Road Scholar

When I retired from the journalism business I wondered what I was going to do to fill the time once spent working. Do what you enjoy, I was told by friends and magazine articles.

Well, that means birding. But what kind of paying job could I get in the birding business? Not many that I would want to do, as it turns out.

Hitting the road. (RE Berg-Andersson)

I have great admiration for people who study birds for a living. I don't mean everyday birders like me, I mean those with hard-core knowledge. They know a primary from a secondary (a bird's outer and closer to the body flight feathers), a mantle from a tertial (feathers on a bird's back) and a gape from a gonydeal spot (the fleshy edges at the base of a gull's mouth and the spot, often red, on some large gulls).  

All these definitions come from Richard Crossley's field guide to Eastern birds. Crossley is hard-core. So is David Allen Sibley. So was Roger Tory Peterson. They don't just look at birds and identify them, they know their every part. All have written extensive guides.

Other hard-core birders go beyond identification and want to handle the birds in the cause of science. So I looked into becoming a bird bander. It turns out there are rules - a lot of rules.

I found a free, online course in bird banding offered by the U.S. government. Once I registered I looked at the study materials in each module. For instance, there is the 69-page North American Banders Study Guide published by the North American Birding Council. It begins with a Code of Ethics and then goes on to detail such things as the permits needed for banding (migratory birds are protected by federal statute), how to handle a bird, how to open a bird's bill, capturing and extracting birds from mist nets and how to prevent bird injuries and fatalities, among many, many other things.

Duck banding at Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge.
(Public domain image from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

I would also have to go through the Handbook of Field Methods for Monitoring Land Birds by C. John Ralph and others from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This book is 47 pages.

When I started the course I discovered I would not be watching a video of a person talking to me and handling actual birds, but listening to a script as I followed along with notes put up on the screen. I quickly got bored.

OK, says I, I don't want to go through the process of becoming a registered, licensed bird bander. What about volunteering to help out the bird bander?

A contact sent me the link to the Ornithology Exchange listing all kinds of jobs. Most of them require experience as well as advanced science degrees no way covered by my Bachelor of Science degree. The closest hotspots to me for those who monitor, trap and tag migratory birds are on Lake Ontario or Lake Erie. 

Here is one such place, in Erie, Pennsylvania. The job would be an assistant to the bander and would pay about $5000 for seven days a week over eight weeks of work starting in September. I would need my own car to get me from the office to the field site. Nothing is mentioned about where I'd be staying for those eight weeks.

Then I read on and found this:

The most successful of candidates will also: Have previous environmental interpretation experience and/or teaching skills. Be comfortable using various social media platforms to relay information regarding EBO’s banding program in a manner consistent with NABC guidelines. Hold NABC certification at the banding assistant level or higher. 

Applicants should possess a positive attitude, be comfortable interacting with the general public on a frequent basis, be prepared to work long hours in sometimes adverse conditions (heat and humidity, biting insects), be meticulous in record keeping, and be in good physical condition. Successful candidates will have experience extracting, handling, and banding songbirds. This includes: 1) At least one season at a high-volume station (2,500+ birds/month). Volunteer experience also acceptable and 2) Successful solo extraction of 400 birds minimum. (emphasis added)

So much for that bright idea.

I also considered the Cornell Ornithology Lab's online ornithology course on comprehensive bird biology (for which I'd need another expensive textbook). But I had no interest in that, or even in the Lab's more general online bird-related courses.

Pete Dunne in 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I was an average student, and I went into a field where having a BS (and an ability to cut through the BS) was enough. Everything I learned after that has come from actual experience, the University of the Street. And I remembered that the great Pete Dunne, a man I've met, the author of many books and once the sanctuary director of New Jersey's Cape May Bird Observatory, did not have an advanced degree in ornithology. He was just some guy with a great interest in birds who, according to his "Tales of a Low-Rent Birder", lucked into the job. 

The same is true for the writer Kenn Kaufman, who started birding as a young boy and then, as a teen, hitchhiked all over America to see every bird he could find. He wrote about that in "Kingbird Highway," which became a bestseller and led to a career as a bird guide, then as a writer and illustrator and editor of field guides.

