A Second Chance

Some people fall in love. Some fall from grace.

I just fall.

My glasses - frame and lens - survived the fall by flying off...
(Margo D. Beller)

I was on a cindered trail in the woods near my town's community garden yesterday morning when I left the trail to walk closer to the bordering marsh. I stepped over a small, downed tree. At least I thought I did. I conjecture my trailing foot caught the trunk and I suddenly found myself falling forward.

Glasses flew. So did my hat, stick and the phone. My binoculars were on me thanks to its harness. My notebook was in an overshirt pocket and held in place by a harness strap. It stayed in the pocket tho' the pen bent some of the pages.

First order of business - sit up. Wiggle toes and fingers. Raise arms. No broken bones though the little finger of my right hand had abrasions and hurt. No head pain, no blurred vision.

Next - find the glasses. No breakage. None on the phone or the binoculars.

So I'm OK. Now collect everything and stand up.

...but not before gashing the bridge of my nose.
(Margo D. Beller)

Once standing I walked a few steps, found my legs could work and I continued around the short path and back to the car. The bruising started to show up at home once I started icing my right hand, then my left knee, then my left wrist. I found a mosquito had taken advantage and bit my right hand, so anti-itch cream was applied. The glasses had gashed the bridge of my nose before flying off. The wound was washed and covered with a bandage.

This morning the pains are virtually gone thanks to eight hours of rest and an Advil. I can put my glasses, thankfully not bent, on my nose again.

The psychic pain will take a little longer to heal.

I was lucky the fall was on ground, which gives a bit more than cement. I was lucky no bones broke, that I could get home. I've had other falls, and I feel blessed to have yet another second chance at life. The older you get, the less that is a given. 

Things could've been a whole lot worse and I was happy to rise early this morning and sit on my patio, listening to the dawn chorus with Merlin.

(RE Berg-Andersson)

Yes, Merlin is getting a second chance, too.

Besides not knowing where my legs were when I stepped over the tree, I might've been distracted by my phone. Last week I was at the Great Swamp very early and was frustrated at hearing things I could not identify. I decided to try Merlin again, for the first time since May. I found there had been some changes to the app and it seems to run much better, tho' I have not downloaded the database that would be necessary if I was birding in an area with no cellphone connection. 

On the trail Merlin was finding an Eastern peewee, a bird whose very high, thin call I can't hear unless I am literally under the bird. I was trying to find where the bird was to hear it. Eventually, I did. But that was after the fall. I don't remember if I was looking at the phone when I fell but it was definitely in my hand, not a pocket, which might've saved it from damage.

Merlin and I will be birding the backyard, carefully, for the foreseeable future.

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.

How I Became So 'Smart'

I have friends who believe I was born with the knowledge of being able to determine one bird from another. They are amazed when I hear a cardinal singing or a chickadee making its gurgling call and know what it is.

I tell my friends I was not born with this knowledge. It has come from many, many years of listening, looking for the bird that makes the sound and then studying my various books and recordings.

My eyes on the world. (Margo D. Beller)

In short, I get out there. They do not.

When I first started seeing birds at my first feeder I consulted one of my husband's (MH) books published by Readers Digest. It listed "North American Wildlife" including birds as well as trees, flowering plants and just about everything I could see in my immediate area in simple language and with pictures of flowers, leaves and seeds.

I called this book "The Idiot's Guide" because that is what I was at the time. It has gone through many editions since the one I used because birding and getting out into nature has become very big, especially since the coronavirus pandemic.

My second book was one I found at the old New Jersey Audubon bookstore at Scherman Hoffman, "Birds At Your Feeder." This has been very helpful in identifying birds, what foods they prefer and what predators they face. This has also gone through many editions.

Over time my library has expanded, enough to fill a small bookcase. Along with bird identification books MH has bought guides on mammals, fish, birding behavior and other related subjects. In time I discovered the "Birds of" series by Stan Tekeila and bought the ones for New Jersey and New York. These books listed the birds by color. So if I saw a yellow bird I could look at the yellow-tabbed pages and see if it was a goldfinch or an evening grosbeak. I'm sure there is a guide for every state.

Then I found a used copy of the "Stokes Field Guide to Birds" for the east. Like the Tekeila it had photographs of the birds as well as information on whether a particular warbler liked to stay high in the tree or lower. It had range maps. It was a soft paperback I could carry. (I later bought a used copy of the western bird edition and read it on the plane while I headed to California for a family occasion.)

