose, charming illustrations, and exceptional design fully deserve every bit and byte of the praise that has been poured over it since its publication earlier this year. Julie Zickefoose’s writing is neat to the point of occasional elegance, and in the paintings, field sketches, and drawings that accompany her text, Zickefoose displays the full range of her graphic talent, from the witty to the touching, by way of many pictures that are, simply put, beautiful. Melissa Lotfy’s design makes it almost as much a pleasure to hold the book as to read it: I wish more bird books were square.

I expect birders to notice such things. But remarkably, The Bluebird Effect has broken out of ornitho-circles to be lauded just as loud in the popular press as well, from the Sunday papers to the book blog of a television talk show host so famous that she can get by with only one name. And all agree. This is a bird book for everyone, and (if I may be so crass) the spectacular sales figures at amazon.com suggest that that is precisely who’s reading it.

But one thing bothers me. Amid all this acclaim, well merited as it is, one vital question seems to have gone unasked by even the stillest and smallest voice. Yes, it’s a good book. But what is it about?

One of the sacred strands in the story of North American birding is the one that leads from the shotgun to the spotting scope. When we tell ourselves our history, we start with the Audubonian slaughter of the innocents, tarry briefly over Jonathan Dwight’s bird-in-the-hand bookplate, and rejoice in the oft-told triumph of Ludlow Griscom’s opera glass over firearmed skepticism. Birding, over the two centuries since Alexander Wilson roamed Cape May blasting away at everything feathered, has progressed—or at least so our narrative would have it—from an act of pursuit and possession to a discipline of observation and admiration. We’ve transcended the primitive materialism that needs to grasp everything and we’ve matured into a cooler, more abstract, more intellectual culture that can find satisfaction in contemplation.

Haven’t we?

Maybe not.

History doesn’t always proceed in a straight line, and progression isn’t always progress. The dialectical pendulum is swinging back at astonishing speed, and the past decade or so has seen a relaxation, even an incipient rejection, of the hands-off puritanism that guided our interactions with birds and other wild creatures in the days when I was a new birder. Historically and culturally, the American birding community has taken up again the childish ways we once so proudly put away.

If you happen to be among the more than one billion of earth’s human inhabitants who use Facebook, take an hour to run through your “friends” and their photos. Among mine, at least, images of birders quietly birding are significantly outnumbered by pictures of beaming souls clutching, touching, holding, cuddling, and grabbing birds. The mist net and the bal chatri trap have gone from researchers’ tools to hobbyists’ toys. Falconry is back in style, and the fashion industry’s slope back into feathers is growing slipperier every day.

The two dozen largely discrete essays that make up The Bluebird Effect are grouped by season, from “Spring Songbirds” to “Winter Musings”—a familiar organizational principle handed down from the very beginnings of nature writing. More subtle is the second chronological structure that Zickefoose layers on top of the calendrical. When the book begins, the author is “very young, barely able to reach over the woven wire fence” of a rural petting zoo; it ends, some decades later, with the death of Charlie, the Chestnut-fronted Macaw who Zickefoose feared might outlive her. There is, as the author herself notes, something of the memoir about this book, and we follow her from her days as a student and field worker into the years when painting, writing, and raising her own family have come to constitute what is to all appearances an immensely full and richly rewarding life.

But the book is still not about Zickefoose, and not even about the birds that populate the stories in each of the 25 chapters. It is instead about the meeting of the two; it is about intervention, the intentional, often literally hands-on interference in the lives and deaths of wild animals. The “bluebird effect,” the author explains, summarizes “the unknown consequences”—on birds and on people—“of a seemingly irrelevant action.” If a butterfly’s wing can raise a hurricane, then even so harmless and inadvertent an act as startling a hunting hawk may change the course of life for the hawk, for its prey, and for the human whose waving arms cost the raptor its meal.

This bluebird effect gives the book not only its title but also its third, most important, and perhaps unintended structural layer. Zickefoose’s stories proceed through the seasons of the calendar and through the years of her life, and they also move steadily along a scale of ever more intimate intervention into the lives of the birds, forcing the reader to confront important questions about the place of humans in nature—and about when enough is enough.

