My State of Birding

The other day I was looking at the New Jersey bird list and found a reference to a "Morris Plains Pacific loon." Morris Plains is a small borough in northern New Jersey.

I didn't know which was more startling, a Pacific loon from the west found in New Jersey or a Pacific loon found at all in MY TOWN.




My photo of the Pacific loon, Morris Plains, NJ

 The loon, a juvenile, had been in the area for five days by then - as of today it is still being seen (and a second one was found even more recently at Lake Parsippany a few miles away!).

I was angry as hell that I'd missed it all that time but quickly caught up the next day by getting MH away from his books and papers and grabbing our binoculars and cameras to rush to the pond where it had been found, in an otherwise ugly office park at the edge of our town, literally five minutes away.

We saw the loon, we took our pictures (semi-decent because even with a long lens the bird was still too far for me) and even got to see that ringnecked ducks, redbreasted mergansers and hooded mergansers were in the pond, with a lovely redtailed hawk in the clear blue, chased by two less-than-happy American crows.

Another photo I took.

A good day, I thought. It's not often an unusual bird is found in my "backyard" and easy to see during a workday break. Oh, the joy of working from home.

Then, that evening, I was checking the list again and came upon a post that amazed me.

It was from a Bayonne (NJ) birder who posts regularly. Something set him off, however. A gyrfalcon had been found at Gilgo Beach off Fire Island in NY and, I'm gathering by his post, the bird chasers had gotten out of hand.

In "The state of birders/birding" he wrote:

It seems that the current atmosphere favors the "birder" and not the "birdwatcher." With RTD (real-time data), listers (chasers) seem more numerous than "birdwatchers." This concerns me because then it is sport (the extreme) and not science (the desire). Obviously, most fall somewhere in between.

Well, he's right about that. Many are the times I've complained about people who take the fun of birding much too seriously, traveling miles just for a glimpse, lugging gun-like lenses and trampling the environment in the process. In its extreme, it's the plot of the movie "The Big Year."

At the office park we met one woman who had driven two hours north from Gloucester County in south Jersey. (This wasn't odd to us as we've been known to drive two hours south for the same reason. But we always combine that with other things, such as visiting a bookstore.) Another woman there said that on a whim she decided to throw her dog in the car and drive over -- from Delaware.

Talk about a loon!

So yes, there are nutcases out there who time their movements to those of the birds.

But here is where Mr. Bayonne got me mad.

This all goes back to grade school. As far as I can tell, most lurk and wait for the "real birders" to "find" and report birds that they then "chase." Boil it down and these are the people that copied homework back in the day.

Now wait a minute, buster. I don't LURK.

Those "real birders" must not need money because they are reporting odd birds in far-flung areas every day. MH and I can only do any real birding on the weekends because during the week we have a little thing called WORK to do.

That's why I go to the list, to see what's out there so during my precious free weekend time I am not going off half-cocked. It gives me an idea, and then it's up to me to interest MH in joining me on the drive.

I don't cotton to being called a homework copier.

I don't put myself in the same league as those who read the list, learn of a gyrfalcon 500 miles away and then go nuts trying to get to it, find it and take a picture of it for his or her Flickr page. As MH likes to say, it's supposed to be a hobby.

Most times, whether I go with MH or alone, I don't find anything worthy of such frenzy, even if I wanted to report it. (I read the list but I am not a subscriber; only subscribers can report.) Most times I go out and find birds and am happy to see them, especially familiar ones I haven't seen for a while, such as the brown creeper or the bluebird. If someone else reports to the list about a flock of redhead ducks on nearby Lake Parsippany, as one did the other week, I plan my time and energy accordingly.

During weekdays I must content myself with the wonders of my own backyard.

Redtail picture by RE Berg-Andersson

For instance, the redtailed hawk above decided to just hang out for a while one day, and then it came for short periods during the next two days. Redtails are buteos. They like to eat squirrels, among other small mammals, so the ones in my yard disappeared as soon as this hawk flew in. The feeder birds knew they'd be left alone because it wasn't hunting, just sitting. However, the 200 grackles that were about to divebomb the feeders quickly took off from the surrounding trees.

...time to get out and find your own birds...might be the most fun you ever had;) he concluded.

Oh, I will, boy-o, I will indeed, as I do almost every weekend.

And when I do find an unusual bird - like the greater shearwater along a New Jersey beach or the sedge wren found in the wet grass of Somerset County's Lord Sterling Park, both seen a few years ago - I ain't gonna be reporting that news to anyone for the very reason that pissed you off about the gyrfalcon: the resulting overkill by zealous birders.

