birdspot

A wise person does not walk around Central Park barefoot, it is just not safe. There are things in the grass that might pinch you.

Like crayfish??? I first realized there are crayfish in the park by watching a Hooded Merganser on the reservoir wolf one down, as voraciously as one might wolf something down that has claws and an exoskeleton. Since then I have seen them in the streams of the North Woods (they were fighting at Glenspan Arch on Tuesday) and at the Harlem Meer.

For a list of birds seen Sept 15-16, click (more…)

6:30 am, Little Compton, RI. The birdsong starts before sunrise, but a gentle span before sunrise, as befits August: no spring/early summer mania at 4am. I, concrete-weary and tired of urban cacophonies, use the dawn chorus and the lightening sky as an alarm clock, and am up and abnormally awake.

First birds heard: possible Cuckoo sp (though I might have been dreaming that), Gray Catbird, American Robin, Carolina Wren, Northern Mockingbird.

I am taking photographs on the property of a lovely couple; I am making a drawing for them, of whatever I want, inspired by their incredible environs. I spent the night in their guest loft over the barn. I am not birding, I am WORKING, but as always I am listening, listening, listening…

Birds heard, and added to the previous species, as the sun just begins peeking up: domestic Rooster, Cedar Waxwing, Chipping Sparrow (with begging juvenile Cowbird), House Wren, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Song Sparrow. It is getting distracting.

Focus, I tell myself, you are at work now. Lose yourself on colors and patterns, compositions and ideas. I want to distill the visual and aural cadences around me into something else, and I need to get some interesting reference photos. It would be nice to achieve something beyond the mundane, though now there are 16 different avian species vying for my attention, tugging at me from multiple directions. Bird watching does not really a great drawing make.

Calls are rising with the sun: American Goldfinch, Red-shouldered Hawk (screaming, distantly), Blue Jay (nervously, nearer), Northern Cardinal (off in a more suburban yard), Downy Woodpecker, Mourning Dove.

The sun warms the fields, dew becomes mist, and a couple of bucks are feeding across the meadow. They have been eyeing me for a while, but we are all nicely together in a peaceable kingdom as I do my early morning reverie thing. Until, that is, I raise my long telephoto lens to take their picture, whereupon the larger of the two actually barks at me, stamps his foot, and off they go. Methinks those deer know a thing or two about rifles.

Insects must be moving more freely, because now I hear Tree Swallows! Eastern Kingbird! Barn Swallows are flying overhead as well, but silently. Chimney Swifts intersperse their chattering when they cross paths with the Tree Swallows. Eastern Phoebe (harsh “Phoe-bree”) and Black-capped Chickadee (softer “phoeebe”) immediately take me back to spring, and more distantly, to Vermont, and graduate school, and a host of other associations I don’t want to go into here. A Great-crested Flycatcher starts doing its harsh “Mreep”, sounding prehistoric. A Tufted Titmouse or three are off in the woods.

The light is rapidly changing. Larger (lazier?) birds are making their way across the sky: American Crows hold complex conversations with their wheezy juveniles (who sound like Fish Crows), a Red-tailed Hawk screams and makes the Red-shouldered shut up, and then, off to the south, I hear the plaintive, wimpy whistle of an Osprey, which makes me think that I should be at the water instead of these fields because shorebird migration is happening RIGHT NOW and there is just so little time and what if I’m missing something really good? Red-winged Blackbirds chuck at me as they fly to the water, a Northern Flicker calls from the eastern edge of the property, and a House Finch begins singing its rambling jumble of notes, near the house. A Great Egret squawks as it lumbers over. PLUS: everything from earlier is still singing, minus the elusive and potentially imagined cuckoo. 33 species, heard-only, in 30 minutes. It is amazing I get anything done at all.

Walking through the mud of Jamaica Bay for the first time last Sunday, I fell in love a little. I don’t know if there are many people who find wading through pitch black, sulphurous muck to be a romantic adventure, just as I full well know that few would find hours of shorebird watching to be a reliable mechanism for tapping into the sublime, but my heart is still out among those reeds, or perhaps more correctly floating on the Lemna or hanging in the humid air between a lens and a flock of birds, drawing lines in the interstices of small sandpipers flying along East Pond, flashing silver and moving in that awesomely single organism sort of way, or tracing paths in the sweat that runs beneath annoyingly protective clothing. Words are so clumsy for love, and my love is more clumsy than most, and amorphous, indeterminate, always on the cusp of existing, floundering after Calidris wings and the tide.

