Okay, so this isn't really the end of spring migration. And that doesn't mean this will be the last diary in the series for spring of 2008, it does mean that the number of birds and species will diminish very strongly now, winding down to a trickle. The flycatchers are still out there, as are the mourning warblers, and the thrushes. And the ladybirds will increase dramatically in the next few days and weeks. But the insane colors and mind-bending numbers of birds will fade except for the odd gust of wind or strange fallout.
But as I've indicated, I'm not done yet.
I want to talk a little about what drives birders in the first place.
I'm sitting in the diner part of the Lobster House in Cape May, NJ. I have no idea that the woman sitting next to my fiance (non-birder) and I is "one of us". After a few minutes of my bantering she politely breaks into the conversation and asks me whether it is too far to bike to Reeds' Beach. I tell her it's about 20 miles, and we start to get into a conversation. She's just come up from Atlanta, by way of the Great Dismal Swamp (NC) moving north with migration.
I'm totally flabbergasted. If I were of independent means, or had a spouse who was more supportive of the hobby I'd love to start in Florida in March, drive to Texas for April and slowly move north and east. But this is a fantasy that this woman is making real. She's totally nuts; no sane person would do this. She's a birder.
Happily she reports that NC was filled with "millions of neotropicals" and my heart starts to race. Does this mean, it isn't over yet? I saw Wednesday's report for Central Park, and it was a madhouse. Very early in the day, in sunny spots, they had several hundred warblers including some of my absolute favorites. Chestnut-sided, Blackburnian, bay-brested and even two Cape Mays. It isn't over yet.
Spent about two hours "guiding" a family of three- a father and two sons- through Higbee's beach. They simply got out of the car the same instant I did, and when I went south they followed. Soon we had the king of the warblers, the totally mad yellow-breasted chat.
Okay, when you think warbler you think a tiny guy, not much bigger than a wren or a chickadee. You think fast and wild, never stopping for breath, and you think he sits in the tree all day singing his repetitive song for all to hear. You also think he's a bird that has almost no courtship displays, no energetic rituals, no odd behaviors. Just eat, eat, eat, sing for a few minutes, and then fly all night to his next day's destination.
Not the chat. He doesn't have a fixed song, he improvises. Not quite as good as a red-breasted grosbeak or a robin, but not far off. But he adds to it some catbird-like chatter, some scratchy lisps and high pitched notes, and he squawks from time to time. But unlike the other warblers, he does this at night as well as in the day. And he doesn't simply sing from a tree, he sings while flying, and he vigorously pumps his tail in a wild display. He's no shrinking violet, he's the clown prince of warblers. And he's also about as big as a robin. At roughly twice the weight of the nearest relative, there is nothing at all common about him.
Did you think I'd talk in length about this wild bird without a photo!
So they followed me around for about a mile, and we got the youngest boy (about 17) nearly a half-dozen or so life birds. He got his first rose-breasted grosbeak, his first redstart, his first bay-breasted warbler (my only two of the spring, a male and female pair) scarlet tanager (both sexes) magnolia warbler and a few others that I've forgotten. His brother was a more advanced birder, their father somewhat in between. We'd met a woman with a charming dog (saw a lot of birders at Higbee's walking dogs) who was pretty advanced, and we hung out for about a half hour.
I think I'll pause for a minute to give you another anecdote. There's an elderly African-American gentleman who's getting on in years, that I've met in Central Park a few times. He's not a man of means, but he's out there much of the time walking around, birding without binoculars and now it seems without a camera. He gave me the most insight about my birding style that I've ever heard before; he described the two of us as "commandos" while the rest of the CP community is "the infantry" and I think he described me perfectly. I do enjoy the social birding, and I love helping people out (and I'm more than willing to "steal" someone's bird if I see their binoculars pointing upwards) but I am a "lone birder". You can't experience the same connection to them when you are traveling in a pack. Sure the infantry sees more birds, but their views are from a distance, and they never get to experience intimate contact.
So I'm in Jamaica Bay, and there's this little old man who I've met a few times before- a lower-intermediate birder with a Nikon lens that must weigh almost as much as he does. I've seen him for the last three or four years, not the best birder but one of the most driven. As we pass each other, I mention the raccoon that I saw half-asleep poking his head out of the owl box.
He rushes over to get a look! Later, we meet in the blind. He thanks me for directing him to his "best shot of the day" and we spend five minutes together watching the yellow warblers and willow flycatchers bathing in the small man-made pool. Sure I love getting the big guys- the rarities, the odd birds, the accidentals or birds a thousand miles off course. But the everyday birds are just as special, just as wonderful, just as meaningful if you are willing to let them be birds. Watch in silence as they go about their routines. See them eat, preen, feed their young, mate, even die- do it with dignity and devotion because they inhabit this world with us, fighting for survival with a set of tools that evolution gave them that makes them uniquely qualified for life in the borders of human habitation. We are surrounded by mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish but we do not get to interact with them in a manner approaching birds. Birds may be weary of us, they may be scared and they may be easily set to flight but it is because of that ability to quickly arrive and depart that gives us the ability to see them. Most Americans are lucky if they see a dozen species of wild mammal a year. Combine that with the other non-bird vertebrate species and you'll be lucky to make that two dozen. But take one trip to the shore, or walk the park on a spring or fall morning and you can easily reach 50 species of bird in a day, without trying too hard. And not only species count, but numbers of individuals- the most mammals I've ever seen (admittedly I'm not in the great African parks during migration) in one place is about 30 deer. Okay, so I've seen nearly 100,000 people at football games, but we don't count... go to the shore and you can see a thousand or more geese or ducks or flamingos without trying. Birds are everywhere, all around us, occupying every niche and environment.
Part of the allure of birding is observing their variety, their beauty and their poetry of life. I'm fascinated by the subtle variations in design, habitat and structure. Many songbirds have microscopic variations in their bills. Insectivores (such as this Canada warbler) have tiny horizontal notches at the tips of their bills which act like tweezers to hold gnats or mosquitoes.
Check out the details on this white-eyed vireo's beak. Looks like it could poke your eyes out. He'll be a featured bird in next month's diary on bird song. And while you're at it, check out the white eyes.
Fructivores (fruit eating birds) have larger and thicker bills, designed to tear instead of catch. Seed eating birds (finches, cowbirds) have massive heavy bills designed to crack and split, and use their tongues to separate seed from shell.
Crossbills are the ultimate finches, with bills that overlap and protrude like a terrible case of overbite, but that is specifically designed to separate the seeds from pine cones. A straight modification of this is seen in kites, a form of raptor that eats snails. The slender kite bill is a specialized version of hawk bills. Distant cousins of the hawk, the nightjar family (sometimes called "frog mouths"; the whiporwill and nighthawk clans) have giant triangular bills with soft mouths, along with the tweezer slots in order to catch large moths. Every bird is a solution to the problem of survival.
And that "design" is evolution. Darwin's famous finches show how it only takes a few million years for mutations to develop, turning a finch into a warbler, a tanager, an oriole. Subtle changes in bill structure compounded by wing and claw shape determine the food a bird eats, the way it approaches and catches its food, and the way it protects itself from predators.
I'm going to end this with a couple of photos taken at Stone Harbor, NJ of a common tern diving in for a snack. I think they're just spectacular photos of a bird in flight, followed by a splashdown.
Note the entry into the dive, the wings have stopped flapping and the bird is in the process of leveling off.
Now the wings are folded back, preparing for entry into the water as quickly as possible to prevent the prey from fleeing.