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Fall on Me

Fall is almost here and it couldn’t come sooner for the BwP crew. This year’s covid-mandated isolation plus an associated reluctance to go anywhere, on top of the annual June-August doldrums, a regular occurrence when even the most vociferous locals shut up and get down to the business of (quietly) rearing young, has felt like an interminable quarter.

Yeah, yeah, we could have gone to the shore, scoped for vagrant seabirds and resident shorebirds, but the thought of vying with throngs of work-from-home cooped-up beachgoers suddenly released on their own recognizance sent a shudder through our introverted spines. So, we get no Piping Plover for the list this year, but perhaps gain an added appreciation for and intimate awareness of the comings and goings of what seems to be a bumper crop of local Blue Jays. Geri birding they call it, big sit, 5MR.

But besides the jays it’s otherwise been quiet. It was even an uncharacteristically slow summer for leps; not a single leaf on our milkweed was munched by a hungry Monarch caterpillar, and only a very occasional Vanessa shared the butterfly bush with a healthy and persistent troupe (flock? gang? cartel?) of Peck’s skippers.

When it is this slow, you can worry too much, become easily discouraged: locally about your own looming physical decrepitude, and more broadly with an abstract concern–perhaps not so abstract nowadays– that radiates out to include the country and the world. But reaching down past the gray featureless despair, past its whiff of lurking, atavistic malice, you may find just-in-time beacons of hope: the first warblers have started passing through. They’re here and there at the beginning, characteristically in the company of mixed flocks of chickadees, with the occasional associated titmouse or nuthatch. Like back in April, a Yellow-rumped was first, but a Redstart was soon to follow, and even though they are generally less colorful and less vocal than in the spring, they (anthropomorphizing here) still flit cheerfully with a certain reassuring, uplifting, and infectious joie de vivre.

Time to dust off the monopod and get off this couch.

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ADK 2020

“Forever Wild” is debatable as we cross the Blue Line doing 70 mph on the six-lane Northway, but the Adirondack Park is indisputably big: a contiguous but internally fragmented mass, government lands veined with private property and huge tracts of private land; nineteenth century Great Camps like Jack Ma’s retreat on 28,000 acres, these parcels eclipsed in turn by holdings of timber companies you’ve likely never heard of (Molpus, Lyme)—273 thousand and 240 thousand acres respectively—the People of the Great State of New York’s 2.6 million acres of wild forest, the park in total 6 million acres.

What a great place for lawnchair birding! I picked up 18 year birds (41 species total) in just a few days hunkered down on my campsite, including three warblers I missed in migration — Blackburnian, B-t Green, and, my favorite, Magnolia. (In camping trip planning I always question the added weight, but I am never sorry to have brought the scope; an angled eyepiece or module dramatically boosts the octane level of “big sit” birding and is a superior tool for people with PD.)

Ravens are awesome, and I was glad to see and hear several every day, chatting each other up with a wide variety of vocalizations. It was a privilege to catch a glimpse of a Black-backed Woodpecker and to become newly cognizant of the odd, ringtone-like song of a Junco, a vocalization I never get from my winter visitors. The more familiar call of a Common Loon is hopeful, not haunting: it speaks volumes about the health of the watershed, and Osprey and Bald Eagle affirm that the fishing is good, healthy up and down the food chain.

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Streak Update: 225

My eBird streak continues at 225. Although we are still constrained by the coronavirus, it has been good to have the impetus to go birding, just for a little while, every day.

keep on keepin’ on

I always carry bins and usually carry a camera, but find I rarely use either on my morning course. Birding my neighborhood in July reminds me of how important birding by ear (no matter how bad I am at it) has become to me. Probably 2/3 of the species I observe are heard-only, and bird vocalizations in the summer are rich with communicative chips and chirps, a colorful and diverse cacophony of juvenile chatter and begging calls, but very few actual songs. Song Sparrows seem to be the exception to the rule.

Caution is in order, though. Some mornings a Carolina Wren sounds an awful lot like an Eastern Towhee, or maybe even an Ovenbird (especially if I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet.) Blue Jays are accomplished mimics, and an occasional starling gets into the act as well. My neighborhood rarely has a mockingbird, but makes up for it with a healthy population of Gray Catbirds. At least they usually throw in a nasally “mew” to give away their doppelgänger songs.

Birding-by-ear skills not only open up a leafed-out world, they are particularly useful to people with PD. Shaky hands don’t get in the way of your ears, and sharp listening can help locate interesting birds when you do want to try to get them in sight. Just as in visual birding, a good strategy is to familiarize yourself with the usual suspects before going afield, not trying to figure out a call after the fact. One good place to start your study is the Macaulay Library.

