'Dumb' Bird Watching

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.

'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.

'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.

Using 'dumb' technology
(RE Berg-Andersson)

I'm sure there are people out on this rainy morning looking for what migrants might still be around. But you won't find me going far from my porch.

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.

My Big Days

The annual World Series of Birding is on Saturday, May 9, this year. 

Ornithologist Ludlow Griscom and his protege, Roger Tory Peterson of the influential field guides, were among the first to popularize using binoculars rather than guns to study birds in the field. They were also among the first to popularize the concept of the Big Day.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

The Big Day is a sort of endurance test - how many different types of birds can a person see in a day. It is a very American thing to do to prove to others (and yourself) just how good you are in finding and identifying birds. Some Big Days take place in popular places such as New York's Central Park and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. Others can take place in your backyard.

Others take it to extremes, such as the three birders whose quest to see as many birds as possible in a year was made into a book and then a movie. Birding thus became another extreme sport instead of the walk in the park I enjoy. As I've said elsewhere, this isn't birding, it's listing. The bird's beauty is ignored, it is just a name ticked off on a chart.

Pete Dunne - not an ornithologist by his own admission - came up with the idea of marrying the Big Day with promoting citizen science. He called it the World Series of Birding, and it really took off when he got Roger Tory Peterson to come to Cape May, N.J., and ride with him and his team. 

The birds recorded during the World Series are reported to the organizations that study birds, including Cornell's Ornithology Lab and Audubon. This way they know which birds are thriving and where, and which are in decline.

But then nature- or conservation-oriented organizations realized a way to, in effect, cash in on the World Series in the name of citizen science. They asked people to donate funds based on how many birds the organizations' teams found, either per bird or in total. The funds would go to support the organizations' work. 

One example is the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, of which I am a member. I got the mailing below.

(Margo D. Beller)

The concept has become so popular the Cornell people expanded it to the world - literally. There is now a Global Big Day on the same day as the World Series of Birding.

As usual, this birder flies solo. I don't count the number of particular birds I find and I like to walk alone quietly. I avoid birding on the Saturday of the World Series because I don't want to run into teams of people rushing through with their checklists in an area where I am trying to bird.

However, early May is the height of northbound migration, when the birds are heading to their breeding territories. Now that I am retired I have the time to go out on a weekday morning and avoid the weekend birders. Thus I have been undergoing my own endurance test for the past two weeks, rising early most weekdays to visit some of my favorite places within easy driving distance (mindful of the rush hour traffic I will hit on the way home). 

One day is my own version of the "World Series of Birding" and it usually takes place in early May. That is when my husband (MH) drives us to the western edge of New Jersey, where the Delaware River flows, and we change places so I can slowly drive along Old Mine Road, an area of forest and high elevation. Many of the birds I want to see nest in this area and they all are singing as they proclaim their territories in preparation for mating and raising a brood. 

This place draws a large number of birds that would otherwise not be found elsewhere in New Jersey, as well as a large number of birders. 

A remnant of the former community on Old Mine Road
(RE Berg-Andersson)

There used to be homes along this road. But after too many floods the federal government decided there should be a dam across what is now Tocks Island. There was controversy over the dam, but unlike the fight to preserve Great Swamp from becoming an airport this fight was not successful for most of the people. They had to move, leaving their homes to be flooded.

Except the project was shelved in 1975, deemed too expensive. You can still see many of the abandoned homes, windows broken, covered in graffiti, on the verge of falling down like the barn shown above. (That picture is from a few years ago; as of May 4, 2026, more of the barn has come down). The homes of those who continued fighting to stay were grandfathered into the national park.

In summer people flock to this area where once there was a community to swim in the river or picnic. MH and I come before it gets too hot, buggy and crowded. During Covid, when very few federal parks were open, Old Mine Road was very popular. Lots were completely packed. At one the cars nearly spilled out into the road. 

That lot and several others are now blocked, no doubt because of erosion on the paths leading to the river that was caused by hundreds of pairs of feet.

Old Mine Road is where I do all the bad driving I accuse others of doing on the highways. Right hand on the wheel, left hand holding Merlin near the open window, stopping suddenly every time I hear something. MH knows I am going to do this and only grows testy when he wants me to pull over for the sandwiches I packed for lunch. 

Eventually, my stamina falters and I drive a little faster to get to the end. My head says to stop at every dirt path to hear what birds are around, but my body (and MH) tells me it is getting late. Five hours on one stretch of road goes by amazingly fast.

Near the end of the road we stop and MH takes over the driving.

Intrepid birder (me) on Old Mine Road a few years ago
(RE Berg-Andersson)

I enjoy all the birds I have found during these past two weeks, particularly the mornings after "big flight" nights when southwest winds and lack of rain brought thousands of birds northward. But finding the colorful challenges known as warblers is the main reason I go out in the early dawn hours in May.