Then came David Sibley's guide, and that showed me illustrations of birds in flight, birds in breeding plumage, young birds and birds in nonbreeding plumage. Sibley's guide covers the entire U.S. and I started lugging that book with me everywhere I went, wearing out the binding. This has not only gone through more editions but you can now also buy separate west or east bird guides - just like Peterson. (All these publishers of bird guides seem to copy one another. For instance, after Sibley came out a Peterson guide came out covering the continent.)

My go-to guides over the years
(Margo D. Beller)

Finally, if I see something and can't find it in Sibley I turn to Richard Crossley's guide to eastern birds, in which he took pictures of birds in various plumages and grouped them within a picture of suitable habitat. This volume, a paperback like the Sibley, is much larger and so is left at home to consult after I return. If I see something in dim light, I look at the pictures here and hope for the best.

Sibley, Tekeila, Stokes and Crossley have made a lot of money with their guides and other books and products (recordings, for instance). So has the man who revolutionized bird study. No longer did someone have to shoot a bird to study the field marks. Roger Tory Peterson came up with a way to illustrate identifying bird fieldmarks using binoculars, and put that information into a small book that can be easily carried out in the field.

It was the third edition, done in 1947, that is considered the "classic" Peterson guide to eastern birds. There are now many more editions of that guide plus guides to western birds, British birds, insects, etc.

MH gave me his beat-up copy of the 1947 edition, which I consult on occasion. But because MH is a compulsive book buyer and wanted me to have enough information for me to be as smart as two people, he found for me a facsimile edition of Peterson's first guide and a special 50th anniversary edition of the 1947 version done up in gilt-edged pages and black and gold cover. 

1947 Peterson (Margo D. Beller)

None of these volumes leave the house.

By studying these and other books I got to know what to look for when I see and hear birds. Like anything else, if you are interested in something and want to learn about it you gain knowledge. There is nothing magic about it. 

Although there is the one friend who went birding with me and now believes I can see things others don't, which may be true. I am so attuned to hearing little sounds and seeing movement in trees and shrubs that I find the birds. I can see partial field marks and be confident in my identification thanks to many decades of doing this.

I amaze myself some days. But I'm no expert.

The Ladies Who Sing

It is finally spring. Trees are leafing out. The daffodils are at their peak. The lawn has greened, the lawn services are out and the pollen is flying.

And there is birdsong, lots of birdsong. As light comes into the sky the dawn chorus begins - robins, cardinals, titmice, song sparrows.

This is my favorite time of the year. At any moment a migrating bird may stop in my yard to visit the feeders or hunt for insects in the trees and shrubs. The light comes into the sky around the time I wake up and by the time I get outside the birds are singing.

The other morning I was outside with my coffee, listening to the dawn chorus. There was a cardinal singing particularly close by and for once I wanted to watch him sing. I walked along the path to get a better look and stopped when the song seemed to come above me in the apple tree. But where was the distinctive red male cardinal?

Female cardinal (Margo D. Beller)

There was no male. The singer was the brown female, whose dull coloring allowed her to blend into the bare tree branches near the very top rather well. 

I had been fooled, but I'm sure I am not the only one who has made that mistake.

Here is the common thinking about birds: The males, brightly colored to attract a mate, do the singing to either draw a female or defend its chosen territory, its song warning other males of its type to stay away. The duller females mate, choose a nest site, then build the nest for the eggs she will incubate.

But that thinking is wrong, I've learned. Female cardinals sing just as often and as loud as their male counterparts. It turns out female birds of quite a few species do, too.

How have we managed to miss all these female singers? There are a number of reasons, some of them literally man made.

I did some research and it turns out the study of female birdsong has been increasing, and there have been quite a few articles on this very topic.

One problem with knowing if a female is singing: It is hard to tell the male from the female of many types of birds. For instance, I can't tell if the titmouse singing "peter, peter, peter" in my tree is a male or not because the males and females look alike. They are the same size and color. Some singing birds have only the most subtle difference in shading, such as the black head of the male robin and the dark gray head of the female. 

Male or female titmouse?
(Margo D. Beller)

Another problem: There have not, historically, been a lot of studies of birds beyond those of temperate zones in the U.S. Most of the birds that have been studied come north in the spring and go south for the winter. But there are many more birds, just starting to be studied, that stay in those South American rain forests and jungles and do not migrate because they have all the food they need. These female birds sing all the time, to protect territories or draw a mate. (Of course, there is an even greater universe of birds living and migrating in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.)

According to what I found on the Cornell Ornithology Lab site, a 2016 study pointed out that in a sample of more than 1,000 songbird species from around the world, 64% had females that sing. Many tropical species and some temperate-zone species, such as female cardinals, "sing regularly; while others sing during specific parts of the breeding season," according to Cornell.

