April 2016

Birding Old Town Hill in Newbury, Massachusetts

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

View of Adams Pasture and salt marsh from Newman Road. Photographs, unless otherwise indicated, by Peter Oehlkers.

Directions, Parking, and Fees

There are multiple trailheads on the property. Most of them are accessed by parking on Newman Road, which extends from Route 1A in Newbury to Hay Street in Newbury. A large parking area at the bottom of the Old Town Hill area on Newman Road is the main parking area, but there are smaller pulloffs at each of the trailheads that can accommodate one or two cars.

The Trustees website gives these directions to the property: From Interstate 95 Exit 54, take Route 133 East for 4.5 miles. Turn left onto Route 1A North and follow for 4.8 miles. Shortly after passing over the Parker River, turn left onto Newman Road and follow for 0.5 mile to parking (10 cars) on left. Look for trailheads along Newman Road. There is no charge to use the property.

The Trails

This trail map of the Old Town Hill properties is similar to the Trustees of Reservations’ map, except that it includes my unofficial names for the trails that I describe. In this map, the shaded areas are the Old Town Hill properties. Trails are marked with dark lines. The two roads that pass through the property are Newman Road, running east-west, and Hay Street at the left of the map, running north-south.

The trails will be described in order from their intersection with these two roads, beginning at the east on Newman Road and working west.

View from the summit of Old Town Hill.

The Summit Trail and The Hot Ridge. The most popular trail begins at a barrier on Newman Road 100 feet or so west of its intersection with Route 1A. The trail proceeds up Old Town Hill with a few switchbacks and opens out at the summit. Spring birding is good in this area. Indigo Buntings and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks are found at the base of the trail, and at the summit Scarlet Tanagers, Pine Warblers, and Indigo Buntings are reliable nesters. Twice I have seen male buntings and tanagers in the single tree on the summit—a memorable sight. Eighteen years ago one could hear Ruffed Grouse booming from the summit in early spring, but not to my knowledge since then. Olive-sided Flycatchers have been observed at the top of the hill, as well as a variety of warblers in May. The summit is the point on the property with the best views.

If the hiker is in a hurry, returning by the switchback trail provides a quick retreat, but continuing west on the Ridge Trail takes the hiker along a ridge between a field on the right and a wooded area on the left. My birding friends and I call this area “The Hot Ridge” because in spring it is the first area to warm up in the morning, and when there are warblers in the area, they will be here. Old Town Hill attracts thrushes in spring, and this trail is a good place to find them. After turning to the right, the trail proceeds down a hill and turns left, to return to Newman Road.

Scarlet Tanagers are reliable nesters at the summit of Old Town Hill. Photograph by Sandy Selesky.

The Boardwalk and Adams Pasture Trail. There is a trail to the north at the base of the hill below The Hot Ridge. If the hiker takes this trail and bears left in 150 feet or so, the trail proceeds to a boardwalk across a tributary to the marsh. There are good views up and down the marsh from the boardwalk. On the other side of the boardwalk the trail continues through woodlands and meets a more-traveled trail. Bearing left on that trail takes the hiker to Adams Pasture and then along its south edge. Adams Pasture is a field noted for its Bobolinks arriving in spring and nesting in the summer. Near the far side of Adams Pasture the trail veers left to pass through trees and then a section of salt marsh, arriving on Newman Road. This salt-marsh area is reliable during nesting season for Saltmarsh Sparrow and Marsh Wren. In spring, one can often hear Virginia Rails calling in the spartina. This trail is one of my favorites in the area, passing through hilltop views, deciduous and pine forest, pastures, and salt-marsh terrain. Warbler fallouts are possible here in May, and hundreds of robins roost in the wooded area in the winter. Note: I recommend that the hiker walking this trail for the first time proceed in the direction from Old Town Hill to Adams Pasture, as described, since the trail can be difficult to locate when passing in the reverse direction.

Boardwalk Trail.

The Hill Trail. At the top of the Newman Road hill, there are a pulloff and two trailheads. The trail south of the road passes through a field where Bobolinks nest in the summer and continues to the Little River. The trail north of the road is one terminus of the trail from the top of Old Town Hill to Newman Road, described above.

The Lower River Trail. Another trail to the Little River begins at the main parking lot at the base of the hill on Newman Road. It passes through woodlands, follows the bank of the Little River, and returns along the edge of the salt marsh.

The Salt Marsh Trail. At the point where Newman Road crosses the Little River, there is a pulloff and a trail passing north from Newman Road through the salt marsh, through the trees, and along the south side of Adams Pasture. This is the other end of the Adams Pasture trail described above.

The Hay Street Trails. Two short trails, one on each side of the road, lead from a pulloff on Hay Street about one quarter mile north of its intersection with Newman Road. This area is also part of the Old Town Hill property. Each of these trails begins at a green gate and each leads to freshwater wetlands and marsh. The trail on the west is part of the Bay Circuit Trail, which emerges from the woods at the parking pulloff.

Driving Newman Road

Although the trails provide looks at many birds that cannot be seen from the car, local birders often drive Newman Road on their way to or from Plum Island or other destinations and stop to examine the marsh. A series of pools at the bottom of the Newman Road hill often contains shorebirds and ducks, and this is a favorite spot during summer months for Glossy Ibis. On summer evenings, Whip-poor-wills can be heard from Newman Road. Horned Larks often feed in the frozen marsh in winter. A variety of rarities have been observed in this area. Sandhill Cranes have spent time here. Northern Shrikes have been observed in the trees bordering the marsh, and Rough-legged Hawks are unusual but regular visitors to the area. A bonus for the birder stopping on Newman Road along the marsh is the view of the oxbows in the Little River as it meanders through the salt marsh on its way to join the Parker River.

Nearby Birding Areas

In addition to the areas on the Old Town Hill reservation, there are several spots nearby that are worth checking in season.

Just south of Newman Road on Route 1A is the Parker River Bridge, where the river sometimes freezes down to a single opening in winter. Three merganser species, as well as a variety of river ducks and loons, can be concentrated near the bridge. In warmer times, the waterfowl are distributed up and down the river but can be observed from the sidewalk on the bridge. The parking lot at the bridge requires a boating permit, but one can park off the highway or in the Old Town green and walk the short distance to the bridge.

Quill Pond (also known as Icehouse Pond) on Hay Street is worth checking, especially now that domestic Mute Swans are no longer allowed to spend their days on the pond, chasing away native waterfowl. If you are proceeding up Hay Street, Orchard Orioles have nested for the last 18 years or so near the intersection of Hay Street and Low Street. Owling can also be good on Hay Street. Last year, Great Horned, Barred, and Screech owls were heard from the road, calling at night.

Precautions

Do remember that mosquitoes breed in the salt marshes in the summer, and greenhead flies can be numerous in July and August, so bring insect repellent if you are walking on the reservation in the summer months. And if you walk through grassy areas in the warmer months, be sure to take precautions and check for ticks afterward.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a scenic and birdy area to visit in the Parker River region of Essex County, Old Town Hill’s short trails and longer loops can provide you with interesting birds in any season. The Old Town Hill reservation is a little-known gem that is worth visiting on the way to or from Plum Island or, as local birders know, for its own sake.

References

Coffin, Joshua. 1977. A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport and West Newbury. Hampton, New Hampshire: Peter E. Randall, Publisher. See p. 368 for the full, rolling, oratorical sentence in which the sheep look down on the marshes from Old Town Hill.
The Trustees of Reservations. 2007. Old Town Hill Management Plan. Accessed online. Contains a detailed history of the property and the Trustees’ recommendations for preserving and maintaining it.

David Davis is the current Poet In Residence at Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport. He has lived in Newbury for nineteen years and birds the Old Town Hill area at least weekly, walking to the property from his house along Hay Street and Newman Road. He began birding in Colorado in the 1960s. Davis is an artificial intelligence consultant and high- tech entrepreneur who uses genetic algorithms—evolution simulated on a computer—to solve difficult real-world problems.

The Obscurest of Obscure Birds: Smith’s Longspur

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Also on December 22, this is what Geoff Wilson, our chaperone at Bear Creek, wrote, “The day after the CBC when we were looking for the Swainson’s Hawk, Stephen and I were sitting in my truck talking about how bold the [longspur’s] outer white tail feathers were.” So it went for several more weeks. Geoff or someone else would see a solitary bird, one that did not associate with Horned Larks or other ground- feeding birds. But it was only seen after being flushed, flashing those bright outer tail feathers as it flew away.