On that, Mr. Bayonne and I agree.

Otherwise, to Hell with him.

Passages

Many of my friends, now in their 50s and 60s, are starting to come to terms with mortality. Their parents are ill or they are infirm or are frail. My friends worry about their parents. Lately they've been dying.

Unfortunately, I am an old hand at this stuff. My father died 20 years ago, my mother 33 and a number of grandparents and other relatives in between.

It has been a long time since I've had to attend a funeral. The other week it was my mother's brother, who was in his early 90s and had been in a locked ward with dementia for the past several years after six years on his own following his wife's death.

The rabbi spoke. The cantor sang. My cousins remembered their father and their children either spoke of their grandfather or sang a song of comfort. Some friends of my cousins were there, one of my uncle's cousins who took the train up from Washington, two relatives through my late aunt, MH and me.

As I sat and listened to the heart-felt words I noticed to my right a large reproduction of an Audubon print of a snowy egret - dark bill, yellow feet. A lovely portrait. Then I looked ahead of me. A small effigy of a bald eagle, talons bared as tho' about to grab a fish from a pond. When I had the chance I looked and realized there were Audubon prints all around the room - flycatchers, wrens, owls.

It almost made me laugh out loud.

At my house the joke is I can't go anywhere without birding. I somehow found a chattering goldfinch on top of a traffic light in the middle of downtown Chicago one summer trip. I watch a commercial and I notice the birds, not the product. I sit at a garden party and follow the flight of a pileated woodpecker overhead in the middle of a converation.

At my uncle's grave, I heard a distant flock of geese. (At my aunt's burial, a redtailed hawk had been up in a nearby tree.)

It was sad attending the small funeral.

But I couldn't help thinking of another recent death, that of my old friend Steve. We had all been young together, friends for over 30 years, had a lot of good, wild times. Lots of stories.

Then he had gone silent, mad at something we allegedly did, refusing to tell intermediaries what that was.

To hell with him, I said. Then, five years later, he suddenly died.

We heard of his passing long after his funeral. He was buried in the family plot in a cemetery at the far end of Cape Cod, one of my favorite birding areas. He died in December, not long after his 56th birthday.

Knowing me, I'd have found a bird somewhere, maybe while at his grave - presuming I'd have seen or heard it through my sobbing. I don't know how much I would've been comforted. This death was too close to home, a reminder of my own mortality, and MH's.

Losing parents is hard. Losing contemporaries, I've learned, is harder.

You can say an old, demented man who has passed on is "at peace." Many people said this of my uncle after his funeral.

But what of a young man who was very much alive, already at peace with his life and with a woman who loved him?

Doesn't seem fair.

Caged Birders

One of the features of the National Wildlife Refuge known as The Great Swamp in northern New Jersey is its tour road. Drivers enter the refuge and quickly leave a paved road for a gravelly run on which they are supposed to travel at 15 miles per hour.

If they are birders like me, they are going far slower and frequently stopping in hopes of hearing or seeing something from the road – a harrier, bluebirds, perhaps an owl.

There are two lots to park in along the way, and serious birders park, get out of their cars and start scanning the skies.

It’s the other type of birder I’m writing about here.

These are the people who drive considerably faster than 15 mph, sending up dust clouds. They like to “look at nature” with their windows up and the heat or air conditioning on in what is their four-wheeled cage.

There are other tour roads where serious birders drive, such as the NWR near Atlantic City known as Brigantine. You can stop along the road and scan birds from the road or your car. Green flies be damned! This is no place for a quick run through “nature.”

Pleasant Plains Rd. tour road, Great Swamp

Then there are birders who can only bird from a car. I met an older woman at one of the Swamp lots who told me it’s hard for her to walk now and so she drives to a spot and sits there with her binoculars. If something flies by she’s happy. She’s had a lot of luck thanks to her patience while others stop and go after mere minutes if they see no action.

Contrast her with a couple I saw recently at the same Swamp lot. I had already pulled up and left my car to scan the area. Redheaded woodpecker sometimes show up in the dead trees far to the left, bald eagles drift on the distant horizon and ducks fly up from the marsh grasses.

A car pulled up containing a boomer couple. The man raised his binoculars and watched the black ducks that would suddenly rise, fly a bit and then put down. It was a cold day and their windows were closed. The woman just sat there. They never left the car.

