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Category Archives: Birds and Birding
Under escort
Gary Stix profiles Omar Fadhil, ornithologist and researcher with the University of Baghdad. Field work in Iraq presents special challenges.
Whenever I go out, villagers always ask, “What the hell are you doing here?” I never engage them directly. Instead I get out my binoculars, set up the camera tripod and take out my bird books. I show them pictures of the birds I’m looking for and, when possible, let them look through the binoculars at the birds themselves.
After a time, they often warm to me. They point to a bird in the book and say, “We’ve seen this one but not that one.” They become my scouts. Despite the war, I have found six new species that had never been seen before in Iraq.
Sky blue
I live on an island at the edge of a maze of estuaries, at the convergence of a bay and a sound, a place full of waterbirds, even in the dead of winter.
Janice P. Nimura goes birding on the East River.
…they were gadwalls, not mallards. The female looked mallardish, but the male was different, with dove-gray feathers, paler at the tips, over a black rump. Understated and elegant, like a morning coat. I love the word “gadwall”; it sounds Dickensian, the name of a prosperous man of business, paddling about on the social pond.
Beginners’ parallax
Chuck Almdale assembles a mini-handbook for field trip leaders on how to help others find the bird you’re looking at.
In an open area, twelve o’clock is always straight ahead, six is directly behind, three and nine are 90 degrees right and left, respectively. Other hours fall in between. For a vertical object such as a tree, twelve is the top, three is ½ way down on the right side, and so on. …12 o’clock is not simply the direction in which you happen to be looking at that moment.
An alternative
They are the worlds that obey me, kinder and finer worlds: in many of them, for example, I’d have no teeth.
Because I believe I’d do better with a beak. So why not have one? That shouldn’t be impossible. I feel a beak could make me happy, quite extraordinarily content: sporting something dapper and useful in that line—handy for cracking walnuts, nipping fingers, tweezing seeds. Not that I’ve ever fancied eating seeds, but one can’t predict the path of appetite.
And beaks come in different sizes: that’s a plus, along with the range of designs. The toucan would be good for parties, shouting, grievous bodily harm. Ibis: mainly funerals and plumbing. Sparrow: best for online dating and eating crisps.
—A. L. Kennedy, “Story of My Life”
Upcoming: 28
The 2011 edition of the Great Backyard Bird Count will be here on February 18!
Another survey
Paul Baicich and Wayne Petersen report in the current Birding Community E-Bulletin:
Researchers at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, are studying the risks and benefits to birds caused by human behavior and technology (e.g., alternative energy efforts, cats, windows, and communications) as they are perceived by Americans with varying interests in birds. The researchers do not expect those responding to the survey to know the degree of risk associated with each of these behaviors or technologies. Indeed, some consequences remain unknown. The responses on these perceived risks will help more fully understand public opinions and behavior. The responses are expected to provide tools to raise bird conservation awareness.
In the closing pages of the survey, the researchers share some statistics about avian mortality that are rather surprising.
Please take the 25-minute survey.
Providence trip report: 1
Drew Whelan’s report to the ABA conference at Providence, R.I., about disaster response along the Gulf Coast to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is less than encouraging. Cleanup efforts are hindered, it appears, in any number of ways—from well-intentioned protocols that protect NWRs, to corporate bungling. Drew’s images of oil-soaked booms washed ashore into coastal marshes and apparently abandoned are especially disheartening.
The American Birding Association continues to collect funds in support of recovery efforts.
Bird Phenology Program
Consistent with another of my volunteer gigs (with Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic), I seem to have positioned myself as a wetware information transcriber. A couple of months ago I started working about an hour a week as a data entry volunteer for the North American Bird Phenology Program, based out of Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
Phenology is the study of comings and goings in the natural world—what day of the year the swallows return to Capistrano, the lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, that sort of thing. Decade-to-decade trends in a particular location can provide additional evidence to researchers studying climate patterns, among other things.
There are a number of phenology programs active under the umbrella of the USA National Phenology Network. One of the broadest-scoped citizen science initiatives was organized in 1881 by Wells W. Cooke, and was later expanded by C. Hart Merriam of the newly-formed American Ornithologists’ Union. For 90 years, up to 3,000 field researchers submitted data on the arrivals and departures of migratory birds in North America, in sort of an ornithological Mass Observation Project. Data was collected on 2×5-inch slips; when the project was wound down in 1970 (as other means of collecting similar data evolved), the records base comprised 6 million of them. In 2003, Sam Droege began efforts to safeguard and digitize the slips.
Many of the records are on a GPO-issued form, designated 3-801 or Bi-801; this form was redesigned a couple of times to collect different data. But many more are simply hand-written slips in a particularly compact shorthand that identifies the species (often simply by a three-digit AOU number), the location and observer, and the dates that the bird was first seen in the course of the year; seen again; seen commonly; and last seen during the breeding or migration season.