Finally, on Monday January 18, 2016, my Massbird post had an entirely different subject: “Smith’s Longspur at Bear Creek.” Here is the text in its entirety:

On today’s otherwise uneventful Bear Creek walk, we spent a lot of time studying a longspur—which may have been 2 different birds. The first one, extremely secretive, was deemed by some to be a Lapland, but frankly I never got a good enough look at it to be sure of anything. The second one (if it was a second one) was extremely tame and allowed close approach by our whole group. Once I got it in the scope I began to doubt seriously that it was a Lapland. There simply was no rufous or ochre anywhere near the face or hindneck—or much of anywhere else….

This is what Marshall Iliff said of the photo [of this bird] taken by Norman Hyett, confirming it as a Smith’s Longspur:

Key features shown here are: 1) overall buffy plumage; 2) bright pinkish legs; 3) narrow streaking becoming pencil thin streaks on flanks; 4) lack of a prominent and contrasting rufous wing patch; 5) moderate primary projection; 6) prominent frame to auriculars and large pale spot at lower border; 7) well-defined mantle braces; 8) lack of any rufous on the nape. The one thing that surprises me here is that the eye ring does not appear at all prominent, which is usually the case on Smith’s.

At this point I began to look for additional evidence, including all the photos I could collect of the bird. Most showed pretty much what Norman Hyett had captured—all except the bird’s legs, which were nearly completely obscured in the one- to three-inch vegetation it favored.

On Wednesday, January 20, 2016, approximately 30 people came to the Bear Creek sanctuary to look for the Smith’s Longspur. We found it almost immediately less than 50 feet from where we had seen it last. For the entire time that we were there— nearly two hours—the bird was essentially alone, feeding in three-inch-high vegetation and easy to see. Initially it was in bad light, so we slowly circled to its sun side and the entire group had lovely views of the Smith’s in perfect light 20 to 25 feet from us.

We also had the media present. A reporter and a freelance photographer from the Lynn Item came to record this birding event. The management at Wheelabrator, which operates the landfill and wildlife sanctuary at Bear Creek, had been alerted to the onslaught of birders coming to see a once-in-a-lifetime bird and notified the local press. They also alerted the local gourmet sandwich shop, which served us an excellent lunch afterwards, courtesy of Wheelabrator.

The eBird report for January 20 indicated that the combined eyes of all of those birders turned up quite a list. A Lapland Longspur, indeed, was present, feeding with Horned Larks, as is habitually the case for this species. A flock of Snow Buntings put in an appearance. A young Bald Eagle, three Northern Harriers, and a first-year Glaucous Gull rounded out the day’s special sightings.

Gathering at Wheelabrator. Photograph by Ram Subramanian.

Marshall Iliff’s note in eBird about the Bear Creek Smith’s Longspur is worth quoting:

…astonishing first winter and third state record for Massachusetts found 17 Jan 2016….This bird [was] seen twice in the same area, and … a longspur sp. was flushed here once or twice previously (first on the day after the Boston CBC). Chestnut-collared Longspur eliminated by moderately long primary projection, prominent frame to the auriculars, and whitish mantle braces. Key field marks distinguishing it from Lapland Longspur are: 1) overall buffy plumage including throat, auriculars, and all of the underparts; 2) pale sandy upperparts with little contrast except whitish mantle braces; 3) narrow breast streaking becoming pencil thin streaks on flank and with no black patches on underparts; 4) secondary panel contrastingly rich buff (or pale rufous) on the edges, but nothing like the chestnut panel of Lapland; 5) prominent frame to auriculars and large pale spot at lower border; 6) brightest rufous color along the rear edge of the auricular frame and very faint, with the nape actually contrastingly grayer (colder) than the buff on the rest of the head and upperparts and very unlike the rich rufous nape of Lapland. 7) very faint, thin white eye ring was almost impossible to see against the pale buff face but was apparent with very close views (and shows in the photos below) although it looks like some feathers of the eye ring may be missing. Given the lack of obvious white lesser coverts, indistinct eye ring, and generally non-contrasting plumage I assume this is a female and probably a first-winter. Leg color was never seen as this bird stayed back on its haunches the entire time we observed it. I could clearly see that the outermost rectrix was white, but never saw the spread tail and could not see the second white tail feather (although others said they did see this). Towards the end of my (MJI) observation it made one short flight and gave two flight calls, which were a solid, metallic rattle like Lapland but slower and composed of 4–5 distinct notes that could almost be counted.

Eye ring: Chris Floyd, who perused the bird carefully for a long time, assured me that this longspur had much a brighter white eye ring on its right side and also more white on the right side secondary coverts.

Leg color: Norman Hyett’s photo clearly shows pinkish legs; they are not exactly the bright pink that Marshall Iliff describes, but are certainly pale. Where visible, the legs in all of my photos of Lapland Longspurs are dark brown or black. Godfrey (1979) states that Smith’s young and females have pale brown legs, paler than other longspurs.

Calls: I asked Jan Smith, who originally had heard the bird fly overhead and call on December 20, to listen to recorded calls of Lapland and Smith’s Longspurs. He reported, “I just listened to flight calls for both Smith’s and Lapland Longspurs and the call that I heard seems most consistent with the recordings for the Smith’s.”

After the extremely successful attempt on January 20 to relocate the Smith’s Longspur, we made two additional trips to the site. On Wednesday, January 27, 52 people came to look for the bird; there was no media contingent this time, but lunch was served again. However, there was no bird to be seen. Four days later, on January 31, nearly 60 people arrived at the site but again we were not successful in finding it. However, some sharp-eyed members of the Tufts Ornithological Club found three Lapland Longspurs.

It is apparent that the Smith’s Longspur has left the area or moved. Since it is solitary and does not flock with other ground-feeders, it will be difficult to relocate.

There have been two previous records of Smith’s Longspur in Massachusetts: On October 12, 1968, Chris Leahy identified and described an individual from Salisbury Beach (Veit and Petersen 1993).

On November 9, 2014, Alan Trautmann photographed a longspur at Nahant that was identified as Smith’s upon closer perusal (eBird 2014).

I’ll share here some of the information I have gleaned about this species. The Birds of Canada (Godfrey 1979) shows the breeding range of Smith’s Longspur as spanning northern Alaska as well as the far north and northwest of Canada in tundra habitat. The easternmost breeding birds nest along the southern shore of Hudson Bay. They migrate mainly through Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and winter from Kansas and Iowa, south to Oklahoma, Central Texas, northwestern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, rarely in Tennessee.

Birds of North America (BNA) covers the breeding biology of Smith’s Longspur at length. It has the unusual mating habit of being polygynandrous. Here is how BNA describes this system:

… each female pairs and copulates with two or three males for a single clutch of eggs, at the same time that each male pairs and copulates with two or more females. Males do not defend territories, but instead guard females by following them closely and compete for fertilizations by copulating frequently in order to dilute or displace sperm from other males. Over a period of one week in the early spring, a female longspur will copulate over 350 times on average; this is one of the highest copulation rates of any bird. Males are well-equipped to deliver such large numbers of ejaculates—their testes are about double the mass of those of the monogamous and congeneric Lapland Longspur (C. lapponicus).

The birds nest in colonial groups. Males help in feeding the young. Two or more males may assist, and the amount of food each provides seems proportional to the number of young he sired. BNA continues, “Perhaps the advantages females obtain from extra male help in raising offspring may explain why they pair and mate with more than one male.” image

References

Briskie, J. V. 2009. Smith’s Longspur (Calcarius pictus). The Birds of North America Online (A. Poole, Ed.). Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Retrieved from the Birds of North America Online on February 11, 2016.
eBird. 2014. Accessed February 11, 2016.
Godfrey, W. E. 1979. The Birds of Canada. Ottawa: National Museums of Canada.
Veit R. R. and W. R. Petersen. 1993. Birds of Massachusetts. Lincoln, Massachusetts: Mass Audubon.