I, meanwhile, had turned around and found an American kestrel, the smallest of U.S. falcons, sitting on a power wire behind the car. Such a pretty little killer. Another man had left his car and was taking pictures. But the couple in the first car backed out and quickly left the lot. Did they see the falcon? I doubt it.

We all need to get out of our comfort zones. We need to walk around, not just for the beneficial exercise but to experience the world around us. That’s why I bird. What kind of world do you really see from a closed car?

People who experience “nature” looking out the car’s front window might as well be at home watching a big-screen TV.

Urban Birding

I spent a lot of years working in New York City. Most of my time was spent either in an office or rushing to or from it, particularly to catch transportation home.

But the nice thing about birding is you can always find something anywhere, even in the middle of the concrete jungle.

It is definitely a change of pace for MH and me when we decide to go to The City from our little New Jersey town. For one thing, people move faster. For another, there are more of them shoving into you.

White-throated sparrow

Even big places like Central Park can sometimes feel too crowded, particularly during a nice day when there are tour groups coming through or visitors enjoying a big swath of green in the midst of the city or gathering around the "Imagine" mosaic near the W. 72 Street entrance, remembering John Lennon. Dogwalkers are there, of course, sunbathers in season and, yes, birders. Alot of birders, alone and in flocks of various sizes.
But while Central Park is more famous, just about any place where there is some shrubbery can produce something interesting beyond a pigeon, even  a more common visitor such as the white-throated sparrow and its cousin the junco.

When I worked in New York I would usually go to Bryant Park at W. 40th-44th streets, especially after reading a report of an unusual visitor. Considering how often the lawn is torn up for an ice rink (winter) or concert stage (summer) and the thick crowds that pass through or sit and eat there every day, it is amazing I've found as much as I have in the shrubbery and the huge London plane trees that border the lawn.

Here are other ways urban birding is different.

When I go to the city I have to be careful what I carry, and I don't just mean money or important papers. I refuse to drive on midtown streets so that means carrying no extra boots or walking stick or Sibley guide to help me identify anything. I don't even take my big binoculars unless I have my backpack. I have small ones I can pocket.

Concrete sidewalks and blacktopped streets are harder on the feet, knees and lower back than grass or cindered trails. There’s the noise of traffic, including the incessant sirens, and people talking to each other or on their phones in a Babel of languages.

While you can go slow, look around, listen for a call and hope to be lucky, there are additional rules: Watch out for the traffic and keep one eye on your surroundings so you don’t get your pocket picked.

A male wood duck (top) with mallards at Central Park's pond.

If you can get past that, it’s always a treat to find something unusual in an urban area at the wrong time of year.

One Saturday last year as we were walking through Herald Square – a concrete triangle in midtown Manhattan filled with tables and chairs and some greenery along the edges -- MH and I found four catbirds. This was winter. Catbirds don't usually hang around this area in winter. When I would walk through here every day on the way to my old job I might see one or two. Yet, here were four, and they were quite bold, running or flying around after the crumbs dropped by the visitors, fighting bill and wing with the house sparrows, pigeons and white-throated sparrows.

Those crumbs were keeping the catbirds and the rest of the birds alive.

Union Square is another busy New York park, with a farmers market, benches, people, dogs and, as it turned out, birds. Sparrows and white-throats, of course, but last year I went there with MH after a day of wandering to look for a reported yellow-breasted chat, the largest of the warblers and a bird that should’ve been far south of where I stood.

As it got darker, I heard sparrows chirping from a holly and started looking for the larger and yellower chat. Instead, if found a yellow-bellied sapsucker roosting on a low branch. Then, despite the traffic, I heard the “laugh” of a flicker. Then, as sparrows flew up to the holly, so did the chat.

Prothonotary warbler, found in the front
garden of the New York Public Library
on Fifth Ave., not far from Bryant Park.

This happened last winter, a milder one than this year's has turned out to be. This year I haven't felt much of a desire to go into New York and bird the usual places or, when we were going to New York to meet people for supper, the weather was so dicey we just came in, dined and left.

This Saturday we will be going to a daytime party in Brooklyn. If the weather holds, we will go into lower Manhattan, perhaps by walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, and wander around. I doubt we'll get to Central Park but I know we'll be in City Hall park.

I don't doubt that somewhere, where I least expect it, I'll find something wonderful in this urban wasteland.

Get Out and Count the Birds!

I was walking in my town one mild afternoon after our most recent snowstorm. Although warmer temperatures melted a lot of it down, much of the white stuff still covered the lawns.