Take the song sparrow. A 1943 - yes, that far back - study by Margaret Morse Nice, found female song sparrows sing early in the breeding season, mainly to warn other females away. But she also found female singers among temperate-zone birds including northern mockingbirds, Baltimore and Bullock’s orioles, white-crowned sparrows, European starlings, cedar waxwings and house finches.

To me that is impressive - her study covered nine years of observations - because in many of these birds the males and females look identical.

Both of these birds will sing very
sweetly for you, if you have ears to listen.
(Margo D. Beller)

That study is impressive to me for another reason - it's a woman doing the research. Bird research, as in most of the scientific fields, has been a male domain. Most of the researchers have been men and, back in the day, not many of them were interested in traveling outside the United States and were even less interested in dull females, much less whether they could sing. As in so many areas of our western patriarchal society, gender bias determined what we all believed.

That, however, has been changing, slowly. 

Here is a sampling:

The Auk, now known as Ornithology, is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Ornithological Society. The society was formed in 1884! This is the place for people who go far beyond Sunday birding, the (mainly) men who make the rules as to taxonomy and other fine details of birds and their lives. Even here you'll find a study on female birdsong, complete with abstract, figures and tables, and references.

Femalebirdsong.org goes further: This site provides actual female birdsong calls and gives you a way to be a Citizen Scientist and gather even more data. There are also links to articles on the topic of female birdsong.

The Female Songbird Project is another a Citizen Science initiative.

Audubon: The granddaddy of bird preservation organizations puts the spotlight on a study "tackling the gender and geographical skew in avian song research."

But wait, there's more: Do a google search of "female birdsong." You'll find all sorts of other articles from mainstream publications including Scientific American and the Washington Post.

If you take away anything from this blog post, it should be to keep your mind open as well as your ears and eyes. Or, to quote Abigail Adams, who in many ways was far ahead of her time, remember the ladies.

I'm No Expert

There are as many opinions as there are experts.

 -- U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 

Among my friends I am the bird expert. Some even refer to me as the "Bird Lady" (including my husband). When they see a bird they don't recognize they call or send me an email about it. My response is usually the same. If they don't tell me what color or size the bird is I ask about it. Then I get more specific. Where were you when you saw it? What was the bird doing? Was it on the ground or in a tree or flying? Did it make a sound? What did it sound like? Was it bigger than a robin or smaller?

Downy woodpecker, smaller than a hairy, with
dainty bill. (Margo D. Beller)

From the answers I get I run through my head whether I've seen or heard anything similar. If I recognize it from my many, many years of bird watching, I respond with the answer. If not, I start looking in my various field guides, including those by David Allen Sibley (birds of the entire U.S., with his excellent drawings), Richard Crossley (birds of the eastern U.S., with his pictures where he has juxtaposed dozens of shots on a background of habitat) or, if I'm really stumped, Roger Tory Peterson's guide to eastern birds (the 1947 edition; there are many newer editions, but the 1947 is considered by birders to be the best of them). There are others I can consult but these three are the ones I use first.

Then I provide the answer to my friends and continue my reputation as the resident bird expert.

But, truth be told, there is a great deal I still don't know or understand. I know just enough about bird anatomy to get by. MH and I go out in the field and every so often I see a bird I don't recognize, or hear an unfamiliar call. I quickly note the field markings in my notebook, or create a kind of schematic diagram of the call. Then, once home, I pull out the field guides and/or start listening to the CDs of bird songs. And yet, there are times I still can't identify the bird.

I still don't know what this bird is, tho' it may be an immature starling.
I saw it at a grassland park in NJ. (Margo D. Beller)

I do know why birds migrate (to find food and/or a mate and form a nest to create young), although I don't know why certain birds, when finished breeding in the arctic tundra, fly farther south for the winter than others (including the red knot and the blackpoll warbler). Or why the white-throated sparrow only flies as far south as my yard for the winter.

I have much improved my identification skills over the years, but it took me a decade to see a bird on my house feeder and know whether it is a male house finch (red head, weak chin, a common feeder bird) or a male purple finch (raspberry-colored head, slightly larger, purple "eyebrow," an uncommon feeder bird). It helps if a female is nearby because the brownish female purple finch has a bold white eyebrow. The female house finch doesn't.

Female purple finch with her distinctive
eyebrow. (Margo D. Beller)

It also took a very long time - longer than one would think for an "expert" - to know the difference between a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker. The hairy is obviously larger but if one is making its way up a tree that isn't immediately apparent.