The Bluebird Effect begins with the author face to face with a “large tom turkey … feathers raised into an enormous sphere, his fleshy red, white, and blue wattles and doodads fully engorged.” Slightly intimidated, she lays her hand on the bird’s head and feels a “jolt of pure empathy …. something deep and primal, a realization that … there was someone in there … I could understand.” It ends with the painful account of life with her “raunchy, awful … tattered old” macaw. Falling somewhere between these extremes—the fleeting encounter with a barnyard bird and a tortured long-term relationship with a pet parrot that Zickefoose describes as a sort of interspecies marriage—are other interventions, some as innocent as throwing feathers into the air for nesting swallows, others as invasive as repeatedly removing chickadee nestlings from their box (surely with the appropriate permits) to serve as studio models. She even engages in predator and parasite control, microwaving infested nests and taking snakes for what I hope is not a euphemistic “ride down the road” when they come too close to her favored bird neighbors.

Zickefoose is a licensed bird rehabilitator, and many of the stories in The Bluebird Effect are about that particular form of interaction with wild birds. Undaunted by even the most demanding of wards, she raises hummingbirds, swifts, starlings, and more, giving them names, getting to know them as individuals, weeping over their corpses, and serving as what she unabashedly and without any apparent irony calls “their mother.” Such interventions are always strenuous and often heartbreaking, and to my view, almost never worth the terrific efforts Zickefoose writes so movingly about; I’d much prefer to see the considerable time and the considerable money required to keep a sparrow or an oriole alive in a cage for weeks or years devoted instead to preserving habitat or finding safe indoor homes for the feral cats whose attacks land so many birds on the author’s doorstep. Zickefoose disagrees: Intervention of this type might not matter so much to the birds, but, she says, the reward for us can be “a handful of human hearts connected in joy” as a rescued and healed Red-tailed Hawk soars overhead.

The most extreme interventions between humans and birds involve death, and the most extreme manifestation of death is extinction. Zickefoose fantasizes a sighting of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and reports the real conversations, “absorbing and strangely sad,” she has held with those few living observers who actually saw the bird in its last years. She worries

about how modern endangered species management practices might handle the discovery of a relict population. The birds captured, one by one … taken into huge enclosures. Artificially inseminated. Their eggs placed in incubators … their chicks fed by lifelike puppets ….

Faced with a salvation like that, the birds would surely “fly away in a long, straight line … [from] the further workings of humanity,” a reaction the author imagines with sympathy.

There’s little can be done about the great woodpecker now, condemned a century ago to near-certain non-existence by collectors and pothunters. The guns still sound, though, aimed, legally, at wild birds from the Sandhill Crane to the Mourning Dove. Zickefoose has been one of the most outspokenly effective critics of the expansion of crane hunting in North America; the author admits here that the biological arguments are not clear-cut—it is at least possible that the increasing populations of this most abundant of the world’s cranes could bear a carefully managed “harvest”—but she argues that there is more to the issue than numbers. “I believe,” she writes, “that it is desirable to hold some species sacred.” And yet, she acknowledges, others can find the sacred in precisely that ultimate intervention, in killing and consuming the same birds that for many of us “awaken the untamed places in our hearts.”

The varieties of birderly experience and interaction described here are far from the detachment and intellectual distance that characterized our sport for most of the twentieth century. Again and again, Zickefoose asks herself not what she can see but rather what she can do: When a wren nest is too precariously perched, when a potential predator eyes a still-innocent fledgling, or when a greedy vulture gets a stomach ache, she intervenes. She picks and chooses when bestowing aid on her fellow creatures; she poisons night-herons, releases starlings into the Ohio wilds, and calls cowbirds “impostors.”

I would be surprised to see birders pick up their shotguns again, but it seems clear that watching is inexorably giving way to holding, contemplation to interaction. What that might mean for the birds is less clear, but in her lovely and important Bluebird Effect—and, no less, in the bluebird effect—Julie Zickefoose offers an unequivocally hopeful view of what it can mean for us. “By waving our arms at one hawk … we had intervened, and we were much the richer for it.” I hope she’s right.

Rick Wright

Bloomfield, New Jersey

rwright@aba.org 

                                                                                                                                                

The ABA Area Referendum Results: What's Your Take?

 

Back in late July, I posted on this blog asking for discussion of one of the issues we at the ABA are questioned about most frequently: what, if any, expansion of the ABA Area boundaries ought to take place? I also asked for your feedback on how we ought to go about polling our membership for their thoughts. That post has garnered 70 comments so far, many of them astonishingly thoughtful and well-informed. Though I didn't comment on all of them, I did read them all and they were truly helpful in shaping the non-binding referendum that we then sent out with our annual proxy ballot.

Well, the results are in. If you've received the current issue of Birding, and you should very soon if you haven't yet, you may have seen that I reported on your answers in my "Birding Together" column. If you haven't seen the article, or are not yet an ABA member, you can read that column here.