Soheil Zendeh, born in Tehran, grew up in Tehran and Tangier, Morocco, arrived in Cambridge in 1961 as a college freshman and later started an auto repair shop first in Cambridge, then in Watertown. He began birding in 1973, never got a good look at the Newburyport Ross’s Gull, got sick of driving to the North Shore for birds, and began checking out local Boston spots in 1975. Since 2009 he has been guiding bird tours at Bear Creek Sanctuary in Saugus. Soheil lives in Lexington with his wife Christine.

The author thanks all the people who helped pin down this bird: Geoff Wilson, Tim Factor, Norman Hyett, Marshall Iliff, and Jan Smith. Also, thanks to the researchers whose work was summarized in Birds of North America: James V. Briskie and Joseph R. Jehl, Jr.

The Bobolink Project 2016

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

There are many hay farmers in New England who are willing to delay their harvest schedule for the sake of nesting birds such as Bobolinks, but to do so costs them money. Late season hay is less valuable commercially than early season hay. By providing financial support, The Bobolink Project allows participating farmers to manage their fields for grassland birds by delaying their harvesting schedules. This mechanism buys the time needed for grassland birds to successfully nest on working farms. The Bobolink Project collects conservation donations and provides a way for farmers to submit bids to enroll their farms. Then, through a reverse auction process, the project selects which farms to support so that the amount of land that can be protected is maximized given the amount of conservation donations that have been received.

The Bobolink Project is a proven and successful model for grassland bird conservation. As summarized by Allan Strong, “In 2013, The Bobolink Project raised about $32,000, which led to payments to seven landowners for bird-friendly management on 200 acres … In 2014, we raised about the same amount and ... were able to support bird-friendly management on 340 acres.” Furthermore, in 2015, even more farmers were interested in participating, and approximately $50,000 of conservation donations allowed protection of 549 acres of suitable grassland bird habitat during June to early August.

However, Strong concluded his article by noting that:

The Bobolink Project has been successful in large part because it is supported by a [federal] grant [that covered administrative and marketing costs] . . . without grant funding, this approach is probably not sustainable in the long term without someone who is head-over-heels in love with Bobolinks . . . . For 2015, we’ve got just enough money left in the grant to run the project for one more season (Strong 2015).

That is, The Bobolink Project was expected to close up shop in 2016 because the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s grant to Stephen Swallow had drawn to a close.

As we considered this situation at Mass Audubon, we were convinced that The Bobolink Project was simply too good an idea to allow it to die. With our partners at Vermont Audubon and Connecticut Audubon, we joined forces to become those people Allan Strong asked for—the ones who are head-over-heels in love with Bobolinks. True, some administrative changes would be required to allow the program to become a permanent conservation initiative, without dependence on uncertain grant support from either the federal government or nonprofit foundations. After a series of conversations and meetings with Drs. Swallow and Strong, as well as with representatives of Audubon Vermont and Audubon Connecticut, we developed the new version of The Bobolink Project which is online at www.bobolinkproject.org.

What has changed? First, administration of The Bobolink Project and its website has shifted from Stephen Swallow and the University of Connecticut to Mass Audubon and our collaborators, Audubon Vermont and Audubon Connecticut. Drs. Swallow and Strong, however, are still fully involved in the program. Second, donations that cannot be passed to participating farms in one year will be set aside and held for use in the following year, and up to 15% of donations will be used to cover administrative and marketing costs connected to the program. Third, the geographic scope of The Bobolink Project will expand beyond its previous focus in the Champlain Valley of Vermont to potentially include farms in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Farms in Massachusetts outside this region also will be considered.

This effort can only succeed with your support—the more money we raise, the more Bobolinks we will protect. Please tell your friends, farmers, or potential donors about The Bobolink Project, and ask them to tell their friends too. If you are a farmer interested in being paid for delaying your hay harvest, please go to the website by April 22 and make a confidential bid to enroll your field into The Bobolink Project for 2016. If you are a donor, we also need to receive your contribution by that same date.

If protection of nesting Bobolinks were an easy problem, we would have solved it by now. The reality is that conservation on working lands is the key to the success of this work. To ask farmers to delay their harvests, we need to “rent” their working lands to make up for their lost income. Help us continue to make The Bobolink Project a win-win situation, for both birds and farms, by joining as a donor or a farmer. We need you.

Reference

Strong, A.M. 2015. How Much is a Bobolink Worth? Bird Observer 43(1): 15-20.

Jon Atwood is a Bird Conservation Fellow, concentrating on grassland bird conservation, at Mass Audubon in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He has been a practicing ornithologist and conservation biologist for 30 years, specializing in integrating behavioral studies of rare and endangered bird species with habitat conservation planning. While working at Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences during the early 1990’s, he collaborated in the analysis of the first 30 years of Manomet’s landbird banding effort, spearheaded federal protection of the California Gnatcatcher under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, led a long-term study of factors affecting Least Tern colony site selection, and contributed to early studies of Bicknell’s Thrush. From 1998–2011 he directed the Conservation Biology Program at Antioch University, New England; taught classes in Ornithology, Ecological Research Design, and GIS; and mentored over 70 graduate students working on various wildlife studies. During 2011–2013 he worked as Science Director at Biodiversity Research Institute in southern Maine.

A Tribute to E. Vernon Laux: “Keep your Eyes to the Sky!”

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

The world lost a true giant on January 21, 2016, with the passing of our friend Vernon Laux. He will be remembered for all the good he did to promote the richness of birding in Massachusetts and beyond, the countless rare birds he discovered, the birders young and old he inspired, and the many friendships he fostered. Many of us will be forever grateful for the people we know and the friendships we have due to his generosity and enthusiasm. Above all, Vern will be remembered for the fun and excitement he introduced into birding and into life in general.

Vern was the most recognizable name and personality in New England birding. He wrote weekly articles for the Vineyard Gazette, the Martha’s Vineyard Times, and the Cape Cod Times that exposed many readers to nature through his illustrative prose. Vern regularly appeared on WCAI, Cape Cod’s National Public Radio station, for “The Point.” The many speaking engagements he was invited to give provided a more personal interaction with the public. Indeed, the number of birders, nature lovers, would-be birders, and would-be nature lovers he reached and influenced is one of his greatest legacies. While traveling the Cape and Islands, it was impossible not to meet people Vern knew or who knew him. Each of those folks had a story about a bird they noticed, or for which they had a special appreciation, all through Vern’s influence. In fact, we often joked that if we ever encountered a police officer during late-night owling, a quick mention of Vern’s name would clear up any misunderstanding (our get- out-of-jail-free card).

Of course, his work in media couldn’t explain the entirety of his legend. Vern had a huge, uplifting personality that inspired people to listen and learn. His infectious enthusiasm for birds and the natural world so excited nonbirders that they tuned in to his radio pieces on a regular basis just to hear his positive words on birding (the same as life). Beginning and experienced birders alike found him equally forthcoming with information, identification help, or a good joke. It didn’t hurt that his huge personality came with a giant frame and booming voice. On a one-mile by two-mile island in Maine, we always knew when Vernon had arrived, not by our first sighting of him, but by his far-reaching voice that penetrated every corner of the island.

He also had a competitive side, which showed in his interest in sports. Tom Brady and the Patriots were favorites, as were Larry Bird and the Celtics. Vern enjoyed Christmas Bird Counts and he particularly relished finding lingering or rare species that he could report at the countdowns—a feat he rarely failed to accomplish! He was an essential asset on any Big Day adventure. He was involved with most of the teams that broke each previous Massachusetts Big Day record. We participated with Vern in the World Series of Birding in New Jersey for a number of years and were fortunate to break the difficult 200-species barrier each time. Typically, these events are extremely well planned with little room for freewheeling, but with Vern there was always time for an impromptu detour of a few hundred miles on a hunch. One year, Vern persuaded us to make a major detour for an American Avocet, which happened to be a mere 150 miles off our route. Needless to say, it paid off; we got the bird and still broke 200 species.

Vern discovered or helped find and identify many exciting birds. The long list includes a Streaked/Sulphur-bellied Flycatcher, Gray Kingbird, Common Cuckoo, Tufted Duck, Sandhill Crane, Ash-throated Flycatcher, Common Swift, and, of course, who could forget the Red-footed Falcon. However, Vern found excitement in every aspect of birding and birds. One of the stories he relished the most was being involved on Martha’s Vineyard with the first documented hybrid of Black-capped Chickadee and Tufted Titmouse, a bird he dubbed the Chickmouse.

