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. 

Hawking

Here in New Jersey we have been given a gift this late August - cool, dry, breezy weather, more like September than late summer.

The cool air has inspired me to go outside and deadhead the spent flowers on the perennials in hopes there may be new bloom before winter. My peppers have started growing, at last. Leaves are falling off the apple and pear trees, and the dogwood has a hint of red in the leaves, even as its fruits are starting to form. The female locust tree in the front yard will have a bumper crop of seed pods this year, unfortunately, and when they fall they will have to be raked to the curb with the inevitable leaf piles.

Male Harlequin-you can hunt it in season.
(Margo D. Beller)

For now, however, I am thinking about migration.

There is still the occasional hummingbird visitor to the feeder. The adult males are long gone, the adult females are leaving and the juveniles are now big enough to feed and travel on their own. The rubythroated hummingbird I've been seeing of late seems to have a tinge of red on its "chin," making it a juvenile male. He perches and takes long drinks. With the accumulated fat he's building he'll soon be heading to the lush tropics for the winter. I hope he survives the trip.

Overhead, the clouds are moving from north to south. In the bird reports I see warblers and other migrating birds showing up in greater numbers on their way to their winter grounds. The north wind is a tail wind, and when September comes that means it will be time for me to look in the skies for southbound raptors.

Buteos such as redtail hawks, accipiters, falcons, harriers, vultures, eagles: When they fly south they use the warm air rising off mountains to help them stay aloft. So unlike the warm spring winds from the south, which don't seem to limit the hawks' flight patterns, in autumn the best place to see these birds is along mountain ridges. I enjoy the hawk watch from Scott's Mountain and have seen hawks from elsewhere in New Jersey, including New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary and from the front lawn of an office building in Englewood Cliffs, across the road from the Palisades and the Hudson River, which the hawks follow south.

Redtail hawk (Margo D. Beller)

The view of raptors from the top of Pennsylvania's Hawk Mountain, an extremely rugged hike each way, is awesome. No platform here, just jagged rocks. This was one of the many places where sportsmen would see how many hawks they could shoot out of the sky.

That doesn't happen anymore, at least officially. The outcry over such slaughter as well as the killing of birds such as great egrets for their feathers led to the passage of the 1918 Migratory Bird Act. No more raptor target practice. Birds such as grouse, woodcock, ducks and geese can be hunted, but only during limited times of the year and with a strict limit on how many you can kill, just as with the deer and bear.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: For over a century, wildlife conservation laws and regulations have been enacted to keep our bird populations healthy. As part of our mandate to conserve birds and their habitats, we administer the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamp Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. These acts are at the foundation of the Migratory Bird Program.

Hawk feathers (Margo D. Beller)

Among the artifacts in my museum of collected oddities are three feathers. I see, but don't usually collect, feathers all over my yard and from all kinds of birds. But these three feathers (at left) were found while I was hiking and for some reason I took them. From the pattern, it looks like they came from a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned hawk, presuming these are tail feathers, but I can't be sure. They are fascinating to study.

But was my taking them illegal? Under the law what happens when you kill, say, a Canada goose during hunting season? Can you collect its feathers for sale?

According to this site, created by a person who sells feather art, some situations are legal, some are not. One of my friends, who is handy with crafts, recently found feathers from a great blue heron that was preening in one of her trees. She is angry at what she sees as hypocrisy -- that she can shoot a bird for supper but can't use its feathers for art and commerce.

So she won't be hawking her wares anytime soon. I, meanwhile, will be waiting for autumn to come for real and the north winds bringing the great raptor push southward. Feathers will be flying.