I encourage you to go ahead and give it a read. It's short, and goes through the tallies with a minimum of editorializing.

But blogs, of course, are all about editorializing. And I'd like to hear what you have to say about the results. Are you surprised? Or did things pretty much go the way you expected? Perhaps even more important, in view of what the membership has told us here, what would you like to see happen next?

Should we move immediately to consider the question of annexing Hawaii? What about the other areas? Their addition wasn't favored by a majority. Does that mean they should be removed from further consideration?

One other thing that may help make the results a bit easier to interpret and which there wasn't space for in print: some pie charts. Below, you can see the results as compiled for each of the 4 areas that we specifically asked you about.

A caution. These results, as informative as they may be, don't tell it all. We got dozens of handwritten comments, with a few major themes emerging, as I mentioned in the column. And we have not attempted to do any kind of deeper analysis; e.g., how did people who voted yes on Hawaii vote on Bermuda?, or similar correlations.

So here are those pie charts. Take a look, read the column, and by all means, tell us what you think.

 

 

Certainty, Experts, and Confirmation

A couple of friends and I were birding around Jamaica Bay in New York a few years ago. We came upon a couple of people, a man and a woman, looking out over the water and discussing a bird perched in plain view, but a bit distantly, out in the marsh. They didn't seem to be birders (judging by their lack of optics), but one of them suggested it could be an Osprey. I took a look with my binoculars, easily saw the relevant field marks due to the benefit of magnification, and assured them that yes, it's an Osprey. The woman replied "Could be" as they were walking away.

Could be?! How could she doubt someone with expensive binoculars and birding experience? I had confirmed that it was in fact an Osprey, there was no doubt necessary, we now knew it was an Osprey, didn't we? In this post, I want to discuss how we confirm identifications, what we mean by expert, and how we ever know we are right. It is a treacherous subject, as birding reputations are built on accuracy and perceived infallibility, but I think it is a necessary discussion that may reveal a lot about the community of birders and our interpretations of other people's birding abilities.

What kind of hawk is this? Larger pictures available here. Read more about this bird below.

More recently, I found a hawk on our property. We haven't had a lot of raptors on our farm, not even migrants. I've been hoping for more buteos, and as soon as I saw this bird I knew it was a new species for us. However, I also knew it was going to be a tough ID. It seemed to be a young hawk, smaller than a Red-tail, perched on a dead branch in the morning fog. I immediately had it down to two species: Red-shouldered or Broad-winged. But which one? I quickly digibinned a few pictures, taking breaks to look more carefully with my binocular. I really wanted to see the top of the wings, so I decided to walk around the row of pine trees beside me and have a better angle on the bird's back. I quickly but quietly moved around the pines, and of course the bird was gone. Fortunately I had the pictures, and headed indoors to clinch an ID.

I started with reference books, but didn't find a definitive answer. I only saw the bird from the front, and young Red- shoulders and Broad-wings can be really similar from that angle. I was leaning toward Broad-wing (it was around the peak of their migration through the east), but I certainly wasn't leaning very strongly. I decided to seek outside help, get some other views on the matter. I emailed pictures to some of my birding friends and to the Ohio-Birds email list. One of my first responses was from the list, someone I didn't know. His name was John Blakeman, and he introduced himself: "Blake, I'm a master falconer and raptor biologist. The bird is a red-tailed hawk, clearly. But I'm not so sure it's an immature. Did you see the brown tail? The tail here looks too short for an immature. Immie RTs have tails about an inch longer than adults. But no doubt, a red-tail. --John Blakeman."

I panicked for a second. Wait, was this a Red-tail? Did I just jeopardize my birding reputation by asking for ID help on the most commonly seen hawk in the country? I went back to the pictures, and quickly assured myself that it indeed wasn't a Red-tail. How did I know? Well...it didn't look like one to me. I started to receive other replies; Haans Petruschke said, "...Looks like a Red-Shouldered Hawk. Others may say something else based upon plumage, but the eye structure and shape is pure Red-shouldered." Then another reply, "Immature Red Shouldered Hawk. (For what it's worth, raptors are my specialty.)" This last was another reply trying to convey the idea of knowledge and experience. Not confirmation necessarily, but just trying to indicate that they weren't some random person who started birding yesterday; they had time and experience and background with this subject. A couple of my birding friends agreed with Red-shouldered, but then a couple said Broad-wing, and then a couple more from the email list also said Broad-wing, so I was faced with a split vote. I really wanted to add this bird to our property list, so what to do?