Bird list/image info: (more…)

The top photo is a chipping sparrow. The bottom photo is a branch. Where the chipping sparrow was.

There are many pros and cons to an urban existence, there are many forms of entertainment to be sought in the park’s Ramble, and within one microcosm of life there are many different views on a proper birdwatching experience. There are often small irritations involved in identifying birds, especially in a public area. I am mostly bemused and tolerant of these, and generally find that there is a surprising amount of peace and quiet to be had. I love to think of myself as worldly and already-exposed to many subcultural quirks.

Yesterday, gentle readers, I was introduced to The Pisher of Central Park.

For a moment, let us revisit the art of the pish, just in case you have no idea what I am talking about. Pishing is a catchall term for the making of noises that attract birds to you, and is useful in some cases for drawing out a secretive individual or in bringing in a mob when you are in an area with widely-dispersed birds. It can involve pursing your lips and softly “spishing,” or can be a more aggressive, loud “Pshht!” Lip smacking, tongue clicking, or hand-kissing all fall into the same general idea. Taping is a cousin, but that involves electronic devices and prerecorded bird calls.

For a moment, let us avoid the obvious. Pishing is actively debated as to its merits and ethics. It is pretty straightforward that it has an effect on birds. All of the grey areas fall into how much, how loud, where (as in many cases, urban vs. rural), when (time of day, season), and for what purpose. Many people abhor it, many people use it with discrimination, and some people are just outta control.

There were a lot of birders skulking around the Ramble yesterday, and a Wednesday is a common day for group walks. Groups are pretty good at avoiding West Side Story encounters, for the most part. I was having a decent day, despite the numbers of people and the fact that it kept threatening to rain. The weather forecast had said a high of 68ºF. I had missed the part where someone tells you “not until 4pm; until then it will be 48ºF,” so I was a little cold, but I digress.

I was scouting some of the thicker tangles, chasing a shape that was probably a bird but that certainly had reminded me of an elusive Oporonis species of warbler. I was stock still, peripheral vision all electric and buzzing, with my eyes glued to a speck of movement in front of me, when I heard the LOUDEST pish I have ever heard. The effect on the understory was astonishing: robins flushed from everywhere, giving alarm calls, three blue jays swooped in and began scolding, and a flurry of smaller, more interesting birds flushed silently away into the realm of somewhere else. I jumped almost a mile, thinking someone was standing directly behind me. Within .75 seconds, all of my birds were gone.

Imagine my surprise when I realized the offender was, in fact, no where near me. Imagine my irritation when it became apparent that he did this incessantly. My jaw dropped open when I finally ran into him and realized he was leading a group and effectively teaching them that this was OK behavior. Now, finally, imagine my fury when this continued for about 4 hours. And yes, from an empirical standpoint, the birds outside of his periphery (namely, where I was, always trying to avoid him) flushed EVERY SINGLE TIME. Forget ethics, this is personal.

Of course, I don’t really mean to forget ethics. A nice rundown of codified behavior can be found at the American Bird Association site: http://www.aba.org/about/ethics.html

My bird list for the day, after the jump: (more…)

Yesterday was a 16-warbler day. This is very normal for a pretty good day during Spring bird migration. It is not a particularly amazing number (20 warbler species and up is rather nice), but there were good pockets of birds throughout the park, with some coveted FOY’s (First of Year’s) such as Prairie and Kentucky Warblers. Normal. A nice, normal day.

The morning dawned bright and beautiful, I was going to bird with Starr and Lenore & group, and was starting at the leisurely hour of 9 am. My train up the park was on time; I was eagerly and properly caffeinated.