Vern’s 60th Birthday Party. Photograph courtesy of the authors.

Whether he was birding locally or in distant lands, he found pleasure in being outdoors and encountering whatever flew by. He visited every continent. He worked on ships in Antarctica, traveled in Africa, and spoke longingly of truly awesome times in Australia, Asia, and Central and South America. Locally, he was crazy about Monomoy Island and South Beach in Chatham for shorebirds, the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard for fall migration, Low Beach and Madaket on Nantucket for gulls and migrants, and offshore waters where he loved fishing as well as observing seabirds. To be perfectly honest, and we know Vern would be, fishing may have held a spot equal to birding in his heart.

A birding adventure with Vern would not be complete without one of his favorite musicians blaring on the radio. He was particularly fond of epic rock and blues guitar licks from the varied likes of Jonny Lang, Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Buddy Guy, John Hiatt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name a few. During the summer of 2015, Vern and Peter Trimble attended a Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang concert which, according to Vern, was the best concert ever!

Vern was a unique person. If he wasn’t the inspiration for the most interesting man in the world ad campaign—and he could have been—he certainly could have inspired a most interesting birder in the world ad campaign: “He doesn’t always go birding, but when he does, wait—he always does!” And who doesn’t recognize his signature slogan: “Keep your eyes to the sky, my friends.” After all, Vern was recognized as a “Person of the Week” on ABC News in 2004! Who would believe that a birder could slide into that spot?

Vern was passionate, intelligent, and outgoing, to put it mildly. One of the traits we found most exciting about Vern was the way he could transform the routine into the extraordinary. Whether you were with him for a first state record, the most routine field sighting, or the millionth time he’d seen a Merlin cruise by—Vern had a special fondness for Merlins, the “magicians”—he turned that experience into the greatest birding moment of your life. More to the point, the next time you saw a Merlin with him, well, now that became your most memorable birding experience. His excitement transformed the way you looked at birds and at life so that you walked away with a new appreciation, no matter if you were a lifelong birder or a first-time participant in Vern’s world.

Vern’s eyesight was second to none. It often seemed unfair that he walked around with binoculars. I lost count of the number of times he picked out a bird AND identified it with his eyes before anyone else saw it in their binoculars.

Vern had many different jobs during his lifetime, which included being a researcher in Alaska; a Zodiac driver in Antarctica; a fisherman off Cape Cod; a business manager, painter, and realtor on Martha’s Vineyard; a naturalist on Nantucket; a writer; and a radio commentator. No matter his career choice of the moment, he was always birding.

His fondness for island living and birding was well known. Monomoy Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Monhegan Island, and Nantucket were favorites of his. His last stop was Nantucket and he quickly became an integral part of the island community. He started the wonderful Nantucket Bird Festival, designed for birders and nonbirders, islanders and mainlanders to enjoy an awesome few days of birding and socializing in a unique and special place. The list of rare birds found during this festival in a few short years is amazing: Magnificent Frigatebird, Western Kingbird, Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Townsend’s Solitaire, Calliope Hummingbird, and the mega Gray-tailed Tattler. All of these birds speak volumes to Vern’s vision.

Wherever Vern called home, he made many friends. Vern introduced birds to many and had time for all. Beginning and experienced birders alike could find a friend in common. Some of our greatest friendships are the direct result of Vern’s natural openness. When Jeremiah and I bird and visit Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket we are met with open arms by amazing people. These friendships were a gift from our dear friend Vern and will help his memory live on forever. Wherever we bird, Vern will be at our side. In a story on the Red-footed Falcon for ABC News, Peter Jennings wrote, “The 50 million birders of America have a lot to thank Vernon Laux for.” We couldn’t agree more!

Five things I learned from Vern Laux

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

It could always be something special. Never dismiss a group of birds as anything common. Look closely enough and the rare and special may be hidden among the flock. One early summer day, my husband came by our office to have lunch. Vern, Carl, and I sat at the picture window eating sandwiches and chatting about fishing. A slew of mourning doves huddled around the bird feeders. Nothing extraordinary. Then Vern interrupted Carl mid-sentence to exclaim that one of the mourning doves was actually a white-winged dove, a bird usually found in the far southern US and Central America. Leave it to Vern to spot the rarity.

Don’t talk down to kids. Despite not having any formal training in education, Vern was an intuitive teacher. His enthusiasm for nature and all things birding was infectious. Children were drawn to him, which I believe was due, in no small part, to the way he spoke to them. He never talked down to children, but spoke to them as peers regardless of their age. He would tell hysterical stories with the heart of a six-year-old all the while discussing breeding habits of Osprey. It is a testament to his genuineness that many island children called Vern their friend.

A true story can be improved upon in the retelling. Working with Vern I got to hear many of his stories; some of which I heard more than once. He was an engaging storyteller leading the listener along right to the end. That’s one thing that made him so great to listen to on the radio. However, sometimes the story changed just a bit, was just a bit funnier, or more harrowing. Who knows which versions were true and does it really matter? Aren’t we all a little better off for having heard a great tale?

Live life to the fullest. Vern was one to fully enjoy life; never pass up a cookie or a drink when offered. I don’t think he ever met a trip he wouldn’t take. He knew how to have a good time and not take life too seriously. When I first started at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation he took me out birding with him. After driving around town we stopped in front of a non-descript house with a small front yard and several feeders. “Wait, what’s in there?” he said aloud. There was excitement in his voice, so I knew it was going to be good. As I looked with my binocs, he guided me to the bird atop the feeder, head down. “It’s an Ivory-billed Woodpecker!” he exclaimed with glee. Sure enough, I was looking at a wooden carving of an extinct bird. How many others has he pulled into this trap? I can hear his big laugh even now just thinking about it.

Keep your eyes to the sky. This signature statement ended the WCAI Bird Report each week. Taken literally, Vern loved to remind us that we would only see more and interesting birds the more we looked. Now, with Vern gone, I am reminded to keep my eyes open to observe the world around and all it has to offer. Live big, love big, laugh big. Keep your eyes open to the possibilities.

Vern wouldn’t want you to miss a thing.

The Essex County Ornithological Club: 1916-2016

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

The camaraderie of these trips was celebrated in impromptu entertainments and songs belted out with toasts around a campfire. The river could be tricky after spring rains, and the group’s comedian, aptly named Albert Fowler, composed mock- heroic ballads about canoeists overturned. “Cum Laude Platypus,” credited to John R. Ornithorynchus, tells the tale of sunken birders metamorphosed into duck-billed platypuses. They meet their curious fate in the final stanza:

From the Drink, from the Drink,
We emerged through the eel-grass and slime.
We were changed by the Stink
Into Or-ni-tho-ryn-chus Divine.

The moral? Birders on boats should learn to swim. Henceforth, any capsized canoeist would automatically join the Royal Order of Ornithorynchus.

In 1916, the now expanded band of birders formed the Essex County Ornithological Club (ECOC) to study the county’s birds systematically in a co- operative spirit. They compiled a list of 40 charter members (mostly from Salem, Lynn, and Danvers) and elected the first officers: Frank Benson, President; Albert Morse, Vice-President; Arthur Osborne, Secretary; and Albert Fowler, Treasurer. The club sponsored field trips and met monthly to compare field notes and hear ornithological papers in the Peabody Museum of Salem (now Peabody Essex Museum), long a center for study of the county’s natural history. The ECOC, wrote charter member Edward Morse, carried out nature study in the tradition of Thoreau and John Burroughs. “The meetings are very informal, specimens of birds are exhibited, excursions are made and altogether perfect accord has prevailed.” Morse rhapsodized about the fascination of birds and the “agreeable features” of bird study, “wandering as one must over field and forest.” He claimed that because of birds’ economic importance, “we are of some use in the world in studying and recording observations of intrinsic value” (Morse 1919).

The ECOC bylaws, modeled on those of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, required that existing members nominate new members and that all members agree in writing to conform to the bylaws. Any member could be expelled by a three-quarters majority vote. The club also established an Honorary Membership for “ornithologists of eminence.” Annual dues were set at $2, with a life membership available for $25.