I joined the ID-Frontiers email list to post a message about this bird. I included a link to the pictures, hoping to gain some insight from those on the 'frontiers of identification.' I knew that there were a few people on the Ohio-Birds email list who also subscribed to ID-Frontiers, but I hadn't heard an opinion from them. Based on the split vote, I thought that moving it up to a higher court was acceptable. But what do I mean by acceptable? Aren't birders available to help others, would anyone judge you for asking a stupid question? I mentioned to my wife I was thinking about emailing Sibley to get his opinion. She was incredulous: can you just email Sibley? I felt like it was an identification question that was worthy of expert advice; I'm not a new birder sending out a fuzzy picture of an obvious Brown Pelican. I have some idea what I'm talking about and didn't know what this hawk was, and other people couldn't agree, so I didn't think I'd be wasting anyone's time. I knew many respected birders were on ID-Frontiers, and I would get some good feedback. I received three responses; the one I weighted highest came from Bill Clark, co-author of the Peterson Field Guide to Hawks of North America. He said it was a Broad-winged, and I took that as the final answer.

I emailed the Ohio-Birds list, saying I'd accepted the expert testimony from ID-Frontiers (all in favor of Broad-wing). Case closed. John Blakemen replied, "Blake, You are certainly welcome to assign the ID of the hawk photo to a Broadwinged. But all of the Broadwings I've ever dealt with have distinct but subtle horizontal patterns on the breast, not the vertical ones on your provided photo...Redtails (except in the vary rare melanistic specimens) always have the central, upper breast lighter than the belly band or flanks of the upper breast (chest area), exactly as on your photo of your bird. Red-shouldereds and Broadwings have evenly hued coloration and evenly-patterned upper breasts. But the lack of horizontal patterning on the upper or middle breast negates a Broadwing for me, and the presence of a less-patterned, slightly lighter central area on the upper breast marks the bird as a Red-tail for me. I've trapped, banded, and rehabbed many dozens of Buteos in 40 yrs of working with these birds. John A. Blakeman".

I quickly did an internet search for John Blakeman. Who is this guy? Does he really have the credentials that he claims? I quickly found that yes, indeed he does. He has many years of hands-on experience with these birds. How do I decide which expert to believe, which claims to consider valid, how do I confirm an identification when it isn't clear-cut? The bird is gone, there is no way to get it back. We can't collect further evidence to make a final determination. What if everyone I consulted said it was a Broad-wing? What if they all said it was a Red-tail? Would I listen to the majority, or choose voices here and there? Maybe this bird was a hybrid, or a ghost (I mean a literal ghost, not one of the two species we sometimes call 'gray ghosts')?

My point is, we often have no way to be certain of our identifications. We see a bird, we put a name on it, and it flies away. We don't know whether we were right or wrong. Even if we move it to a higher authority, we can't know for sure if they were right or wrong. One of the people who corresponded with me suggested I try whatbird.com; the site includes a forum where people will help you identify birds. Many people post pictures, hoping to find someone knowledgeable to determine the bird's identity. Many times the responses say something like, "Chipping Sparrow. Confirmed." That is supposed to mean that the person doing the confirming knows what the species is, and they know that they are right. But how do any of us ever know that for sure?

When I decided to write this post, I emailed all of the participants in the discussion and asked whether it would be okay to use their names and responses. A couple were reticent at first, they wanted to check what they had said to me before having it thrust upon a larger birding audience. Why is that?

It is partly because birding credibility is fragile; there are people who think they are good at identifying birds, very willing to share their expertise, but who in fact lack those skills. People who are well-known in birding circles or make their living from birding-related enterprises are justifiably concerned about being lumped in with these other 'bad birders.' Unfortunately, this often keeps them quiet when a difficult identification arises. Sometimes the best identification is 'I Don't Know', but we don't usually want to admit that fact. Even worse is proposing an incorrect identification. This has the obvious side effect of stifling discourse and preventing knowledge from being shared. I was impressed when Birding began running photo quizzes where different birders explained their identification and how they got there. This prevented a consensus view from clouding perception and coloring judgment. Sometimes the experts differed, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Maybe there was no right answer (hybrids...or ghosts).