And yet, birds were singing – redbellied woodpeckers, house finches, chickadees, titmice. They are sensing that the worse of winter is over and spring is coming. Who needs the groundhogs?

Somehow, as I was looking ahead, I remembered the Great Backyard Bird Count.

Now, if there is one part of birding I do not like it is keeping complete records. I’ll note what I see but I am not very good about reporting exactly what day I saw what and how may. When I read on the state reporting lists that someone saw 523 herring gulls I have a hard time believing he or she is standing there going one, two, three...

Yet, I enjoy this annual counting of what birds and how many I see at my feeder. The count is co-sponsored by the National Audubon Society (separate from New Jersey Audubon, which is not directly involved in the count) and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology. It is held every Presidents Day weekend, which means the 2013 count begins this Friday and lasts through Monday.

What you do is simple – you note the types of birds you see in a particular area and how many of them there are in 15-minute increments. You can look at what comes to your feeder or you can travel to a location and count what you see there.

The count has its own website where you can type in your findings. You can look at last year’s data, see which states had the most of a particular kind of bird (or filed the most checklists) and find photos, ways for kids to get involved, maps and even a Twitter feed. Yes, the count is on Facebook and no, there is no fee.

The aim is to aid science. By contributing an accurate count, you are telling the bird experts at Cornell which birds are the most common and not in danger of extinction and which are declining in numbers. According to the count website, “GBBC participants submitted a record-smashing 104,151 checklists with 17.4 million individual bird observations. Participants set new checklist records in 22 states and in six Canadian provinces. Across the continent and in Hawaii, participants identified 623 species.”

That's a lot of birds.

I took this picture of a pair of one of my
 favorite birds, cardinals, which visit my feeders
at all times of the year.

Participants reported the northern cardinal on more checklists than any other species for the eighth year in a row. I recorded them and was happy to do so since cardinals are one of my favorite birds. Learning the number two bird is the mourning dove was no surprise because these seem to be everywhere I look, sometimes outnumbering its cousin the pigeon.

The most numerous bird reported during the 2012 count was the snow goose, which is surprising to someone who sees more often the larger Canada geese – both migrants and the ones that foul town parks and corporate office campuses. 

If this makes you want to count birds all year long, Cornell and Audubon run eBird, which features, data,  news and features. New Jersey Audubon has its own version of eBird, too.

So whether you are off from school or work, when you are running around this Presidents Day weekend look at the birds around you, note the time and location of what you see, especially how many.

Even counter-phobes like me will be out there doing the same.

An Ugly Beauty, Part 2

On Dec. 17, 2011, I wrote a blog post about the turkey vulture and its southern cousin the black vulture.

I noted how I was walking through the Greystone property and found a large flock of vultures on the ground, running after each other. I had only known of vultures circling overhead or roosting in groups in tall trees.

Turkey vulture, picture by R.E. Berg-Andersson

Since then I have been learning new things about these raptors that fly so gracefully but look so ugly when close up, especially when eating roadkill.

For one thing, one of my favorite authors, Margaret Maron, in her most recent Deborah Knott mystery, "The Buzzard Table," uses information provided by the Turkey Vulture Society as headers for each chapter. Yes, there is a Turkey Vulture Society. Lots of interesting data.

The book cover shows turkey vultures circling a house, but aside from the section headers the "buzzards" are not identified as turkey vultures at all. That miffed me. As a birder, I want precise information! My husband makes fun of me for this - we'll be watching a commercial and what interests me is not the car, say, but trying to identify the hawk flying in the background.

Anyway, there is a reference to the white feathered tips of the vultures' wings, which makes me think they could be black vultures, more likely to be seen in North Carolina, where this book takes place.

Closer to home, I've been studying the vultures that populate parts of the old Greystone mental hospital property in Parsippany, NJ - not so much their feeding or breeding habits as there are lots of places to learn about these birds, including Cornell's Lab of Ornithology - but how they deal with cold.

Last year, I thought the vultures would roost in evergreens in cold before moving to bare deciduous trees to warm up before flying in search of food. Turns out vultures are much smarter than that.

Black vultures roosting on a building bordering the
Greystone property, a picture I took.

During our recent cold snap in New Jersey-  the longest period of subfreezing cold we've had for 13 years - I would take a morning walk every few days. I would get the paper and come back along a route that would take me to the old Greystone property - now Central Park of Morris County - via a side street. I realized vultures don't like the cold any more than I do.