Among many prominent founders, one man stands out: Dr. Charles Townsend, an all-around naturalist and reigning authority on the county’s avian life. In 1905, Townsend published The Birds of Essex County, Massachusetts, among the first comprehensive studies of birds within a single county anywhere, to provide an annotated list of all species known from the county. Townsend traced the county’s ornithological history from the early 17th century drawing on reports from diverse sources such as seabird-watching lighthouse keepers. His book, wrote Jim MacDougall in a 1993 ECOC history, gives us “a body of knowledge that exclaims we take notice of the trends of the past and demands the necessity of keeping records today” (MacDougall 1993). Jim Berry, Townsend’s heir in his exhaustive study of the county’s birds, especially admires Townsend’s descriptions of bird behavior, observed with scrupulous attention to detail. Townsend, notes Berry, was an intrepid field naturalist who “disdained physical hardship by canoeing around the marshes, hiking and camping in the [Ipswich] dunes, cooking out at all seasons, and taking a dip in freezing water in winter” (Berry).

Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club 1937-38. Cover with logo by Frank Benson.

Townsend’s book offers a wealth of knowledge about the county’s birds but also tells a disturbing story of lost abundance and diversity. Birds that were once common in Essex County, like the Passenger Pigeon, are now extinct, and a litany of species, including Tundra Swan and Long-billed Curlew, have been extirpated as breeding birds and migrants in the county and often in the whole state. Townsend’s 1920 Supplement to the Birds of Essex County strikes a more hopeful chord, as he cites recent laws that had shortened the gunning seasons for shorebirds and waterfowl, and notes the crusade to stop the killing of egrets and terns for the millinery trade. We will never know the abundance of birds that astonished the first European settlers in New England, but through dedicated efforts to preserve species and their habitats, we might keep the birds we have.

ECOC meetings featured a regular speakers’ program, often covered by the Salem Evening News, beginning in 1916 with Winthrop Packard’s report on Mass Audubon’s lobbying for legislation to protect birds. State ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush lectured on “How Birds Helped Win the War” in 1918 and “The So- called Suicide of Wounded Water Birds” in 1922. Frank Benson, a renowned artist and club president for 18 years, demonstrated his etching techniques for illustrating birds. Charles Moulton entertained his audience with imitations of bird calls. Many members were knowledgeable naturalists, with interests ranging from botany to entomology to collecting and handling venomous snakes—the subject of Charles Clark’s 1927 presentation. Other well-travelled members shared birding adventures around the country and abroad in French Guiana, the Nile Valley, and Japan. Townsend, a delegate to the 1930 International Ornithological Congress in Amsterdam, reported on his around-the-globe birding tours. To add a visual component to lectures, the club purchased a Spencer Delineascope (a reflecting stereopticon or “magic lantern”) in 1917 and built a lantern-slide collection of local birds. In 1927, members enjoyed a motion picture starring locally nesting hummingbirds. In 1930, Gil Emilio brought in a freshly collected Say’s Phoebe for group inspection.

From 1919 through 1938, the club published annual bulletins that combined detailed field notes with thought-provoking articles on bird behavior, distribution, and conservation. Benson, who later created the second Federal Duck Stamp (a Canvasback), designed the terns-in-flight logo for the cover and illustrated each issue with woodcuts. The quality of the bulletins can be measured by the widespread interest they generated. ECOC archives in the Peabody Essex Museum contain requests for copies—and offers to exchange ornithological reports—not only from around New England but from individuals and academies nationwide, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and scientists at the British Museum, the University of Bologna, McGill University, and zoological societies in Brussels and Paris.

One regular feature was Ralph Lawson’s annual report on the Ipswich River canoe trip. Lawson rejoiced over the “rich harvest of species” at such riverside spots as the Proctor estate in Topsfield, a “great wonderland to the lover of trees, shrubs, and rock gardens” (Feathered 1926). Truly, he exclaimed, Essex County in May was a bird lover’s paradise. Rodman Nichols explained the diversity of species found on trips as a reflection of the varied habitats along the river: woodlands, uplands, bogs, farmland, salt marshes and sloughs, and the dunes and beaches of Ipswich. The Salem Evening News regularly covered trips, with headlines announcing “warblers galore” in 1919 (23 species, including a rare spring Connecticut) and a Wood Duck nest with 17 eggs. In the final bulletin Ernest Dodge summarized the first 32 trips, with a table of all species seen or heard and the years when they were found. To the modern Massachusetts birder, the table is striking for the absent species—Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Carolina Wren—and species once routine but now rare anywhere in the county. Golden-winged Warblers and nesting Vesper Sparrows were seen every year, Sedge Wrens in most years.

Field notes were gathered in “Told Around the Big Table,” a reference to the club’s meeting place at the museum. Here readers could find reports of rare or interesting species seen by birders from bicycles, cars, trains, rowboats (Little Blue Heron in 1923), and steamers (Harlequin Ducks in 1922), or while trapping mink or searching for flowers or on ECOC field trips. The 1921 issue featured a photo of a preserved Common Shelduck (now in the museum collection) shot by Captain Howard Tobey at the mouth of the Essex River––the first specimen collected in North America, though not accepted as a record because of its questionable provenance. In 1925, George Felt described a county-record American Three-toed Woodpecker he found while hunting in Middleton and persuasively explained why it was not a less rare Black-backed. In 1929, Gil Emilio captured the drama of chasing and trying to document a rare bird, the first Black-headed Gull recorded in North America. On January 26 Emilio spotted the gull offshore in Newburyport and shot at it from 40 yards but missed. The next day, with a boat and a bigger gun, Emilio, Ludlow Griscom, and other club members re-found their bird, but by the time Emilio shot it, they’d lost their boat and captain, and the dead gull remained stubbornly at sea. Griscom frantically tried to organize a swimming party to brave the frigid waters. Emilio prudently declined and waited until his specimen had drifted within wading range.

Griscom, a legendary field birder who joined the club in 1928, quickly became a regular “Table” contributor, reporting on his bird censuses each May. In several reports we find a young Roger Tory Peterson tagging along in the field with Griscom and Lawson. Other field notes illustrated the range encompassed by the term “birding.” Arthur Morley considered the problem of Northern Shrikes hanging out around bird- banding stations. A.W. Taylor in 1936 suggested techniques for capturing birds with a camera.

Each bulletin contained a list of species found that year, and starting in 1921, the club periodically published an updated county checklist, initially based on Townsend’s 1920 Supplement. Like other record-keeping societies, the ECOC struggled to set standards for accepting “unlikely observations,” and Emilio and R.J. Eaton published long bulletin articles on the credibility of sight records. The unreliability or smugness of certain observers was a source of comedy as well as an issue of scientific ground rules. In “Drumming of the Snipe,” Albert Fowler reported that, despite gabby group members and a large dog’s “uproarious vocalizations,” birders managed fleeting glimpses of snipe drumming and fluttering at dusk. “One man,” Fowler noted, “went so far as to declare that he saw five Snipe, thereby drawing on himself sundry observations more pointed than scientific” (Fowler 1922). In “It Is Wise to Look Twice,” Arthur Stubbs satirized three “bird men”—the Medico, the Engineer, and the Pillman—each “wise in his own conceit” and “a little cocky over his knowledge of local bird-life” (Stubbs 1928). Stubbs nearly overlooked a Bald Eagle while wrangling over shorebird identification.

Field notes also told darker stories of birds and their habitats going or gone. On Martha’s Vineyard in late April 1921, ECOC “Heath-henners” thrilled to see 20 Heath Hen pairs engaged in mating dances, but three years later Alfred Gross spoke to the club about the species’ rapid decline. In 1921, Stubbs reminisced about Yellow-breasted Chats, regular breeding birds in the county between 1885 and 1895. C. J. Maynard, in 1926, recalled that Esquimaux Curlew once abounded in the Ipswich hills, where he saw some around 1870, but were now gone forever. Members were also dismayed that some of the county’s most productive birding grounds, like the Fay Estate—on the shores of Spring Pond, at the meeting point of Lynn, Salem, and Peabody—were now compromised or giving way to development.