Leg band (Public domain image from the
Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

Do I expect to become a famous birder like these guys and many others, or even a YouTube influencer for fun and profit? No. But I can't see myself trading in the time I've missed by working indoors staring into a computer for time spent indoors following an online course. Life is too short. I'd much rather be outside in the field, scoping out a hotspot or even just walking along a road in my town, learning from life. 

Birding With Merlin

It's always nice when I can go birding with my husband (MH) or with friends. The more eyes and ears to find and identify the birds, the better.

But what if the friend coming along isn't human?

Merlin home screen (Margo D. Beller)

So it was that MH and I recently traveled with the free Merlin app, provided by the birding experts at Cornell University's Ornithology Lab.

Merlin is the name of a falcon, halfway in size between the small American kestrel and the larger peregrine falcon. It is also one of the names, depending on whose legend you're reading, given to the wizard who tutored the boy who became King Arthur. To many birders, Merlin is a rather magical tool.

For me, not so much. 

I had resisted downloading this app ever since it was introduced in 2014. For decades I have gone out into the field with my binoculars, looked at a bird and then identified it after pouring over my many reference books. Or, more often, I listen to a call, try to find the bird, make a note of the pattern and then use one of my CDs of bird songs to identify it.

In the two decades or so I've been indulging in this lunacy I think I've done pretty well. Certainly my friends seem to think I'm an expert.

However, when MH and I did our annual spring day trip to Old Mine Road, a road in the northwestern corner of New Jersey that runs from Worthington State Forest into the federal Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, I found myself more overwhelmed than usual by the sheer number of breeding birds that come here in May and sing their territorial songs while setting up housekeeping. 

This has been especially true with warblers. There are many whose call I've heard very often so the bird is easy to identify: the "sweet-sweet-I'm-so-sweet" of the yellow, the "teaCHUR, teaCHUR" of the ovenbird, the "witchety-witchety" of the common yellow-throat. 

Merlin list of birds it heard (Margo D. Beller)

However, there are 35 types of warblers that pass through New Jersey each Spring and Fall, and many I rarely see, much less hear, so I am not as good identifying them. The magnolia, the Cape May or the bay-breasted warblers, for instance, have high, thin calls that are very tough for me to hear.

So after reading enough reports of birds that I could've identified had I heard them or knew what they were, I downloaded the app to help me. The first time I used it, at one of my favorite birding places, the Great Swamp, MH was so impressed he downloaded it, too.

Merlin has two identification features: a microphone for recording songs and a camera for taking a picture of a bird. I have not used the camera. As for the microphone, the app plainly states the microphone is most effective if you are standing in a quiet area near the bird you are trying to identify.

This is not what I have been doing.

Much of the time I've used it the phone was in a pocket as I walked. When I'd stop to check the phone Merlin would either show me a list of birds it "heard" or I'd find the app had closed because something rubbed against the touchscreen the wrong way. It is extremely difficult for me to hold the phone in one hand, a walking stick in the other and then want to quickly use the binoculars to see something moving. Especially on a rocky hillside. Going down.

If I hear something unusual, however, I stop (in a safe place), hold the phone and see what pops up. After using this app 10 or so times in very different birding locations, here is what I've learned:

There are times I can hear and identify a bird before Merlin. 

There are times Merlin hears a bird call I don't hear (which prompts me to try listening really, really hard. Half the time I still don't hear it).

There are times Merlin hears a bird call I don't hear until later in my walk and at another location. 

There are times Merlin makes a mistake, such as the catbird it identified as a red-eyed vireo and the yodeling female wood duck (which I later saw) identified as a killdeer.

There are times Merlin does not hear at all the sound I'm hearing.

Birders I've consulted on Facebook have been unanimous in saying Merlin is a less-than-perfect tool, and they never, EVER, report the birds the app "hears" and they don't. Rely on your experience, is their thinking. I agree. 

Merlin has its uses, just as the cellphone has its uses. The trick is knowing when to shut them off and go on with your life (or your birding).