As you would expect, the transcription of this data from scanned document images into a web form is not an automatable process. Enter the volunteer scribes. It takes me 30 seconds or more to copy out a card—up to several minutes if I have to puzzle out a location name (Google Maps is my BFF) written in faded fountain pen ink in a cursive handwriting style more suited to wedding invitations. The data collection protocol also provides for observer’s notes on whether the bird breeds in the area, is a winter resident, and assessment of abundance (one point on the scale is the quaintly labelled “tolerably common”)—all that, along with any other notes made by the observer, is to be transcribed into fixed fields or free text. Each observer seems to have a different approach to spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. The opportunity for transcription errors is therefore high, so each card is copied into the database twice, then compared.
There’s lots more to be done: the number of digitized cards only numbers in the few hundred thousands, so if you’re into birds or just have some spare cycles, I would encourage you to sign up for the program. You can request to transcribe cards only for a particular location or a particular species, or you can do what I do and just pull cards at random. I’ve copied slips filed from tiny, obscure places like Hadlyme, Connecticut and Rhoma, Texas; I’ve worked with a card prepared by A. W. Schorger, author of the definitive book on the Passenger Pigeon. No particular knowledge of birds is required; in fact, the procedures we follow call for a literal transcription of the record, no interpretation or corrections allowed. So even if I “know” that the common name of a bird has been changed in the past hundred years, my instructions are to copy what the observer wrote, and to let the researchers clean up the data later.
And that turns out to be a learning experience for me, too. Before I started transcribing, I wasn’t aware that Purple Martin (Progne subis) and Eastern Phoebe (Sayronis phoebe) once had simpler names in common use (Martin, Phoebe). And I had never heard of Holboell’s Grebe, which we know now as Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps grisegena).
Droege and his team have already begun to draft papers from the data, especially looking at patterns of Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) migrations. The San Francisco-area ABC affiliate put together a rather fine story on the program.
Glass kills birds
Anne Eisenberg reports on trials of Ornilux, a patterned UV-reflective window glass designed to reduce bird strike deaths.
Poetic license
In the first chapter of the The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender, a quite fine novel, this passage stopped me:
My father usually agreed with [my mother's] requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher’s heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back. (p. 5)
Now Ajaia ajaja is indeed a spectacular bird to see, and she’s got the habitat right, but waders as a rule don’t have much of a voice. But (thought I), since I hadn’t heard the birds I saw in Florida some years ago, maybe the spoonbill does have a pleasant coo. Not so, says Roger Peterson (eastern North America field guide, 5/e): “VOICE: About nesting colony, a low grunting croak.” David Sibley adds, “Also a fairly rapid, dry, rasping, rrek-ek-ek-ek-ek-ek, much lower, faster than ibises.” The one available audio sample from the Macaulay Library confirms.
Some links: 47
Finca El Porvenir, a group of farms between 1,000–1,600 m in elevation on the slopes of Cerro El Tigre, part of the isolated Sierra Tecapa–Chinameca range in eastern El Salvador, has been awarded the first Coffee Conservation Award, a recognition program from Roast magazine and other partners.
The good coffee
A new online source for bird-friendly coffee, with some notes on the agriculture and biology behind it: Birds & Beans.
Hike your own hike
Warren and Lisa Strobel have a nice piece about birding the Appalachian Trail in the current issue of the Conservancy’s magazine. The Strobels came out to work the Park’s nest boxes with us a couple of seasons back. And by the by, nest box season will be starting up in about a month.
Shade-grown coffee: state of play
The Birding Community E-Bulletin points to two reports: first, a recent summary by Robert Rice of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center on the supply of and market for the SMBC’s branded Bird Friendly® Coffee. It’s interesting that nearly 40% comes from Peru; Mexico and Guatemala are other major producers. On the demand side, nearly 350,000 pounds were consumed in 2008 (the last period for which full-year figures are available), divided almost evenly between Japan and the United States.
Amid the clutter of labelling and badging at the turn of the decade, the SMBC established criteria for coffee agriculture specifically designed to protect bird life, and chose to protect them with a mark. These criteria go beyond relatively simple organic certification. Rice’s precis:
… the coffee is:
- Certified organic
- Certified shade-grown (according to SMBC criteria developed in 1997 and based on scientific fieldwork)
Criteria include: a minimum canopy height of 12 meters; a species list of at least 10 trees in addition to the major or “backbone” species; at least 40% foliage density; and three strata or layers of vegetation that provide structural diversity. Criteria apply to the coffee production area itself, and industry and certification specialists consider them to be the strictest shade standards in the world.
Rice states that growers see a 5 to 10 cent per pound premium for meeting BFC standards, in addition to any price bump for being organic.
Unfortunately, as Ezra Fieser reports, that price differential has narrowed over the past few years from a 30-40% markon mid-decade to about 20% now. This trend is driving farmers back to conventional agricultural methods. According to the Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education, costs to the organic grower run 15% higher (certification fees, losses to pests), while yields are 40% lower. As my old B school teacher liked to say, “Sell below cost, and in the long run, you’re out of business.”
Upcoming: 19
Volunteer birders in the Mid-Atlantic, lower Midwest, and South are asked to submit observations (positive and negative) of Rusty Blackbirds (Euphagus carolinus) during this year’s blitz, 30 January through 15 February. It’s dead simple: check your favorite wet woodland (or other suspected hotspot) and submit your data to eBird!