Some of them, particularly the black vultures, would be found on home roofs in the sun, where the heat coming out of the chimney would provide warmth. When the property was a mental hospital, vultures might've congregated on the roofs of the hulking stone buildings where the patients were kept. Those buildings are now gone.

But there is also a large mixed flock that congregates on the ground in an area where trees block the cold wind from the north and west but not the rising sun from the east. They also stay low in the trees, particularly on windy days. I thought these were just black vultures, which are smaller and have silver heads, but when a few would fly up and circle before coming back I would see the white along the wings' trailing edge and realize it was a turkey vulture.

Black vulture - notice the white wing tips.
Photo by R.E. Berg-Andersson

As more and more black vultures made their way north, you'd think they'd be competing with the larger, red-headed turkey vultures. But apparently they have learned that in some situations it is smarter to band together, at least when roosting at night. Grackles do the same thing in winter, forming large flocks that roost on the ground with starlings, redwinged blackbirds and cowbirds. It's a matter of protection.

When it is warm, however, I have noticed the black vultures roost in one group of trees while the turkey vultures stay in another. The status quo is preserved.

Luckily for the vultures, the park provides the space to keep them safely away from humans. Fifty vultures might look imposing in a tree but they are a major hassle if they are in YOUR backyard tree. So far there's been no clamor to get rid of the vultures, a protected species under federal law.

So what can we all learn from the vulture?

In tough times it is better to band together because there's safety in numbers.

When you're a stranger in town, it is better to learn from the locals than try to impose your way on them.

Keep your head down in rough weather.

Oh, and maybe don't look too closely at what your neighbor is eating.

Birders and Bullying

A MEW GULL (first state record pending NJBRC acceptance) was photographed at Spruce Run Reservoir Jan 10. The bird was with a few thousand RING-BILLED GULLS coming to roost near the boat launch area. No reports since.

The above was posted on the weekly Rare Bird Alert for New Jersey on Friday, Jan. 18. A mew gull, a bird usually found in the northwest, is a smaller and darker-eyed version of its more common cousin the ring-billed gull.

I saw one of the pictures posted and it was incredible that out of the thousands of gulls hanging around Spruce Run's popular (with birds and birders) boat launch this one gull would be picked out by a couple of dedicated birders. Talk about a needle in a haystack.

However, there is a darker side of this story and it can be seen on the daily New Jersey bird reporting site. It is a story of cyber-bullying.

No, not the type of bullying you hear about on the news that results in death. This involved a man who obviously knows when to say "stuff it" and walk away rather than a more vulnerable child or teenager being harrassed physically at school and emotionally on Facebook.

Here's the back story.

On Jan. 20, a man from Freehold, N.J., made a brief report to the list via his phone that he and two others had seen a 1st year mew gull in the same place as the one seen Jan. 10, which hadn’t been seen since that report.

I am sure the Jan. 18 alert set several hearts a-pounding in the NJ birding community. The Freehold man went out to Spruce Run and managed to find the gull. His report had others rushing to the same area to do the same.

A day later this same Freehold man wrote the list saying he was removing himself (you have to have a subscription to report but you don’t need one to read the posts).

He had gotten a number of inquiries to his personal email (listed on the post) for details of his sighting - this is quite common and I have done this myself with other reports. Most times the exchange is pleasant and people thank you for providing the information.

However, he also received emails, to put it mildly, questioning his ability to identify birds as well as his character!

He said in response that he made the best call identifying the gull that he could based on using multiple field guides and the thinking of other birders who arrived thanks to his report and looked through his scope. He also said that when he left there were no other birders around and he didn't realize he was violating birder etiquette by not hanging around indefinitely to show others the bird.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

As a result of the abuse he has received he said he was not going to make any more reports and would turn over any more threatening emails to the people who run the list for further action.

I found this exchange fascinating because it shows how “bird watching” has changed and how degraded our society has become.

What was once passive “watching” has become the more active “birding,” a competitive sport. You see something of that in the film “The Big Year.”  (I recently saw a car commercial based on the film’s premise where two photographers are driving like maniacs over mountains and fields, no road in sight, to get a picture of a California condor, a majestic and endangered species. Oh, the irony.)

It used to be you went out with your binoculars, a spotting scope for distant ducks, perhaps a camera. That has changed - now everyone thinks he or she is Ansel Adams. Cameras with gun-like lenses swaddled in camoflage are the norm, as are, at the other extreme, the ubiquitous cellphone camera in the hands of people clambering over rocks in sneakers.