More formal bulletin articles ranged from field ornithology to conservation. One recurrent theme was bird identification, from Townsend’s illustrated “Identification of Hawks in the Field” in 1919 to Griscom’s thorough gull study in 1929. An annual feature was a report on the year’s “shooting season”—for years provided by J. C. Phillips, an avid duck hunter and author of the four-volume Natural History of the Ducks, and then by game warden Edward Babson. Many members became active banders after the 1922 formation of the New England Bird Banding Association, and Laurence Fletcher presented annual banding results. A 1927 editorial denounced the “Wanton Destruction of Hawks and Owls,” and in 1929 state ornithologist John May gathered evidence to show that most birds of prey are economically beneficial.

Beyond its attacks on the slaughter of hawks and heedless shorebird harvesting, the ECOC was dedicated to land acquisition to preserve bird habitat. As a member of the Federation of New England Bird Clubs, established in 1924 with Forbush as president, the ECOC joined the effort to procure land on Plum Island for a state-owned wildlife sanctuary. After Annie Brown of Stoneham bequeathed $25,000 to acquire and maintain 300 acres, the Federation and Mass Audubon purchased another 675 acres, and the state hired a warden to patrol the refuge and prevent illegal shooting. The Federation also purchased Egg Rock off Nahant and Milk Island off Rockport. J. C. Phillips, a Federation director, privately donated 2000 acres to establish a reservation in Boxford—the genesis of the current Bald Hill Reservation.

Jim McCoy with Ben Peters and Shawn Carey. Photograph courtesy of the author.

At the close of 1934, with a peak membership of 72, the ECOC seemed to be going strong, but there were signs of incipient decline. One factor was the stress of the Depression, when even a dime for carfare to a bird outing could seem a luxury, but the overriding problem was that the club’s leaders were dying. Starting in 1929, each bulletin contained an In Memoriam section, and within the next decade the club lost many of its founders: longtime recorder Arthur Stubbs in 1932, Charles Townsend in 1934, Arthur Osborne in 1935, Edward Babson and newly elected President Albert Morse in 1936, and J. C. Phillips in 1938. There’s a poignancy to the last few bulletins, as members memorialized leaders like Townsend—their “wiser and older brother” and exemplary field ornithologist—and Ernest Dodge bemoaned the fact that local birders seemed “to have fallen into a sad lethargy.” In 1936, despite strong resistance, editors Dodge and Emilio recommended discontinuance of the bulletin. Tired of supplicating and cajoling members to provide a “small amount of very mediocre material,” they could no longer justify the effort spent on “something that amounts to so little” (Dodge and Emilio 1936). The final bulletin, covering 1937 and 1938, did not announce its own termination, but it listed the 28 members who had died since the club’s formation 22 years earlier.

The last bulletin marked the end of an era for the club and the beginning of a long stagnation. Many leaders were gone, and others soon left to serve their country in World War II. Birders at home were limited by wartime security and rationing regulations that restricted driving and bird seeking along coastlines. Given the absence of archives from 1940 to 1975, one can only speculate about this period, though the ECOC was hardly unique in struggling to remain a vital, cohesive bird club. Despite its setbacks, the club carried on, maintaining the canoe trip, sharing notes on birds near and far, and remaining committed to conservation. In 1939, members joined a national robin census sponsored by National Audubon, and the Council sent a letter alerting the U.S. Biological Survey to enormous amounts of oil harming birds on Nahant and Swampscott beaches.

Dotty Brown cutting cake 2008. Photograph by George Loring.

A pivotal point in the club’s eventual revitalization was the decision, despite some rigid opposition, to accept women as members in the 1970s. “Before the women,” one longtime male member told me, “the club was dying. It was a bunch of guys mostly sitting around and talking about baseball.” Attendance at meetings had dropped to the single digits, recalls past president Randy Johnson, and as a gentlemen’s club the ECOC was facing likely extinction. The club’s original by-laws had said nothing about gender, but the revised by-laws of 1936 replaced “persons” with “men” in reference to members, and women were excluded for another 35 years. Whatever the reasons, this exclusion certainly didn’t reflect women’s lack of interest in birding, for the Brookline Bird Club, founded three years before the ECOC, featured women as leaders from the start, including eight of its first eleven directors.

The first woman to join the ECOC was Dorothy (Dee) Snyder, former Curator of Natural History at the Peabody Museum and, with Griscom, co-author of the comprehensive The Birds of Massachusetts in 1955. Another pioneer was Sarah (Sally) Ingalls, Snyder’s successor as curator, renowned for her skill in mounting specimens, including a Great Gray Owl found dead in Newbury and displayed at a 1979 meeting. In a recent interview Ingalls credited founder Ralph Lawson for the push to bring women into the ECOC. “We were curious about the club,” she said, “but we didn’t know what those boys were doing over there” (Sarah Ingalls, personal communication 2015). Ingalls edited the revised 1975 ECOC checklist and was elected the club’s first woman president in 1977. Other women soon took on significant roles, including program coordinator Juliet Kellogg and longtime secretary Pauline Metras. Sarah Robbins, the first Director of Education at the Peabody Museum, instituted the delightful tradition of an annual May outing and potluck supper—with “bird cakes” shaped as eagles, penguins, or “mystery birds”—at her home at bird-rich Eastern Point in Gloucester.

Meanwhile, members kept up the annual canoe trips. Secretary Evelyn Clay described the pleasure of floating like Cleopatra on her barge while others took turns paddling, and the thrill of ducking branches as boats swirled in eddies. Some boaters ducked too late, inducting themselves into the Ornithorynchus Club. They may or may not have been the birders who, according to Johnson, joked about seeing “martini birds” like the Extramarital Lark. In 1993, Jim MacDougall reminisced about his first river trip in 1974, his “introduction to serious birding” by old-timers who knew more birds by sound than he knew by sight. Some charter members were so frail, he noted, that “they had to be transported from bridge to bridge in a big old Buick convertible,” yet, while waiting for the canoeists to arrive, they’d find “a roosting nighthawk straddling a branch or a Prothonotary Warbler perched by the river” (MacDougall 1993). The traditional buffet dinners, he recalled, were marked by intellectual sparring, easy laughter, and eyebrows raised skeptically if single-observer rarities were announced. Over the weekend the 1974 group tallied 132 species, carefully recorded by Don Alexander, an ECOC member since 1936. The river trip reports still provide what Jim Berry calls “a useful data base of species found along one of the county’s major rivers” (Berry), illustrating the decline of wetlands and grasslands birds as well as new arrivals. Eastern Meadowlarks were last found in 1986, American Bitterns in 1987. Firsts for the trips included Snowy Egret in 1968, Northern Cardinal in 1969, and Turkey Vulture in 1979.

The club also sponsored regular field trips, including owl prowls and spring woodcock watches led for years by Alexander or MacDougall and recently by IRWS director Carol Decker. One year MacDougall boldly promised woodcock watchers some peenting or their membership dues back but later claimed that the fun was in the looking, not the finding. Members explored Misery Island with Joe Paluzzi and joined hawk watches, Essex River boat trips for shorebirds, and a 2001 outing with “bluebird lady” Lillian Files. When Sarah Robbins died in 2003, her good friend and longtime member Dotty Brown graciously took over the birds-and-supper tradition at Eastern Point. Always looking to ally with other groups, the ECOC has co-sponsored trips with the Friends of Salem Woods and the Brookline Bird Club, starting with club president John Nove’s Halibut Point trips in the 1970s and continuing with an annual BBC Crane Beach walk. The ECOC also provided the majority of trip leaders for the annual Cape Ann Winter Birding Weekend, along with presentations on Cape Ann birds and culture by John Nelson, Jim Berry, and conservation scientist Robert Buchsbaum.

At meetings, members have continued to share bird reports, whether it be rarities like a White-tailed Tropicbird found barely alive on a Byfield playing field after Hurricane Gloria in 1985, or an Ancient Murrelet at Halibut Point in 1992, or heartening signs like Bald Eagles on the Merrimac River in 1981 or, in 1995, the first Eastern Bluebirds nesting at the IRWS in twenty years. In 2002, in a thorough effort guided by Jim MacDougall, the ECOC published, via the club’s website, the 7th edition of the ECOC checklist, still the most reliable source for the abundance status and seasonal distribution of the county’s birds. Berry, Nelson, councilor Toddy Glaser, and Fay Vale have also served as contributors and editors for Bird Observer.