You could look at the white outer tail feathers and see if there are spots (downy) or not (hairy), which to me are not that easy to see, even with binoculars. Their calls are similar, tho the hairy's call seems to me slightly higher in pitch and a bit more throaty. (That took a while to learn, too.) A downy would fly to the suet feeder and its bill would seem longer and I'd wonder if it was a hairy. But then a hairy would come to the suet and I'd know it by its size and a bill as long as its head. Eventually that bill, and the bird's size against the feeder, helped me learn the difference.

Still, there are some things that are beyond me.

For instance, how do the birds determine who goes first at the feeder? I understand why something small like a titmouse would take off if a much larger (and ferocious) jay swooped in, but why would one titmice fly to the top of the feeder and wait for another to take a seed before hopping down and taking its own? 

Male junco, one of Deborah Whittaker's
favorite subjects. (Margo D. Beller)

That leads to another question: How do birds tell each other apart? How does the titmouse at the feeder know when another titmouse approaching the feeder is not from its family group and thus chases it away? More important, how does one titmouse know another titmouse is of the opposite sex? There is nothing to tell a male titmouse from a female titmouse, from my perspective (the same is true of other birds including their cousin the blackcapped chickadees and the house wrens that visit the nest box every year). They are the same color, the same shape, the same size. And yet they must know or else we wouldn't have titmice every year.

I recently read a book, "The Secret Perfume of Birds: Uncovering the Science of Avian Scent" (by Deborah J. Whittaker) that provided some answers. From her experiments (particularly with the common winter visitor to my yard, the junco) she learned birds give off chemical signals that influence choices on mates, where to build a nest, when to fight and when to fly off. Her research found those chemicals are produced by bacteria that manufacture scents in the oil that birds stroke on their feathers when preening, or cleaning dirt out of their feathers. 

Titmouse. I have no idea if this is a male
or a female. (Margo D. Beller)

Whittaker spent years doing experiments to find this out. This was not something she could learn by sitting on her back porch watching the feeder birds, wondering about all sorts of things as I do.

Still, I am considered the "expert," even after I tell my friends they can find their answers themselves by searching on the internet or in a field guide (we frequently give pocket-sized guides as gifts). It is easier to just ask me.

I don't know if I should consider that a sign of respect or laziness. At least we still keep in touch. 

Incidental (Bird) Music

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
               --Ram Dass

In an average day, we are bombarded with a lot of noise, even in this time of coronavirus. As I work from home this summer I have a fan on and the windows closed, not just to keep the hot and humid air out and move the drier, slightly cooler air around, but to keep out the annoying noise from lawn service mowers, edgers and blowers; the roar of airplanes; the screams of children. I will likely have the radio on, too, hoping the classical music will counteract whatever stress remote work is inducing. Downstairs, MH will have the television on, scanning the news channels.

Sitting on my mother-in-law's deck, I could hear a common loon
calling from some distance away. Note the great blue heron
towards the center of this picture. (Margo D. Beller)

Unfortunately, this noise blocking also keeps out something I wouldn't mind hearing more of, the birdsong.

This is why I go out early in the morning to my porch where, despite needing a fan when it is particularly humid, I can hear birds as they go about their business. But the dawn chorus, when I can rouse myself to go out to hear it, is not as frenetic as before because the birds have long ago chosen their territories, built their nests and raised their young. If I'm lucky, I'll hear the chatter of young birds chasing after their parents and begging for food, or see a hummingbird come to the feeder for the energy she'll need to hunt insects and bring them back to her feed her young.

I call this incidental birding.

We traveled recently, to get away from the headlines and visit family in New England. Along the way I was amazed how many birds I heard from the car when we were driving the back roads. This should not have surprised me. Many years before, on a busy main street in Chicago, I heard something, crossed the street and found a goldfinch atop the traffic light. How had I heard this? Simple - I had trained myself to listen and listen hard because more times than not I have to use my ears rather than my eyes when I am out in the field once the trees leaf out.

This was one of the easier paths we followed, to a
marsh. We heard lots of birds along it. (Margo D. Beller)

So on our New Hampshire trip, with really working that hard at it, I heard many of the warblers that had passed through my neighborhood months before on their way to their breeding areas here: black and white, prairie, Blackburnian, to name a few. In a way this is more interesting birding than going out with the intent of finding birds because of the element of surprise. "What was that?" I think as I hear a snippet of bird call. "Was that what I thought it was?" One such snippet rattled around in my brain until I realized I'd heard a common loon. I'd like to think I am correct in my guessing because I have been listening - really listening - to birds for a long time.

Too often we are caught up in our own little worlds, especially now when, if the heat and humidity and hurricanes don't keep you inside, the fear of being infected with a virus does. Even before we'd ever heard of COVID-19 people have created their own soundscape by blaring their car radios or traveling with earbuds. blocking the outside world. After decades of putting up with cell phone conversations and the screeching of commuter trains and subways, it is a blessing for me to hear as little as possible for as long as I can.