But there’s more - there is the Internet and tweeting and Facebook. All are designed to let you broadcast information widely and immediately, whether you’ve thought it through or not.

Even the NJ birding list, taken over last year by the American Birding Association, added a Twitter feed on the main page. Get the word out! Now!

The New Jersey birding list home page. Note the Twitter feed to the right.

There are programs for your smartphone to identify birds and play their calls to fool a bird into showing itself. There are GPS and mapping programs so people can go into the deepest part of the forest - way off the trails - and be able to find his or her way out, eventually, maybe, satellite willing.

These fake bird calls are considered bad birding etiquette because they stress the bird into thinking their territory is being invaded by a rival. The GPS allows people to trespass into areas where they are not supposed to be, affecting the ecosystem and potentially putting themselves in danger.

To these people, birding has become an extension of the X games.

All this is done in the name of finding that rarity, that needle in a haystack. Why? I don’t know. To make yourself look good? To make big bucks selling the picture? To tick off another name on your Peterson life list? To help you think you are young, virile and superhuman?

I don’t know if the Freehold man was thinking any of that but he was looking at hundreds of gulls on a boat launch and somehow happened to see one that didn’t exactly look like the others. Birders do that every day. Not everyone finds a rarity.

His note prompted an avalanche of responses from people who begged him to reconsider. Turns out he is far from alone.

Some said they had also received insulting emails that doubted their ability to identify a bird. One man, who constantly reports to the list and seems to be everywhere in the state at once, said he now never makes a report unless he has photographed the bird so he has proof of his sighting. When he started out his ability and his truthfulness were questioned. That has happened to me, too. That's why I am not a list subscriber although I look at it at least twice a week so I can plan my weekend birding.

One man summed up my feelings: This is supposed to be fun.

When I stopped passively watching birds at my feeders and started going out into the field, it was to get into the woods and get out a lot of the stress I felt from a job in the city that put me under more pressure than an uncorked champagne bottle. I walked and, sticking to the trails, discovered birds in their variety and beauty, high and low, in the air and on the ground and in the water.

Sometimes I even found a rarity. But I quickly learned that it is better to keep rarities to yourself, for the bird's sake and to save on aggravation to me and the environment. For instance, I am glad I didn’t report the sedge wren I found years ago in Somerset County because another one (or the same one?) found later that month in Montgomery, NY, created a birder stampede that trampled a field as they searched for it.

Bad etiquette? Guilty, I guess.

(A more recent example of this is in Somerset County involving a farm that had the luck - or misfortune - to host both a pair of sandhill cranes and several northern lapwings, the latter quite rare in New Jersey. If you go to the list you will see more on how this one sighting triggered a circus, including several reports of trespassing photographers.)

This is the problem the Freehold man had: he is not a recognized pro. The original report on Jan. 10 was made by a couple of “established” birders familiar to the listing world whose sightings are not questioned.

As my husband likes to say, the birds don’t follow the road maps and they are not waiting for you to arrive. So it is not beyond the realm of possibility that a mew gull could be found, fly off and then return a week later to be seen by others. That’s part of the fun.

But not this viciousness that, thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, the immediacy of email and texting and Facebook and the general coarsening of human nature, is pervading what was once regarded as a modest outdoor activity.

We’re talking about birds here, people, not politics, war or the economy.

Unfortunately, birding has become a mirror of society. We want everything and we want it now. If you get it and I don’t, I use the Internet or Facebook or tell my 1,000 Twitter followers what an idiot you are and they pass it on. I act before I think because I can and I don‘t care about your feelings because I don‘t know you and don't want to. I want a picture of a rare bird because you don’t have one and I'm better than you and entitled.

Still, I would also like to think there are more good, thinking people out there than idiots. Sadly, the idiots are the ones who get the attention on the evening news and the birding lists.

So I understand why the Freehold man is no longer making his findings public. Life is too short to be dehumanized by small people, even small people who, like you, look for birds. At least this man is emotionally mature enough to walk away from this cyber-bullying.

Also, I understand the importance of people like the Freehold man to those of us in the birding community who have only a limited time during the week to go out and explore, and who want to be able to see as much as possible. I hope he doesn‘t leave birding altogether. People like him do the work and the rest of us get the enjoyment.

Without these people, we have nothing. To subject anyone - high school kid, adult reporting a rare bird - to abuse, in the words of one writer defending the Freehold man, diminishes us all.