From the club’s inception, ECOC members have spearheaded efforts to census the county’s birds. Don Alexander, organizer of the first Newburyport Christmas Bird Count in 1938, served as compiler for decades, a role filled by Rick Heil, Jim Berry, and now Tom Young for the past forty years, while Nove and Berry have acted as Cape Ann CBC compilers. Berry, an inveterate seeker of nests, has dedicated himself to studying the county’s breeding birds for over four decades. As Essex County coordinator for the state’s second Breeding Bird Atlas in 2007–2011, he organized comprehensive countywide coverage while taking on many disparate blocks himself. He has also compiled useful data on breeding populations through his longtime counts in Ipswich, surveys of salt marsh birds with MacDougall and Heil, and regular heron nest counts on Kettle and Eagle Islands with Simon Perkins of Mass Audubon.

Beyond their extensive involvement in the two atlases and local CBCs, members also joined in an annual IRWS breeding bird census, shorebird monitoring at Joppa Flats, a discouraging statewide rail and marsh bird survey in 1992, and, guided by Buchsbaum, a waterfowl study in Gloucester Harbor in the late 1990s. The club devoted some meetings to banding reports by Ozzie Norris, Bill Gette from Joppa Flats, and owl expert Norm Smith. Since 2008, through the initiative of Phil Brown, the ECOC has also sponsored an expanding nest box program for American Kestrels, a species dwindling in the Northeast.

Steve Grinley with kestrel box. Photograph by Phil Brown.

Still an advocate for bird conservation, the ECOC has worked in recent decades to protect habitat through its lobbying against proposed legislation in 1993 that would have allowed off- road vehicles on barrier beaches. It also participated in letter-writing campaigns to preserve freshwater marshes at the Parker River NWR and a lobbying effort in 2010 to protest the proposed siting of wind turbines on Nahant Causeway. The ECOC is now supporting the Essex County Greenbelt Association’s campaign to acquire and preserve Sagamore Hill in Hamilton. Despite limited financial resources, the club helped support the Tern Nesting Project at Crane Beach in the 1980s and, more recently, Kestrel Educational Adventures, which strives to educate children throughout the North Shore about nature and the need for conservation. The ECOC also donates annually to two organizations that have been special, generous partners throughout its history, the Peabody Essex Museum—its wonderful home for a century—and the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, around which canoe trips have been organized since 1907.

Conservation continues to be a major theme of the speakers program, with lectures on habitat loss, the effects of climate change on bird migrations, and Buchsbaum’s review of Massachusetts Audubon’s 2011 “State of the Birds” report. Through presentations like Chris Leahy’s account of the first Mass Audubon trip to Mongolia in 1983 and Jan Smith’s 1997 demonstration of global diversity in bird families, members bird vicariously around the world. They’ve been taken back in time, as with Shepard Krech’s lecture on birds and Native Americans in the South, and pointed to the future with talks on the expanding study of night migrations and the frontiers of pelagic birding. Some presentations have drawn crowds of 150 or more, such as Shawn Carey’s multi-media account of the 2010 BP Gulf oil spill and Tim Laman’s spectacular video/photo show on birds of paradise in Papua, New Guinea. Thanks largely to the efforts of longtime vice-president Janey Winchell, the programs maintain variety, from local conservation to cutting- edge studies of bird vocalizations, while offering members a world-class line-up of speakers. Renowned figures such as Bernd Heinrich, Irene Pepperberg, David Sibley, and Donald Kroodsma have all made presentations within the past three years.

Jim Berry taking field notes. Photograph by John Lejeune.

Live birds have starred in some popular programs, from MacDougall’s 1977 talk on birds of prey, featuring an injured Northern Saw-whet Owl, to owl presentations by Norm Smith and by Mark and Marcia Wilson. Other speakers—Janey Winchell in 1992 on bats, Brian Cassie on the 1996 Mass Butterfly Atlas Project, Blair Nikula in 2002 on dragonflies—have gone beyond birds entirely. In the 1990s Jim Brown, Jim Berry, and Tom Young offered a series of identification workshops on seabirds, shorebirds, owls, warblers, nests and eggs that utilized the Peabody Essex Museum’s fine collection of bird skins and mounted specimens. In 2013 Winchell, curator of the museum’s natural history collections, guided members through the renovated, expanded Art & Nature Center. In 2014, the center was posthumously named in honor of Dotty Brown, a Life Fellow and Honorary Trustee at the museum, and headed by Winchell, whose title, the Sarah Fraser Robbins Director, honors Dotty’s friend, the originator of the Eastern Point gatherings.

In 2003, Jim Berry instituted a new club tradition, his book-of-the-month selections, starting with Griscom and Snyder’s The Birds of Massachusetts and often introducing members to forgotten treasures of regional bird lore. A much older tradition is the annual members’ night, when members display their diverse creative talents and share stories of birding adventures. In recent years audiences have been treated to the poems of accomplished poet and novelist (and club secretary) Dawn Paul, bird ballads composed and sung by Caroline Haines, Tom Young’s dragonfly photos, John Nelson’s comic essay “Geezer Birding,” Paul Ippolito’s stunning Antarctica photos, Peter Vale’s report on bird-banding in El Salvador, a Jim Wallius DVD of birds and mammals in Australasia, and Jay Moore’s poem “Blown Away Near Shore,” in which a “street- smart coastal bully”—a Great Black-backed Gull—turns its “switchblade bill” on an exhausted Dovekie blown inshore by a storm (Moore 1996).

Over the years, the club has reflected on its history through slide shows by Don Alexander, Stewart Duncan, and Jim MacDougall on the ECOC’s formative years and canoeing tradition. Members have also periodically re-examined the club’s mission and scope. In 1984, a group of members wanted the club to focus more on education and stewardship of all the county’s natural resources. Finding the term “ornithological” too restrictive and “club” too reminiscent of the ECOC’s original exclusivity, they proposed by-law changes to broaden the club’s scope and rename it the Essex County Natural History Society. Members overwhelmingly defeated the proposal, arguing that birding was still the club’s primary purpose, but they reached a consensus on the need to recruit new members and expand natural history programs.

Issues of membership and purpose were revisited in 1994 and 2004 through proposed amendments to by-laws. Members agreed to eliminate nomination (and a review of credentials) as a prerequisite for membership, but voted to keep honorary memberships—in part to honor Sally Ingalls, who’d moved to New York—and concluded that the club’s horizons now encompassed natural history and biodiversity. These deliberations led to the formation of an ECOC Youth Program, chaired by Sue McGrath, who’d been inspired by MacDougall’s 1993 history to join the club and “learn and serve with the finest” (Susan McGrath, personal communication 2015). McGrath organized popular Bald Eagle Family Adventures and family-oriented banding outings. She also became the “landlord” of Purple Martin houses at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and in 2002 established Newburyport Birders to teach aspiring birders how to observe and appreciate birds.

Club membership, steadily rising, is now over 100. McGrath credits webmaster Phil Brown for increasing membership by bringing modern technology to the club to improve communications (Susan McGrath, personal communication 2015). The ECOC now has members from all over the county and beyond.

Bird clubs, big or small, thrive only if members step forward to energize the group. The ECOC has been fortunate in its leaders, from Lawson and Emilio in the early years to outgoing president Jim McCoy, who, determined to increase involvement in club activities, instituted “clubhouse gatherings” at the Ipswich River Watershed Association and Ravenswood Park in Gloucester. Rob Moir, former Curator of Natural History at the Peabody Essex Museum, served as president for nine dedicated years, while his predecessors—Randy Johnson, Stewart Duncan, and Jay Moore—continued their service as officers or councilors long after their presidencies. Moir, in turn, was succeeded by a series of steady-handed leaders: Robert Buchsbaum, Tom Young, Jim Berry, and Sue McGrath. It’s hard to imagine the modern ECOC without the contributions of Berry—our own version of Charles Townsend—or Jim MacDougall, whom Buchsbaum calls the club’s “institutional memory” and “the soul of the organization” (Robert Buchsbaum, personal communication 2015), or Janey Winchell, well-described by Young as “the glue that holds the club together” (Thomas Young, personal communication 2015). And club leaders haven’t lost sight of our obligation to the future. As Griscom once guided a young Roger Tory Peterson, and as Duncan, Jim Brown and Berry were teachers of future presidents Johnson, Young, and McGrath, so Berry and McCoy mentor avid young birders like Jeremiah Sullivan, Miles Brengle, Nathan Dubrow, Ben Peters, and others yet to emerge, the new generation of Essex County birding.