This year at Old Mine Road the big search was for a Swainson's warbler - a bird of the south that prefers to stay low in brush where no one can see it. (I saw one - blink and you'll miss it - when we were in Florida in 2010.) We stopped at the stakeout but, as I expected, we allegedly "just missed it" because it was now deep in the brush off the road. But I heard something I had come to hear - the Cerulean warbler. As the name implies it is sky blue. It is also a bird, like too many others, whose population has declined due to habitat loss. 

Usually we are lucky if we can hear the buzzy trill of one Cerulean. This year we heard six. That made our trip a very Big Day for me. 

Birding as a Competition

On Saturday, May 10, hundreds if not thousands of New Jersey residents will rise and seek out as many birds as they can find. But this will not be the usual weekend during peak northbound migration when the warblers, vireos, tanagers, flycatchers and many, many others are passing through on their way to breeding territories.

(Margo D. Beller)

This day will be the World Series of Birding, started in Cape May, N.J., in 1984 by Pete Dunne and others as a charitable competition with the aim of finding as many birds as possible in a day and collecting money based on how much is pledged per bird. The winnings go towards bird habitat conservation.

There will be teams starting off at midnight and traveling from High Point at New Jersey's northwestern tip to Cape May in the south. There will be people sitting in one place and tallying what they see and hear. There will be yet others who travel to bird specific areas, such as my home county where Great Swamp, Troy Meadows and Jockey Hollow are located. They'll compete, raise money, then report their findings on eBird in the name of "citizen science."

No thanks.

Charitable as I try to be, I tend to avoid official competitions like this. Too many people zooming around, ticking off birds on a list and trying to find more birds than anyone else. It reminds me very much of the narrative of "The Big Year," a nonfiction book (later made into a movie) describing how three guys competed to get into the record books for seeing the most North American birds in a year. 

This is not birding, this is listing.

I admit to some competitive spirit. If I look at the eBird reports for my county and see things listed in places near me, I'll go out and try to find them - strictly for my satisfaction and not to report to eBird because I don't like counting how many birds I'm seeing. Like ticking off a list without looking at the birds for more than a second and a half, counting how many robins or whatever I'm finding detracts from my enjoyment of being outside with my binoculars.

I also admit to using the Merlin app, when I can get it working, to help me hear and/or identify some of the sounds I hear if they are not familiar to me. I have to take Merlin with more than a grain of salt because it is not always correct in its "suggestions."

World Series of Birding "Big Stay" team at Scherman
Hoffman, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I am a Luddite compared to others. Ever since Covid got people outside and noticing the singing birds, birding has become more popular. I am seeing more people when I go out. I am reading more posts on eBird. I wonder how they are finding the birds.

They have help.

We are far beyond the time when all you needed were binoculars and a pair of eyes (and maybe a spotting scope). Besides apps like Merlin there are social media feeds where someone finding a rarity can send out an alert and 100s of people will be at the spot in a matter of minutes. Gadget technology is big, too. Hang a bird feeder with a camera on it that connects to your phone and you can get information on what you are seeing with the push of a button. Field guides? That's so last century!

Every birding organization from magazines such as Birds and Blooms to the National Audubon Society will be more than happy to show you the latest gear including camera attachments, gloves that will allow you to use your phone's touchscreen without removing them and the most effective mosquito repellent.

To me this is a bit much. As I've written before, there are limits to technology.

In years past, when I've seen Pete Dunne in the field, he has his binoculars and his decades of experience to guide him. Too many newbies think they have to become instant experts. When I see them in the field, more often than not they are holding cameras with long lenses rather than binoculars. They are going off the path, bushwhacking, destroying habitat and risking tick bites. 

Pete Dunne at Scherman Hoffman, 2019
(Margo D. Beller)

I can be obsessed about birding at this time of year now that I have the time to rise most weekday mornings and travel to where I (and Merlin) can hear the birds that will soon either be gone or sitting quietly on nests. Seeing what Merlin heard and I didn't can be humbling. It makes me want to listen to the calls more often so I can learn them. In that, I am competing with myself.

So have fun with the World Series of Birding, fellow birders. Raise untold thousands of dollars. Find rarities that may be passing through the state on May 10.

I wish you all luck. But this birder will be back in the field on May 11.

Crossing Paths With Pete Dunne

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”  -- Stephen King

Pete Dunne was scheduled to be at the New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary yesterday, Sept. 19. I wasn't able to attend, anxious to do a lot of walking in the woods after a homebound work week. I wanted to find warblers making the trip south for the winter, not stand on a concrete porch in the middle of hundreds of people broiling in the cloudless sun and watch migrating raptors high aloft, listening for some insight from this man, the co-author of the seminal "Hawks in Flight" and a number of other books. 