When I sit on my porch - before the lawn services and the office Zoom meetings - and hear something - a robin, say, or downy woodpecker - I consider myself lucky. I sit with my coffee and enjoy the silence of the early morning, punctuated with the occasional chipping sparrow, flicker or catbird. I don't need "mindfulness" or other types of meditation, I just listen to what is or isn't going on around me. A hummingbird is a revelation. A catbird is a prayer. A cardinal is the world telling me it hasn't all gone to hell.

In short, it's my way of coping.

The Washington Sea-Eagle, and other Audubon Mysteries

A friend recently gave me an interesting gift. She does volunteer work for a nearby university that periodically sells old books to raise funds. These books (and videos) are donated. One such donation was a jacketless, hard-backed volume with "DAMAGED COPY" scrawled across the cover.

It was destined for the garbage when my friend looked at the title and saved it, thinking I might find it interesting.

I do indeed. This volume, not damaged at all, as far as I can see, is a facsimile of the first two volumes of John James Audubon's "The Birds of America."

Washington's sea-eagle (photographed by Margo D. Beller from Volume 1 of "The Complete
Audubon" published by the National Audubon Society.)

Audubon's original "Birds of America" was an "elephantine" folio - 435 life-sized (and thus extremely large) hand-printed portraits. Quite an effort that took years to finish. The pictures were sold by subscription but they were expensive to produce and so were costly to buy. Audubon, who'd failed as a businessman before turning to painting, knew a smaller edition would be a less-costly alternative. Seven volumes, containing 500 plates, were published in 1844. Audubon supervised the first edition. He died in January 1851.

For the 75th anniversary of the National Audubon Society (founded in 1905), Volair Ltd., the publisher, cut the number of volumes reproduced in 1978-79 down to five. According to the Preface, to "make this edition more compact and thus more manageable, each of the five volumes contains two of Audubon's volumes within a single binding. Not a single color plate has been omitted, not a word of text has been deleted from these timeless American classics."

So I have volumes 1 and 2. Within are some of my favorite birds and a few mysteries.

Many of the birds' names are not much changed now than they were in Audubon's time. The "Wilson's Flycatching-Warbler" is what is now the Wilson's Warbler. The Black-throated Green Wood-Warbler has lost "wood" from its name. The Mourning Ground-Warbler has lost ground and the Nashville Swamp-Warbler has lost the swamp.

Some of the birds go by different names now. The Short-Billed Marsh Wren is now the Sedge Wren. The White-bellied Swallow is now the Tree Swallow. Why the Cliff Swallow was also known as the Republican Swallow I can't imagine. The Traill's Flycatcher has been split into the Alder and Willow flycatchers. The American Redstart is listed with the flycatchers because of its similar habit of darting out to catch a flying insect and then going back to its perch. Now it is considered a warbler.

The buteos, now called "hawks," were called buzzards then so Volume 1 contains Red-tailed buzzards and Rough-legged buzzards, for instance.

Audubon's lifelike rendering of the Common Buzzard
(photographed by Margo D. Beller from the anniversary edition)

But then I find the "Common Buzzard." Audubon says the figure in the drawing above was shot (by someone else) by the Columbia River. I mentioned this to MH and he, in his methodical way, found the National Audubon Society, which has reproduced all the plates on its website, believes this to be a Swainson's Hawk because the entry includes a link to that page in the field guide. (William John Swainson was a British ornithologist who lived from 1789-1855 but he was not the one who named the hawk. To find out who did, click here.)

For me the biggest mystery, literally and figurative, is Haliaetus Washingtoni, the Washington Sea-Eagle.

According to Audubon, who said he first saw one of these in 1814, the adult male he painted is 3 feet 7 inches (42 inches) long with a 10-foot wingspan. That's a major-league bird! (By contrast, the wingspan of a bald eagle is between six and 7.5 feet and it sits 30 to 32 inches tall.) Few had seen this bird or even knew of its existence at the time he finally shot one to paint two years later. He decided he had discovered a new species and so named it for George Washington because, in his words, "as the new world gave me birth and liberty, the great man who ensured its independence is next to my heart...If America has reason to be proud of her Washington, so has she to be proud of her great Eagle."

The eagle looks Washingtonian (George was 6 feet 2 inches, much taller than the average man of his day), sitting tall and noble. The mystery, however, is if it ever existed.