The North Woods of Central Park do not have the best reputation for safety and comfort, but they are incredibly beautiful, and I like to bird with a group now and again so I can really scour the dirt paths and ravines that comprise the top end of the park. These trails often end at a man standing in the shadows, and are called “desire lines” or “love lines.” Other than this, it really does not feel like you are in the city, once you tune out the urban noises. You can’t even see buildings most of the time. Yesterday, however, Starr’s group must have numbered more than thirty people. Translated: many tiny birds + many birders of differing abilities = chaos. Oh, and the film guys were there too, filming the insanity.

By 9:15 a wild-eyed, wild grey-haired man had confronted the group and yelled about a 911 conspiracy involving the similarity of two phone numbers involving high and low levels of government involving the media. By 9:18 the soliloquy was over and birding began in earnest.

At about 10:30 we noticed a fair amount of smoke billowing from behind a small ridge and a couple of us ran over to investigate. “I’m sure it’s just a controlled burn,” I joked. What we found was a small brush fire, undoubtedly set by someone-smoking-something, that was moving through a good-sized area of black, smoldering leaf litter. We called 911 and film-guy Jed tried to stamp some of it out, losing leg hair in the process.

So as we listened to sirens moving away rather than towards us, along came a savior in the form of a crack-hyped, tight-t-shirted fellow who first became absorbed with watching the flames and then started jumping up and down yelling “Take some pretty pictures take some pretty pictures!” He poked at the leaves with a stick until I pointed out that he was only feeding the fire. At this point he became joyously fixated on stamping out the flames, and I left to help guide the firemen up the paths. When an entire truck’s worth of fire fighters finally reached the spot, crack guy had single-handedly extinguished a couple hundred square feet of fire.

And then I birded for a few more hours and made some calls while looking through binoculars and met a bunch of art people for dinner/drinks at the Harrison and then went to a premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and walked down a red carpet and and sat behind an adult film star and went to their after-party and wore these shoes and watched minor celebrities and stayed up too late and if Swarovski wants to pay me I think that would be just fine and I’m totally wrecked today. The End.

A bird list from yesterday: (more…)

I know that it is Spring. I know this, despite the fact that it is freezing and I am wearing long underwear as it snows on me in Central Park, because I spotted a Louisiana Waterthrush and a Blue-grey Gnatcatcher and a couple of Yellow-rumped & Pine Warblers and numerous Eastern Phoebes AND a gazillion Chipping Sparrows. None of whom have been here all this long winter and many of whom were not here two days ago. So as I shiver and point my binoculars past a sleeping man on a park bench and see the Gnatcatcher zipping along a stream in the Ramble, I feel a little happier, if not warmer. There is a Black-crowned Night Heron in a willow on the lake, hunched over with his bill buried deep into the feathers on its back, and I sympathize, but it’s got to get better soon.

This morning the park was notable for an unusual number of Springer Spaniels (6), most with owners. One had forsaken its master and was swimming in Turtle Pond for a good half hour, intently going after ducks and geese. Other birders were none too pleased with this. The ducks and geese, while harassed, were not especially worried, and would fly just enough to be out of reach. Over and over again. The dog, driven by man-manipulated genetics to the verge of insanity, would not give up. We left as the owner gave up cajoling and progressed to howling.

For a full list of the birds I saw today, click “more” at the end of the post.

Oh, and there is some of that amazing new-green color coming up in the park, on the heels of the blooming Forsythia. Magnolia flowers are also opening. And, after getting so used to being filmed that I forget the “film guys” Jeff and Jed are there, I finally turned on Jeff while he was filming me and surprised him by shooting a photo of him.
(more…)

This is the first page of my bird list from my trip to Niagara Falls. Four intrepid birders (Starr Saphir, Lenore Swenson, Don Hill, and myself) headed way north to look for gulls and boreal birds, in particular a Slaty-backed Gull that had been reported at the control gates. This was a group of serious birders, all of the dawn-to-dusk variety and not the sorts to be deterred by the weather in Canada in January. Which is to say we spent most of the time being cold. Although I must admit that spending six hours outdoors in Central Park in January is a more brutal experience than car-birding Niagara.

The drawing is ink on gray paper, about 10×9″. Because jpegs are so notoriously unfaithful, I have put a detail below. Which is also unfaithful, but whatever. If you are interested in reading the full trip list, click the more link at the bottom.

(more…)