Pete Dunne in 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I wasn't there, and there is a strong chance he didn't show up. However, I can still visualize the scene because I was there in 2012, and I saw the crowd and I saw his enjoyment in calling out what hawks were passing through and bestowing identification tips. I saw him patiently listen to all the birding stories and he even answered a question or two of mine, asked in my role as writer of the Scherman Hoffman blog.

However, in March 2013, Dunne had a stroke. In 2014, after much rehabilitation, he stepped down as head of the Cape May Bird Observatory, which he built from nothing to a major destination for anyone with a serious interest in finding and identifying birds. He has become NJ Audubon's "Birding Ambassador." 

He also stepped down as editor of New Jersey Audubon's magazine (in which I've had one article published and have another in production). In 2011, another time we crossed paths, I got his phone number and called the man, who cheerfully talked to me about what kind of articles they would publish, if I could come up with anything. He was encouraging but made no commitment.

I did not mention that phone call when I talked briefly to Dunne in 2012 on the Scherman hawk platform. He talks to a lot of people in the course of a given day. For the same reason, this past May I did not remind him of our previous conversations when MH and I spent a weekend in Cape May that happened to coincide with the day of the annual World Series of Birding -- an event Dunne helped create.

(I first crossed path with Dunne when a friend at work loaned me Dunne's 1986 book "Tales of a Low-Rent Birder." I had never heard of Dunne, and I was only starting to get interested in bird watching thanks to the feeder my brother-in-law and his wife had given us for a housewarming present in 1994.)

The Friday we drove to Cape May -- the southernmost point of New Jersey and a prime feeding spot for birds flying north after they cross Delaware Bay -- was our wedding anniversary. The next day was the WSB. That day we rose early (we had a lot of stops to make our one full day there) and went to Higbee Beach, a large piece of property, and arrived just as a tour bus was loading up with birders trudging out of the Higbee fields.

Pete Dunne, Scherman Hoffman hawk platform, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

"Looks like there's a Carolina wren in your future," said the tour leader as the little bird sang. Pete Dunne, of course, looking as energetic as if he had risen from a refreshing nap. No cane. No sign of the weakness in his left side. Dunne used to travel the state during the WSB from midnight to midnight with a group - at one point including another bright light of the birding universe, Roger Tory Peterson - but now he was sticking closer to home in Cape May, with a large tour group in a larger white bus.

MH and I got to Higbee no later than 7 am and here's Dunne's group just finishing their visit, heading on to one of Cape May's many other birding locations. They had to have started right at dawn, which means Dunne had to have gotten them in the bus no later than 5 am.

Pretty impressive. 

We saw a lot of very good birds on our own that day, and it was the best birding we did this past spring. (Spring migration was not very good in northern New Jersey, and autumn migration is shaping up to be as bad thanks, in part, to the drought.) I wouldn't have minded Dunne pointing out a bird I usually can't identify rather than a Carolina wren, one of my favorite birds and one I can identify in my sleep.

Yesterday's walk, meanwhile, yielded very little in the way of interesting birds aside from catbirds, a blue-gray gnatcatcher and five types of woodpeckers (mainly heard, although the pileated was seen, just barely, flying overhead). While not at a hawk platform we did have plenty of turkey and black vultures taking advantage of the hot, dry air to swoop and soar. We even had a broadwing hawk, seen from the Griggstown Grasslands, which we visited before getting to the Delaware & Raritan Canal. After our walk around the grassland we walked along the canal and back, about 3 miles. 

We got back to our car exhausted.

I bet up on that hot, sunny platform Pete Dunne didn't even break a sweat.

Birding in One Place

There are competitors who run marathons. Then there are those who sit to win.

New Jersey's World Series of Birding was Saturday, May 12, and unlike the baseball series this only lasts one day.

The Big Stay Team

At 7am on this particular Saturday, Scherman Hoffman sanctuary director Mike Anderson and his team were at their perch on the hawk watch observation platform high in the Bernardsville, N.J., hills. As the sun rose over the trees they had already seen or heard over 50 types of birds, an impressive total made more so if you know they had spent the night in sleeping bags on this platform, tallying what was out there starting at midnight.

The World Series of Birding is a charitable competition that began in Cape May in 1984 with the aim being to find as many birds as possible in a day and collecting money based on how much is pledged per bird. The winnings go towards bird habitat conservation.

Within the competition are divisions. Some of the most competitive teams run all day, from midnight to midnight. You need a reliable car and lot of people to see or hear a lot of birds in very short periods of time because these folks must zip from High Point in the northwest corner of the state to Cape May at the southern tip and as many places as they can hit in between. Before the day of competition they’ve already scouted locations and worked out their route for maximum birding in minimum time. NJ Audubon’s Cape May Observatory has such a marathon team, as does the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY, and many others from farther away. Many have corporate sponsorship. One winning NJ team included the famed Roger Tory Peterson, who helped them find 201 species in 24 hours, and that put the competition on the map.