According to the popular website Mental Floss, it didn't take long before "other naturalists began to question whether the bird was really a distinct species. [Audubon] was accused of taking sloppy measurements of his specimen and overstating the physical differences between his bird and other species. Washington’s eagle, as a species, was quickly discredited among scientists, the consensus being that the bird was either a misidentified bald eagle or a hoax and publicity stunt. Just a few years after Audubon’s death in 1851, the journal American Naturalist called it a valid species only among 'amateur ornithologists.'”

A black-throated green warbler by any other name is just
as nice.  (Margo D. Beller)

Could Audubon have misidentified, perhaps, a very large first-year eagle (immature eagles show no white)? British zoologist Dr. Karl Shuker, writing on his blog, points out Audubon had seen more than enough bald eagles and golden eagles in his travels to know something unusual when he saw it, especially a much bigger bird. Shuker goes into a lot of detail about the controversy over this bird and how others, including some in more modern times, claim to have seen one.

"Needless to say, of course, this is all highly speculative (especially with no apparent palaeontological support for such a bird)," he writes. "And yet...every so often, a report comes along that makes me wonder, what if?"

So on this day when we once celebrated George Washington's birthday, let us raise a toast to this majestic eagle, hope it wasn't overhunted into extinction and be thankful Audubon memorialized it.

Rediscovering Where I'm From

New York is an enjoyable city to walk in if you have comfortable shoes, keep an eye out for wheeled and human traffic and don't mind the babble around you of many different languages from people talking into their phones.

I was born in New York, specifically the borough of Brooklyn. To us, Manhattan was "the city." It is where you went to work. It is where you went to leave home and become independent. It is where you went to see a Broadway show or visit a museum or other attraction. Lately, it has become a place to occasionally find unusual birds.

House sparrow pair, Central Park (Margo D. Beller)

After many years working from home in New Jersey, I now work in Manhattan. Last time I was on the west side of midtown. Now I am on the east side, which has a completely different vibe.

I am rediscovering this city. As when I was a child taking the subway in from Brooklyn with my mother, I find myself looking up at the top of the very tall buildings to see the decorated parts you can't otherwise see from ground level.

One such day I was heading east toward the area of the United Nations. Before crossing the street I looked north along Lexington Ave. and up at a colorful skyscraper that was not a glass box or a so-called pencil building. A dark figure sat atop the tower. At first I thought it was a redtailed hawk, maybe the famous Pale Male or one of his many progeny. But later it occurred to me it could've just as easily been a peregrine falcon, a raptor I've seen atop many a skyscraper or bridge, using these man-made structures as its more usual cliff top.

Unfortunately, I had no binoculars with me to know for sure what I was seeing. However, any raptor would have an easy time picking off pigeons, squirrels or rats in some of the city's park areas, including that oasis of green in the midst of concrete, Central Park.

Past Central Park pond visitor - male wood duck (at top)
with mallards (Margo D. Beller)

One day I walked north on Fifth Ave. in midtown, relieved the holiday tourists finally went home. I had no particular place to go, just a desire to stretch my legs and get some air after being in the office in the morning. At noon, church bells rang from St. Patrick's and, up the block, St. Thomas. They were generally ignored but I stepped to the side and listened as the lunch-hour workers and visitors rushed past me, the high-end retailers and those trying to get a handout.

What does this have to do with birds, you might wonder.

I had not planned on visiting Central Park but it was such a nice day and I was so eager to rediscover this city of my birth that I continued up Fifth Ave. until the retailers gave way to expensive hotels and apartments and there was the park. The mood changed and the pace slowed. I looked in the trees and saw pigeons and starlings, two of the three most common birds seen in Manhattan along with house sparrows. I knew I was near the Pond at the park's southern end, so I walked over to see if anything unusual was around.

Pigeons, Central Park (Margo D. Beller)

In winters past one of my favorite ducks, the colorful wood duck, has been there, hanging with the usual mallards and Canada geese. One notable year, a Mandarin duck was at the Pond and became such a sensation people created a Twitter feed and a website about it. Mandarins are colorful and New Yorkers have always gone ga-ga over colorful celebrities in their midst.

However, during my visit there were no colorful creatures. There was a great blue heron watching for lunch from a branch low over the water at the edge of the Hallett Sanctuary, an area of the park kept locked except for small, restricted tours. In the water were a couple of American coots, black and white birds that might look like ducks but are actually related to more chicken-like birds such as rails, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab. Although they will hang out in ponds with ducks, their feet are not webbed. Instead, according to Cornell, "each one of the coot’s long toes has broad lobes of skin that help it kick through the water. The broad lobes fold back each time the bird lifts its foot, so it doesn’t impede walking on dry land, though it supports the bird’s weight on mucky ground."

