Birds on the Move

March 1: a big day for me because March is the month when many songbirds start their migration north to their breeding grounds. I am so ready for them! I am ready for their dawn song, their frantic nest building, the hatching of the eggs, the fledglings making their way around my yard, the parents flitting back and forth between food sources and home.

There are amazing technologies out there for tracking the migration of birds - and a lot of information about migrants gathered carefully by everyday citizen scientists who go out birdwatching and record their data online in various forums.

Birdcast.org will soon begin weekly forecasts of bird migrations. It is so much fun to read their forecasts and then watch them come true in your yard that week. If Birdcast says you will see a grey catbird in your region by early Tuesday, you can bet you’ll hear its iconic mewing sound on that day. But these forecasts are not only for our delight as birdwatchers. They are essential to persuading wind farms to shut off their turbines during certain days or times of day to avoid grinding up millions of migrating songbirds. Big building lights can also be dimmed strategically so that the birds are not confused by the lights, which can get them off course or lead them to crash into the buildings as they fly.

Ebird.org is also a useful resource. Individual birders record the species they observe in particular areas - and the data is coming in from all over the world - so that you can figure out where to go to see a migrating species arrive to stay or to fly through quickly on their way further north. This tool helps a lot during warbler season especially. A lot of warblers remain in our area only for a few weeks, and this tool helps me know where I am likely to find them. Over time, these recorded observations (coupled with radar, which picks up flocks of migrating birds) can also help scientists track how arrival and departure dates for certain species change from year to year, which could be useful in determining the effects of weather, climate change, food source availability, and other phenomena on bird migration. Apparently scientists are still using Henry David Thoreau’s carefully recorded observations of weather, nature, and wildlife as a baseline for comparison with later years in the area around Walden Pond!

Such tools can help us learn about and enjoy nature, and they are also an excellent way to participate in science as a non-scientist. Please write in the comments if you have another tool that helps you enjoy the migration season.

20 Minutes of Wildlife

A sense of disappointment always sets in for me in August, as the songbird mating season comes to an end and the birds fall silent, and then they start to leave the area, and then the summer insect sounds die away, and then the butterflies fade, and then the first hard frost comes and most of the plants still managing to produce in my garden freeze and die. Although frenetic animal activity begins - such as the white-tailed deer rut and the pre-hibernation feeding frenzy of groundhogs and other burrowing rodents - it doesn’t seem to provide the same pleasure as springtime viewings of fawns and muskrats and bunnies. By November, I feel hopelessly distanced from the natural world.

But it’s really not true that the world of wildlife disappears or even slows down. I was just reviewing my notes from a 20-minute walk I took in mid November. In just 20 short minutes, I saw a female turkey, a young white-tailed buck, and a mink. The birds were crazy with activity, and in a short stroll along a creek I saw a pair of mallards, a mockingbird, several robins, several cardinals, a bunch of male bluebirds fussing at each other and chasing each other through the trees, juncos, goldfinches, and 20 or so yellow-rumped warblers flying down to drink and then back up into the trees. I heard a song sparrow, a Northern flicker, and crows. And I’m sure there were many other animals in my vicinity who saw me but remained beyond my notice.

One of my very favorite books is Jon Young’s What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). An experienced tracker, Young explains how understanding bird behavior and sounds can clue one in to many aspects of the natural world. Birds have different songs to indicate different kinds of predators: those on the ground, those coming through the trees, those high up in the air. Their flight patterns also indicate where a predator or food source might be. Young recommends that you sit in the same spot everyday, remain quiet until the birds forget you are there, and then observe. You will quickly begin to distinguish different kinds of calls and activities, particularly if you focus on one species. Fall and winter are ideal times to do this because you remove certain activities and calls related to mating and nesting from the equation, leaving fewer factors to consider in your study. And without leaves on the trees, the birds are much easier to find and keep track of.

Winter can be ideal for learning about other wildlife, too, particularly when there is snow on the ground and you can see tracks. A basic book of mammal and bird tracks is a helpful guide to identifying tracks, and following them can give you clues to an animal’s route, particular behavior, and even the location of a winter den.

Nature organizations and national parks host lots of activities in the winter to help people experience the natural world. My local Audubon society is offering free bird-watching trips, a tree identification workshop, a tracks identification workshop, and several lectures over the next couple of weeks to help people fend off the indoor ennui of winter. I hope you’ll join me in finding opportunities to take advantage of winter and take yourself back out into the natural world to see just how alive it is - at all times of the year.

The Hunt for the Dusky Flycatcher

The first week of November, the word got out: a Gettysburg College Wildlife Ecology class out birding on campus one morning identified what seemed to be a Dusky Flycatcher (Empidonax oberholseri). This is a small, rather nondescript little bird that lives in Western North America and migrates to Mexico for the winter. The poor little guy (maybe an inexperienced juvenile?) got blown off course and ended up all the way over in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

And with the news came the birders. According to one count, some 100 birders came to Gettysburg to see the bird over the course of the weekend. The identification still has to be confirmed and has proven controversial, with some saying that it may actually have been a Least Flycatcher (Empidonax minimus). If the Dusky Flycatcher identification stands, it will be the first one identified in the state of Pennsylvania.

I’ve been a bird lover for most of my life, so naturally attracted to birds from an early age that I apparently came in from kindergarten one day and tearfully begged my parents to let me have a pet budgie. I grew up watching birds in the yard, reading about birds, watching bird documentaries - and having a succession of budgies that were the center of my world. But I only recently became a birder, in part because I somehow felt that documenting birds, checking them off on a list, quantifying them, would take away from their beauty and mystery and all around wonderfulness.

Why are humans so drawn to birding? Now I’m beginning to understand. For one thing, to recognize them is to begin to know them. You don’t just check birds off your list and forget about them. The process of identifying them is the process of understanding them. The process of understanding them involves falling in love with them again and again as you read about their habitat, their migration paths, their parenting skills, as you listen to the variations on their song, as you begin to recognize how their plumage changes over the seasons. After that, seeing a bird you know well is like seeing an old friend.

For another thing, humans love to be on a hunt for something, and birding feels like such an accomplishment. I tried to see that Dusky Flycatcher for several days, without success. If I had, it would have marked a special day in my life and I would have always remembered the story. With birding - or appreciating nature more generally - you always have the sense that there is a world around you that you’re not seeing or hearing or smelling at that particular moment. To identify a bird or an animal is to extract it momentarily from that unacknowledged and mysterious world always surrounding us.

And then, as with anything else, you can tell all your other birding friends what you saw. Numbers and types of birds you’ve sighted become a form of prestige. I’m a novice, with a less than 100 life list (list of how many birds I’ve seen over my lifetime). The stars of the local Audubon Association loom large in my eyes, and I hope someday to have the kind of respect and knowledge that they garner, quantified in part in the number of birds on their life list, their ease of recognition, their ability to tell you exactly where in the surrounding area you can find which kinds of birds at what time of the year.

Might birding also be a form of control or ownership? I’ve thought about that, too. When you make a list, check birds off, talk numbers and species and places, you’re coming to know the world around you. Classification is a human instinct. Knowledge can provide a feeling of comfort, safety, even power over the natural world. But, hey, we’re humans. Control is what we do with nature. And, if we’re going to control nature, it’s best that we know it well and appreciate its details. And birding is a great way to get there.