Tag: backyard

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Geri birding is not a crime

juvenile ruby-throated hummingbird hovers next to a nectar feeder
a young Ruby-throated Hummingbird visits a feeder, a prominent non-avian feature of most geri-birding photos

The irreverent bird blogger Felonious Jive both lovingly and pejoratively calls it “geri birding,” but you can’t beat it when the weather gets hot and muggy. The slower-paced, more sedentary approach to birding may not just be more comfortable, it can be essential for many PD sufferers who find hot weather exacerbates their symptoms. I personally am not sure how much my bias toward a more leisurely pace of birding is caused by this PD-specific reaction, or how much it is just due to my longstanding aversion to heat, humidity, and mosquitos, but it’s a useful excuse regardless to spend more time birding from a cushy, cool nook indoors. And it’s not just for the hot days of summer–geri birding is great year-round, so fill those feeders, train your scope and bins on them, get comfy, and let the birds come to you.

Feeling a bit too reserved? PD birders who want to go to the next level can join me in this fall’s Big Sit, October 9 and 10, 2021. The event is perhaps the pinnacle of geri birding, as individuals or teams count as many birds as they can from within the confines of a 17-foot-diameter circle. (Think of it as a nanoscale CBC.) Sure, some ambitious birders choose exceptionally birdy locations for their big sits, and the event’s organizers “encourage new circles to be located in national, state, or local wildlife refuges, land trusts, forests, parks, or other such areas,” but I embrace the carbon-friendly, lawnchair-forward, sedentary nature of the backyard Big Sit. Plus, since October 9 is also October Global Big Day, you get a twofer on your list!

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Yard Lifer

As seeing birds has become more of a challenge, I am grateful for sustained looks at the commoner birds that visit the yard and feeders. For some winter finches this is an irruption year, and I’ve been watching eBird light up with reports of a “nemesis bird” for me, the Pine Siskin. Particularly as American Goldfinches started to visit in greater and greater numbers, I kept wondering if a lone siskin might make an appearance, especially hearing of the big flocks others in the state have had coming to their backyards.

I’ve been talking about the irruption for a month and Pine Siskins much longer than that–in fact, it had become a running joke in our home: “Look, Dad, a Pine Siskin!” It’s hard to believe over more than three decades of birding the Northeast that I haven’t seen one, but then again, such is the nature of the nemesis. I even went so far as to make, at my wife’s request, a reference poster/cheat sheet remixing images of Pine Siskins, American Goldfinches, and Evening Grosbeaks from Sibley.

For the better part of eight months I’ve been working from home, riding out the Coronavirus pandemic. Most days I try to escape the basement office, if only for a half hour, for lunch with the family. As I finished my lunch Friday, both wife and child excitedly pointed at the closest feeder and simultaneously exclaimed, “Pine Siskin!” This time they weren’t joking.

NEMESIS NO MORE

Pine Siskin

Over these past few days we’ve had as many as three at a time on the feeder, where the little pugilists are surprisingly aggressive and hold their own, fighting off much bigger birds such as House Finches.

I am so grateful: to finally see this nemesis bird; to see it in my own backyard, literally a few feet away; to see it with my family; and to see it because of my family.

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GBBC 2020

I am literally drooling my way through another Great Backyard Bird Count and am actually counting the birds in my backyard, unlike the myriad birders I imagine have trekked to their favorite bird-saturated daybreak spots  to secure more birds in five minutes of dawn chorus than I’ll see all day. Oh, and they’ve staked out two or three owl species calling to round out their eBird GBBC submission. You can’t make this up (or can you?): the first bird seen in the count was a New Zealand owl called a “Morepork,” and you know someone went looking for that bird. Either that or it’s fake news.

Your humble Birder with Parkinson’s gets no parade of passerines, no nighttime strigidean ululations–you’d think the minor peripheral hallucinations of my dopamine agonist ought to be twisted enough to at least conjure up a random semiconscious “Who cooks for you?” Barred Owl call when I get up to urinate at four-thirty a.m. …I’m still waiting for that, though (the owl, not the pee). I have to make do with what familiar little fluffpops I can bribe with black oil to the feeders, or the random silhouettes that I accidentally (incidentally) see while very stiffly walking the dog. In either case that’s not a high number, I assure you. For birders with PD, “crippling fallouts” have upsetting alternate connotations. Looking up into the treetops is hard, too– my back is killing me with spasms that my movement disorder specialist insists are non-Parkinsonian, even though she admits forcing binoculars into my “T. rex” posture probably hasn’t helped them. I think: “If it is already this bad, how will I ever get in shape for spring migration?” 

But I digress. The GBBC is a great reason (hey, it even has “Great” in its name!) to enlist others in birding, like my seven year old who atavistically id’s sparrows faster and more accurately than you or I can (but still hasn’t conjured a Fox Sparrow this year to my Helianthus-husked suburboscape.) It’s a collective birding experience that doesn’t require a trip to Cape May or to High Island; instead, you’re downright encouraged to stay home and look out your windows, or at most to hobble over to your local park for fifteen minutes or so; crucially, you need not interact with anyone at all if you don’t feel like it.

And the GBBC is not actually spiked with intrigue: there are in reality no stakeouts; no complex strategies; no guarded itineraries; the hardcore birders don’t give a rat’s ass about this eBird/Audubon marketing stunt. But that doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful, especially if you decide to convert this from an annual one-off event into something more regular, more varied and engaging–to form it into a habit, not just an annual occurrence. The GBBC is a gateway to caring, and sustaining that care, making a plan to go birding, and following through. And possibly sharing the fun with others close to you.

Especially enthusiastic part-feral seven-year-olds.