Central Park carriages, where a cardinal flew across. (Margo D. Beller)

It stunned me to find the coots, but I should not have been surprised. Central Park is known for the unusual birds that pass through on their way north or south, depending on the time of year. It would've been easy for me to just keep walking and looking for more interesting birds while ignoring the many people visiting the park and its attractions including the nearby zoo, or walk farther up Fifth Avenue and see if Pale Male is still around. 

Unfortunately, my lunch time away from work is limited so on that day I restricted myself, noting the mourning dove with the pigeons, the white-throated sparrows with the house sparrows and the calling male cardinal that flew over the line of horse-drawn carriages waiting for fares. 

The park isn't going anywhere and, for now, neither am I. I'll be back.

Summing Up My Life List

With the new year fast approaching, I was thinking about all the unusual birds I was able to see this year.

Life list (Margo D. Beller)

Every serious birder keeps a "life list" of birds seen, from the humble to the rare. As life lists go, mine is rather small - 352 - for someone who has sought out birds for more than a decade. Much of my list includes the birds we see every day but this year I was able to see a record (for me) high of four "new" birds because I had the time to do it. I was irregularly employed this year, and when I did work it was from home. So it was easy to make the time (tho' not always so easy to get MH to join me).

It seems every year a number of birds not found in my part of the world show up, either blown off course by strong winds or a bad sense of direction.

My life list is a photocopy of the list at the end of the 1947 edition of Roger Tory Peterson's guide to finding eastern birds. This is still considered by many to be the best birding guide ever published because it introduced Peterson's system of identifying field marks. But in 1947 many birds had different names and since then new birds were "created" when the birding bigwigs decided to split what had been one species into two or more (or vice versa). On my list I've also added many western birds I've seen in my travels. Several of my "new birds" this year are ones I realized I had not added when I first saw them: The Wilson's storm petrel and the pomarine jaeger seen from a whalewatch boat out of Gloucester, Mass., were numbers 350 and 351. My list has become so marked up and confusing (my photo is of the front page, not the marked-up back page) I've had to transfer the information to a bound volume MH bought me for that purpose, which is how I discovered the omissions.

I can go many years between finding "life birds." For instance, I saw No. 344, a Connecticut warbler, in October 2013, and No. 345, a roseate spoonbill, in May 2018. It was not for lack of trying. Many times we've gone to where a rarity was reported only to be disappointed, such as the boreal chickadee we were told we had just missed at the feeders of the Merrill Creek reservoir in March.

It was in December 2018 my employment became irregular, and that is how I was able to leave home and find these birds originally found by others:

No. 346 was a female Barrow's goldeneye, a western duck discovered at Merrill Creek. We traveled there on a very cold day in March 2019 for the duck and the boreal chickadee. The duck turned out to be easier thanks to the sun spotlighting the duck's round, brown head and yellow bill, and the arrival of Henry Kielblock, the founder of the Scott's Mountain hawkwatch located at that very parking lot. He had driven up to see the duck, pointed it out to us and then realized who we were (we visit this hawkwatch at least once a year in the fall). After he drove off, a pair of redhead ducks flew in, an unexpected bonus.

"Black-Headed Grosbeak" by jamesbadger is licensed under CC BY 2.0

No. 347 was a black-headed grosbeak, another western bird, reported at a feeder not too far from my home. Many had already seen and photographed it by the time I drove over in April. I learned that when you "stake out" a bird, bring a chair. I had not, but a kind man who had driven up with his wife from central Jersey gave me his seat as we waited from the top of the homeowner's driveway. We were soon joined by others. It was 45 minutes before I looked up and saw the bird's black head and orange breast (the file photo above is of a female, notable for the wide white "eyebrow"). It never came down to the feeder and I had a bad case of "warbler neck" but after watching it for 10 minutes I left satisfied.

No. 348 was a Henslow's sparrow that came from the midwest to the sprawling grassland preserve known as Negri-Nepote. Grasslands are in decline as they are built upon for housing developments, office parks and warehouses. Many had seen the Henslow's sitting in a particular shrub singing away, but when we walked out to the area on a very hot July 6 we almost missed it - it was hunkered down atop a different shrub nearby and not singing as it tried to stay out of the way of several redwinged blackbirds. But I saw the identifying field mark - a dark spot near the eye - and that would have to do.

No. 349 was an upland sandpiper, another bird in decline because of decreasing grasslands. On Aug. 24 we followed the directions given in the various bird reports and parked at the Burlington County (NJ) fairgrounds. There were already several people there, one with a spotting scope. I scanned the area with binoculars but only found a large number of killdeers. The man motioned us over and showed us the upland sandpiper. He then pointed out a couple of sanderlings (usually found on beaches), a pectoral sandpiper and a golden plover. We've often found birds thanks to the kindness of strangers.

