This very rainy morning I sat on my enclosed porch and watched the wren box. Even though the rain had weighed the dogwood branches down to obscure most of the box, I knew what was happening because I had seen the same activity yesterday when it was merely cloudy.
The female appears to be sitting on eggs.
The male house wren would start singing from a nearby bush and the female would pop out of the box to go get some food. The male would continue singing, now from the dogwood, until the female returned and went back in the box.
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| 'Dumb' wren nest box (Margo D. Beller) |
The dogwood doesn't have the thick canopy that was once in the apple tree, where the box once hung, but the wet does not stop the house wrens from going about their business in order to survive and bring up young. The male goes up in the tree to a branch where I can see it, sings until his mate returns, then flies to the shelter of the nearest bush.
I base my presumption that she is on eggs on many years of watching house wrens using this box I hung in the dogwood, where I can see it from my chair on the porch. But even then I can't be sure what is going on.
When we returned from a recent family visit it looked like there was no female. The "tell-tale" sticks were no longer hanging beneath the box. Did the female that had been busily building the nest depart? I have no idea, but now there is a female - possibly the same one - and she is spending more time in the box because, I presume, there are eggs in the nest.
Had I one of those tiny cameras in the nest I'd be able to see inside. But I am not a fan of "smart" technology in general, and for birding in particular.
My Facebook feed, besides items from "Friends," will sometimes send up something based on some algorithm that says I enjoy seeing things about birds. I do, but I also get ads. A recent ad appeared for a "smart" bird feeder that would allow me to "watch birds live from your phone" and download photos and videos of every bird visit, among other talents.
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| 'Dumb' bird feeder, with titmouse and white-breasted nuthatch (Margo D. Beller) |
If there is one thing these old eyes don't need it is another reason to look at the small screen of my phone.
It is ironic that while I've been running around most mornings in these waning days of spring migration I've likely been missing "good" stuff in my own backyard. But when I am home I prefer to use my eyes and ears - albeit with some help from the Merlin app because I can't hear many calls anymore unless the bird is very loud or over my head.
The idea of putting out a "smart" feeder that has some sort of camera in it allowing someone to see what's at the feeder every time a house sparrow or other bird shows up, even while that person is elsewhere, does not appeal to me. Too much information. Too much like one of those camera doorbells.
The birding world has come a long way from those intrepid people who would go out to distant places, see or hear something and then report back to Audubon. Merlin is helpful, yes. So is Cornell's eBird. But the social media channels - Instagram, Discord, etc. - where report of a rarity can draw hundreds of people in a pop-up flash - scare me. The coronavirus forced people outdoors, and while there they discovered birds. But binoculars and good pairs of eyes and ears are apparently not enough anymore.
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| Using 'dumb' technology (RE Berg-Andersson) |
Extreme Birding
My Facebook feed also brought me an article from NPR on three teenage boys who, with their fathers assisting them, competed in the World Series of Birding earlier this month.
My reaction to what I read was mixed. I was glad to see younger people getting involved with birding. There was a time, decades ago, when I was one of the younger ones in a group seeking out a bird. Now I'm right in there with the demographic. Birding needs younger blood.
However, I was sad to see there were no girls on the all-white team - not even a mother helping out - and I was horrified to read these kids were just as gung-ho competitive as the adults who were also running around the state trying to tick off as many birds on their list as they could in a day.
You're not seeing the birds when you are competing to see how much you can find in a day, you're seeing something - shape, sound - that allows you to claim you "saw" it and add it to your checklist.
I was amused the teenagers named their team the Pete Dunnelins, a play on the dunlin shorebird and Pete Dunne, who created the World Series of Birding as a charitable endeavor that would also contribute Citizen Science data on how well, or badly, bird species were doing in New Jersey.
The kids found 206 species of birds, but they came in second to a team that found 209.
The WSB is still an important way of recording what birds are where in a world where bird populations are in decline due to "development" and global warming, among other factors.
But the WSB has gone way beyond its original intent. Now it is a competitive sport. The people at Cornell's Ornithology Lab - the ones behind Merlin and eBird - broadened the WSB to the world, calling it the Global Big Day. You have teams all over the world competing to find as many birds as possible. I imagine hundreds of people running into each other as they stomp on a marsh at 3 a.m. to hear grunting rails and soras, or whatever the global equivalents are.
I expect to see the WSB become part of the next X Games on television soon enough.
No thank you.