My point with this post is not to decide what kind of hawk is in the pictures, or decide which birders are better than others. I wanted to point out that we perceive different levels of birding expertise, and there are people and organizations we are more likely to believe. It isn't always clear why we choose to believe some people over others, or how we pick which 'experts' to consult. The next time you are out birding and run across someone grossly misinformed about the identification of a bird, feel free to do your best to correct their obvious error. Just remember, they may be trying to do the same thing for you.

Video!: Greetings from the Governor and Thank You from the Kids!

George Armistead did a wonderful job earlier today with his photos from the weekend's ABA events in Delaware. As a companion, here are two short videos, one from the Mid-Atlantic Young Birder Conference and one from the Annual Membership Meeting.

First, the Sep 23rd Membership Meeting: when I introduced Collin O'Mara, Delaware's Secretary of Energy and the Environment, he proceeded to play this welcome message from Delaware's Governor, Jack Markell! 

 
It was wonderful to have a head of state welcome the ABA, and birders, so directly and so warmly. Think of it, when have you ever heard a governor even try to pronounce, "dowitcher?" And, of course, I was pleased to be mentioned by name. I think Delaware's Bayshore Initiative, and the way the state is reaching out to birders as the project is still in the planning stages, marks a wonderful evolution. I'm pleased that the ABA is playing a role in moving it all forward and I very much want us to do the same in other states and provinces.

I want to especially thank Delaware's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control and Eagle Optics, ABA's optics sales partner, for providing generous sponsorships for our Membership Meeting, and to the Delaware Nature Society for providing a lovely space for us to have it.

And here's a quick shout-out, literally, to the Leica Sport Optics and to all of you ABA members, from the kids and adults who attended the Mid-Atlantic Young Birder Conference on Saturday the 22nd. I wish you all could have been there. Between George's photos and these clips, maybe you can at least get a feeling for the positive energy directed towards birding and the ABA. Thank you so much for making this all possible.

 

 

Remembering Jeri McMahon

All of us at the American Birding Association are saddened to learn of the death of Jeri McMahon this past Sunday. ABA's Membership Experience Coordinator, Nancy Hawley, worked with Jeri's friends and family to put together this biographic sketch and the special memorial that accompanies it.

Farewell, Jeri. Thanks for your many contributions to the birding community. May the sights and sounds of birds, and the thrill of young eyes being opened to them, keep your memory alive in all our hearts.

—Jeffrey Gordon                

Jeri McMahon, birder

Jeri started birding at 12 years old in northern Iowa. Her first bird guide book was by Chester A. Reed. Two teachers (the Hagarty sisters) lived on her block, and Jeri would spend hours at their house, studying birds at their feeders or bird bath, or reading all their bird books. She birded all 7 continents and when asked about her bird list, she would say she had about 7000 birds on it. 

Jeri in Brazil

Jeri belonged to the American Birding Association, Indian Nations Audubon Society of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Ornithological Society, The Bluebird Association, and the Arkansas Birding Association. She had served as president and bird recorder for Indian Nations Audubon and as President and awards chair for the OOS.  

At the OOS fall meeting, Stillwater

She banded birds with MAPS at Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge as well as Fort Gibson Wildlife Management Area and also banded bluebirds in Muskogee County. Jeri was a map consultant for Oklahoma in the Sibley Guide to Birds and also made contributions to the Peterson Field Guide to Birds.

She headed up the Christmas Bird Count for the Fort Gibson area, lead many field trips for birding, and headed up Eagle Days in Fort Gibson for years and introduced her grandson, Donnie, and several other children to the fun of birding.

 

Jeri's grandson, Donnie

 

Jeri has sent one child per year to birding camp, which she found to be one of the best and most meaningful ways to share the joy of birding. 

In Jeri's final weeks, another long-time ABA member, Kathy Roach, approached the ABA about setting up a special memorial to Jeri that would help fund other young birders attendence at birding camps. As one of Jeri’s closest friends, Kathy says, “We feel Jeri is certainly worthy of being honored for her life-long love of birds as well as her patience and mentoring to all of us her knew her. In addition, Jeri provided both physical and financial support over the years, to many of our Young Birders. Her outstanding dedication has helped many of our youth to expand their knowledge and gain confidence, as well as allowing many of them to attend our ABA birding camps”. 

Kathy adds, “The ABA’s new "Jeri McMahon Memorial" will help maintain and expand all future Young Birder programs and camps. We feel this is a very special honor for a very special lady.”

Jeri lived a life of giving back to birding that all of us would do well to emulate.

To make your donation to Jeri's memorial now, please go to www2.aba.org/jerimcmahon or call Nancy Hawley at 800-850-2473 or 719-578-9703.