The last of the new birds, No. 352, was a Nelson's sparrow on Oct. 12. The Nelson's is one of those birds created when the birding bigwigs decided to split the sharp-tailed sparrow into two types, the Nelson's and the saltmarsh. Both look very much alike. I had seen saltmarsh sparrows in a marsh in southern Maine years ago but was never completely sure if that's what they were. That changed when I found the Nelson quite by accident as I trailed MH hurrying (for him) back to our car as we were completing the Liberty Loop trail near the Wallkill River at the NJ-NY border. When I am seeking birds I walk far slower than MH with his gimpy knees, and as I was approaching the last curve something flew up and looked at me from the top of a shrub. It had a lot of yellow-orange in its face and neck, so I knew this was an unusual bird. I looked in my books and realized I had finally seen a Nelson's, which can be found at freshwater marshes.

There are birds I seek out every year but this year I found a number of birds I haven't seen in years - blue grosbeak, Tennessee warbler, least flycatcher - on trips I took alone to places relatively close by. That was when I would be restless because of my underemployment and needed to get out to give my days a sense of purpose.

But now I have a new job that takes me away from home, and my birding time is again limited to weekends. I'll have to make the most of the time I have.

The Fish Hawk

The habits of this famed bird differ so materially from those of almost all others of its genus, that an accurate description of them cannot fail to be highly interesting to the student of nature. 

-- John James Audubon

Osprey with menhaden, Cattus island, April 13, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

There are times you must leave your home territory if you are going to spread your wings, as it were, and broaden your horizons. Now that the spring northbound migration is in full swing, I have been following a pattern of going myself to local bird spots and then traveling farther afield with MH. But with his knees, I am limited in where we can go. 

So it was I consulted one of my hiking books and found a reference to Cattus Island, which hasn't been an island for a very long time but a peninsula that juts into Barnegat Bay in Tom's River, NJ.

Osprey by John James Audubon

The land was originally a nearly 500-acre tract granted to Gawen Drummond, a Scotsman, in 1690. It changed hands over the years and was bought by county officials in 1973 for a bit under $3 million. Apparently there were plans to put in campsites, but there was so much vandalism to some of the original buildings on the property that this plan was shelved. Perhaps ballfields and other recreational sites? Luckily, that didn't happen either.

Instead, the land was left for "passive" recreation - aka walking. An environmental center was built and trails were blazed. 

Those trails are flat and travel through different types of habitat, making it perfect for MH's knees and my desire to see birds in an area, Ocean County, that is some distance south from my home area and thus closer to northbound birds. Also, the types of birds I would see would be shore birds such as herons, egrets and ducks. 

As it turns out, we saw far more than that because Cattus Island is known for its many successful osprey nests. There are 10 nests on the property and each was occupied by a pair. 

One of the many Cattus Island osprey nests (Margo D. Beller)

Among raptors, osprey are unique. They only eat fish, hence their nickname of "fish hawk," and will dive into the water to catch their prey. They are such good hunters, lazier hunters such as the bald eagle will frequently harass it into giving up the meal. That didn't happen on our trip because we saw no eagles. In fact, aside from an American kestrel, the smallest of the falcons, osprey were the only raptors we saw over the property.

The other shore birds found included great and snowy egrets plus some we hadn't seen in years: little blue heron, green heron, Louisiana (tricolored) heron (ironically, the more commonly seen great blue heron was apparently not around.) There was a huge raft of bufflehead ducks (with some greater scaup) on the calm waters of Silver Bay but out in the choppier waters of Barnegat Bay were long-tailed ducks and two types of scoters, black and surf. We didn't lack for land birds either: the woods provided us with bluebirds, brown creeper, blue-gray gnatcatchers, Carolina wren, four types of woodpeckers and a towhee. There were also warblers: pine and myrtle, which I expected, and an orange-crowned, which I did not.

Osprey hovering before diving for supper (Margo D. Beller)

But the fish hawks were the biggest thrill. They were everywhere. When not on their nests they flew over our heads or sat in trees just about begging for us to take their pictures, which we did. They hovered, constantly flapping their large wings, as they sought a suitable fish and then dove to grab it and bring it back to its mate. They were constantly calling to each other or to warn off other ospreys or to show their displeasure when I stood too long relatively close by and took their pictures with my long lens.

About the only downside to this place is I wanted to walk everywhere. MH and I took the main trail to the end, and then I walked on a side trail to see the ducks on Barnegat Bay. By day's end, when we'd seen 43 types of birds, I was footsore but happy.

Now, to find another region to explore for next time...