Of course, in addition to keen—or at least attentive—ears, it helps immensely to have the support of others. I am tremendously fortunate my son is here for me, seeing what I overlook and cheering me on in my streak. I get the joy of seeing him experience new birds, and he repays me with a fresh look—or listen—of the familiar.

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Summer Doldrums

T. S. Eliot really had it wrong–July is the cruelest month, at least for birders, and this year it feels as if summer has come all at once, July early, and the birds mute. A quiet midsummer is not at all odd, but this year, coming on the heels of an upside-down spring (the pandemic rules enforcing social distancing, closing refuges and other hotspots, disrupting travel near and far) the summer seems early. Every tick mark of every checklist is a struggle. Except for that one insistent Warbling Vireo.

In other (not terribly exciting) updates:

  • Its time to bump up the dopamine agonist settings. We’ll see how that affects birding (when and if there are any birds to see);
  • Still putting the new camera (Panasonic ds-z70) through its paces–backlit birds are very challenging for the autofocus; need to experiment with manual focus settings? (Just what my hands need, something else requiring manual adjustment);
  • Do large mosquitoes count as “birds”?
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The End of Spring (warbler) Migration

It was a terribly sparse and spotty spring for warblering, thanks to quarantine measures such as the closing of numerous hotspots (parks and cemeteries–ironic that many cemeteries are hotspots, perhaps indicative of the sheer numbers of the damned in this part of the country) and my own reticence to get into the car to go anywhere, also fed by the pandemic.

As a result, I missed any reported fallout; all my warblers this spring were hard-won, mostly singles, just 14 species in total. No Magnolia, Black-throated Green, or Blackpoll, let alone Prairie, Blackburnian, Tennessee, Blue-winged, Bay-breasted, Cape May, etc.,.. Maybe it is my choice of habitat to frequent, but I did see some of the other, more common transients, as well as a Wilson’s and a Canada.

And a Mourning Warbler. On May 17 I was drawn to a skulker in a bramble thicket, expecting yet another Common Yellowthroat. Instead a surprise: a burst of song , and a richly colored yellow, charcoal, and greenish bird popped out, granting me crushing views at maybe ten or fifteen feet. I watched in hushed appreciation at this bird, a lifer for me. And later that afternoon I was able to relocate it with my eight-year-old.

The bird was still there early the next morning, singing, and I saw it just long enough to get a very blurry picture (thanks, PD!) before it flew off. Then it was gone for good. I was profoundly grateful. In these crazy times, you have to appreciate any glimmer of hope, no matter how skulking and fleeting, that presents itself.

I’m not winning any prizes with this terrible, awful picture of the wonderful, obliging Mourning Warbler. Note the black bib margin contrasting with a slaty grey head, and the otherwise yellow undersides. The blur is is a product of tremors, low light, and rapid heartbeat. I have since bought a new camera with optical image stabilization. (More on that soon.)
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PD in a Pd: Birding with Parkinson’s in a Pandemic

Social distancing. Shelter-in-place. Self-quarantine. Travel restrictions.

These are terms that are generally antithetical to birders in general, birders of advanced age in particular, and PD birders acutely. To add insult to injury, “COVID-19” sounds like a murder of crows is beating down your door which, come to think of it, is kind of accurate.  Except they’re really tiny crows, and they are trying to get into your lungs, and there’s way more than 19 of them.

If you’re lucky you have well-stocked feeders placed in a welcoming environment conducive to attracting a variety of species, because other options for PD birders are not promising.  With schools closed families have taken over the trails, and little elementary-aged human disease vectors are running amok, totally ignoring “social distancing” guidelines.  Since they’re not accustomed to unprogrammed outdoor activities, these groups of “hikers” are particularly drawn to the flattest, most easily accessible paths—the same ones that mobility-challenged people can best manage. And that’s in the parks and reserves that aren’t closed already. 

Our hope for public health is to “flatten the curve” so that beleaguered ICUs can keep up with the influx of acute patients, but for birders that poses a dilemma: success in squishing the peak down necessarily entails lengthening the duration of the outbreak. While that is undoubtedly necessary, the restrictions on and closures of prime stopover habitat will almost certainly continue through spring migration and most likely through breeding season.  It’s going to be a silent spring, unless you’re blessed with an Edenic backyard and a comfortable spot to sit in it.  Time to build a bird blind?

Other possibilities for birding (PD or otherwise) in the pandemic:

  • Time to order those “Birds of…” guides for destinations you’ve been drooling over—not that you’ll be able to visit them anytime soon.
  • Time to actually read and maybe even study the family-specific books you bought last year (or the year before, or the year before…)
  • Time to enter some of your ancient field notebooks into eBird (ugly ‘x’s everywhere: did we not do counts then, only mark an occurrence?)
  • Time to visit somewhere else’s livestreamed feeder cam or photogenic raptor-nest-cam
  • Time to cultivate “sympathy optics” in your significant other.