But there are also teams that, while competitive, are not quite as gung-ho about it. One category is to bird only Cape May, which makes sense because the area has so many types of birds, both resident and passing through.

Some don’t even spend the whole day at it. Another small team out of Scherman Hoffman, led by Randy Little, left the sanctuary at 7 am. Their route took them through the Scherman Hoffman trails and into the neighboring Cross Estate, which is part of the federal Jockey Hollow park several miles away. By the time they got back at noon they had 61 birds and still weren’t done, heading out in two cars (after a brief rest back at the sanctuary) to bird parts of the nearby Great Swamp. They planned to finish at 3pm.

Black-throated green warbler, Scherman
Hoffman, May 12, 2012

Mike’s team was part of the Big Stay division, which means recording what you see and hear from one place, in this case the platform on the third floor of the visitor center.

Sitting is harder than you might think. You need a strong constitution, a comfortable chair and at least two people with good hearing as well as binoculars and scopes because one must verify the other’s findings for the birds to count. (What you really need is at least three so one can go to the bathroom while the others listen.) A sense of humor helps, too. It was cold that Friday night into Saturday morning, the platform was hard for sleeping and then the sun came out in a cloudless sky and the day got pretty hot, dry and breezy.

But there are payoffs.

The first bird recorded on the platform after midnight was a screech owl, the second a booming great horned owl. As the sun came up, the hungry migrants who needed to eat and rest from their journey north started hitting the trees and singing. The scarlet tanagers were easily scene; the Baltimore orioles (like the one pictured), black-throated blue warblers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, ovenbirds and great-crested flycatchers among those easily heard.

Then came quieter ones like the Cape May warbler, its call weak but its face striking, that showed up on the spruce branch at eye level with the platform. Or the magnolia warbler in the tall holly, which was seen as those on the platform (which now included visitors drawn by the prospect of a good birding day) were joking about being fooled yet again by a house sparrow. It quickly became all business as binoculars were raised and the holly raked over until just the tiniest bit of movement revealed the bird, which showed for a millisecond before flying to a tree farther away. Still, it counted.

Common birds are counted, too - cardinal, titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch, catbird, robin. This is probably one of the few times a house finch at the feeder or a flock of flying grackles or a lone starling are celebrated.


Baltimore oriole, Scherman
Hoffman, May 12, 2012

 Meanwhile, Randy’s team had made its way along the driveway and down to the river, finding a number of warblers including a rare (for the sanctuary) Wilson’s warbler plus other birds, some of whom will breed in the sanctuary. Up on the platform, the sitting team could not hear the calls of the Wilson’s warbler or the Louisiana waterthrush that shows up every year along the river trail because the leafed-out trees blocked the sound. But they could see the common loon and great blue heron that flew over.

It is like the blind men and the elephant. The perspective is different depending on where you are.

As Randy’s team kept moving, trying to find as many birds as their limited time allowed, Mike’s team had tallied 73 birds by 1:15 pm, including broad-winged and sharp-shinned hawks. The team had long ago shed their warm jackets and had switched from finding migrant songbirds to the daytime raptors taking advantage of perfect weather conditions to fly north.

Had Mike and his team - which won the Big Stay division last year with 80 - been out in the field, driving hither and yon, they might not have been as relaxed as they were (when birds weren’t sighted, of course) or as Randy’s small group were in their limited travels. To these people it was a competition but it was also an excuse to get out of the house and do something they enjoy.

Some people let the competition - ticking off the birds on a list - take over. Some people are nice, some can be jerks. Some will be helpful and point out a bird you might‘ve otherwise missed, others will ignore you when you ask what they’ve seen figuring they worked for it and so should you.

What can get lost, even in the World Series of Birding, is the birds themselves. Imagine, 73 different types of birds seen or heard just by sitting in one place. It could be you in your backyard if you were lucky and had the time or the inclination to just sit and listen.

Not many do.

The totals, as of 1:15 pm, May 12, 2012

We should be grateful there are events like the World Series of Birding to remind us that habitat, in New Jersey and elsewhere, is being obliterated by housing “developments,” utility lines and golf courses. The money earned by the Series winners will help preserve what land is left for the birds.

When the winners were announced the next day neither Mike’s nor Randy’s team won their divisions. The most birds seen in New Jersey in 24 hours were 207 - 207! - by a marathon group that included Pete Dunne, who was with that previous winning group featuring Roger Tory Peterson that had found 201 species.

The Big Stay division winner, with 80 species, was a N.J. Audubon team out of Atlantic County, on the ocean just north of Cape May County and where the Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, otherwise known as Brigintine, is located. Mike’s team ended up with 77.

So it goes.

Meanwhile, the birds continue their marathons north. The winners of this World Series get to create another generation for us to enjoy.