In May 2016 the club will sponsor the 110th consecutive Ipswich River canoe trip, among the longest-running bird censuses in the country and invariably remembered by participants for the birds, the dawn chorus on the river, and its lively springtime spirit. Opportunity beckons to join the Ornithorynchus Club. On January 8, 2016, the club met at Salem’s Hawthorne Hotel to celebrate its first century and elected a new president, Constance Lapite. The ECOC has a proud history, but there are challenges to face. In 1993 MacDougall asked: “How can we offset further population declines?. . . Do we want to be the record-keepers of the last Golden-winged Warbler”? (MacDougall 1993) The warblers are now virtually gone from the county, but other local breeding birds are at risk, like Saltmarsh Sparrows, threatened by rising sea levels.

The birds await us. They also need us.

References

Berry, Jim. An Updated Birds of Essex County. Unpublished manuscript, last edited January 8, 2016. Microsoft Word file.
Dodge, Ernest and Gil Emilio. 1936. Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club of Massachusetts no. 18: 3–4.
“Feathered Friends.” 1926. North Shore Breeze and Reminder March 1926: 11–13.
Fowler, Albert. 1922. Drumming of the Snipe, Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club of Massachusetts 4 (1): 55–56.
MacDougall, Jim. 1993. Historians of Essex County and the Essex County Ornithological Club of Massachusetts, Bird Observer 21 (1): 27–35.
Moore, Jay. 1996. Blown Away Nearshore. Minutes of the February 1, 1996 meeting of the Essex County Ornithological Club.
Morse, Edward F. 1919. Introductory Note. Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club of Massachusetts 1 (1): 3–5.
Stubbs, Ernest. 1928. It Is Wise to Look Twice, Bulletin of the Essex County Ornithological Club of Massachusetts no. 10: 57–58.

John Nelson, of Gloucester, contributes regularly to Bird Observer. His recent publications include the essays “I Saw What I Said I Saw: Witnesses to Crimes and Birds” in the Winter 2015 issue of The Missouri Review and “Funny Bird Sex” in the Winter 2016 issue of The Antioch Review. He serves on the Council of the ECOC and chairs the Conservation and Education Committee for the Brookline Bird Club. He would like to give special thanks to Jim MacDougall and Jim Berry for their help in providing sources and reviewing this history.

Photo Essay: Essex County Ornithological Club Canoe Trips

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Phil Brown 2009 canoe trip. Photograph by Laura de la Flor.

Canoe trip putting in 2007. Photograph by Phil Brown.

Canoe trip up the canal 2007. Photograph by Phil Brown.

Binos Up! 2013 canoe trip. Photograph by John Lejeune.

Sue McGrath and Phil Brown on canoe trip 2008. Photograph by Christina MacDougall.

Field Notes: Swainson’s Hawk at Bear Creek Sanctuary, Saugus, MA

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Then, the hawk took off, and we stared. Now we could be certain that our bird was not a Red-tail: we saw no belly band and no patagial bars, and the wings were too narrow. The long-winged, lanky shape of the bird felt right for a Rough-leg, but—

“There are no carpal patches!” I called out. Instead, I saw a clear two-toned underwing pattern. The dark outer flight feathers contrasted strongly with the white belly and underwing coverts. This was no Rough-leg.

It is one of the best feelings in the world when you find yourself face to face with a bird, and you don’t know yet what it is, but you know that it’s rare, or a lifer, or both. Cameras clicked furiously, and I ran to get a better look from below as the bird circled higher and higher. I stared at the pointy-winged silhouette above me in the sky and had a crazy thought: Swainson’s Hawk. Before that day, I had never seen a Swainson’s Hawk at any distance less than a mile. As a trainee at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory this fall, I saw maybe two or three Swainson’s Hawks mixed in with enormous Broad- wing kettles. I had no idea what a Swainson’s looked like up close, but I remembered the other counters helping me pick out the Swainson’s silhouettes by the pointy shape of their wings.

It was ridiculous, impossible. Swainson’s Hawks are birds of western North America, so to find one as far east as Massachusetts is already notable. But to find one in Massachusetts in late December? The hawks all should have been on their wintering grounds in South America, not up north in freezing Saugus. Mark Resendes, another team member, texted one of his photos to Paul Roberts, a friend who founded the Eastern Massachusetts Hawk Watch forty years ago, for ID help. Paul wrote back immediately that the bird was a Swainson’s Hawk, no doubt. But when Mark told him where and when the bird had been seen, Paul replied, “What????? … U r bs ing me.” Paul later explained that when he looked at the text message, his first thought was that during one of those typically slow periods in the afternoon of a Christmas count, the team had decided to play a joke on him and text him an image that somebody had looked up online.

But nobody was joking. After the bird flew out of sight, we rejoined the rest of our party, who had been birding the perimeter of the property. Luckily, they had seen the hawk well as it circled overhead, and they had captured some beautiful photos. A look at the field guide left no doubt in our minds that we had found a real rarity.

Interestingly, when we lost sight of our hawk, it was headed north along the coast. Despite a specially scheduled walk at Bear Creek the day after the CBC, no one has succeeded in finding this bird again. A different juvenile Swainson’s Hawk was reported in New York City a week before our sighting, and reports of that bird continued through December 30. Overall, a small but steady number of Swainson’s Hawks is reported each year on the East Coast, but two in one week seems especially unusual. The weather patterns created by this year’s El Niño, including especially strong winds from the southwest and a relative scarcity of cold fronts from the north, may help account for the presence of these birds. Many other western vagrants, including two Western Kingbirds, a Mountain Bluebird, and several Ash-throated Flycatchers, also have been reported in the area this year.

As for Massachusetts, our Swainson’s Hawk is at least the 11th confirmed state record for the species since 1955, but only the third state record for the period from December through February, according to Veit and Petersen’s Birds of Massachusetts (Veit, R., and Petersen, W.R. 1993. Lincoln, MA: Massachusetts Audubon Society).

On the way to the CBC countdown that evening, we argued over who would be the one to break the news to Soheil Zendeh, our sector leader; and Bob Stymeist, the Greater Boston CBC compiler. We had the satisfaction of seeing the incredulous looks on the faces of everyone in the room when we announced our find, and we all felt proud of having found the best bird of the day. But the feeling that has stuck with me from that day is not pride or triumph; it is simply happiness at having witnessed the presence of such an amazing bird.

The author thanks Geoff Wilson, Paul Roberts, Janet Kovner, and Nancy Given for their edits and additions to this report, as well as the rest of the Bear Creek CBC team, Mark Resendes, Paul Bain, and Andy Hrycyna.

Field Notes: Belted Kingfisher Skims the Water

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

We had never seen this type of behavior by a kingfisher. It reminded us of swallows skimming to drink.

Arthur Cleveland Bent (1940) quoted a Mr. Carey (1909) who noted similar behavior in Belted Kingfishers:

The Kingfisher’s flight is remarkable for its beauty. How easily those long wings carry him about, as he skims so close over the water that their tips are sometimes wetted, or, as he hovers, his body appearing absolutely motionless, in that wonderful way which few birds can equal, for indefinite periods of time. Sometimes, especially in water half a foot or less in depth, he dives while flying nearly parallel to its surface. Sometimes, in his journeys from perch to perch when fish are plentiful, he dips again and again into the water in this way, reminding one of the Swallow as he gracefully touches the water here and there in his flight over the mill pond. Again, he drops like a falling stone in a nearly perpendicular line upon his fishy prey.

References

Bent, A. C. 1940. Belted Kingfisher. Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds. Available online. Accessed January 11, 2016.

Musings from the Blind Birder: The Paradise of Memories

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

This interplay was particularly striking for me during an outing to one of our favorite locations in the Willcox area, the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area, a wide, open marsh of the high Sonoran Desert in the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains. Jan, Alvin, and I were walking slowly, separated from the rest of the group, which was spread out among the many small ponds and marshy spots looking at waterfowl and other birds. Jan saw a perched bird and excitedly noted how yellow it was. She then added that the bird had a black spot and that it was stocky, roughly the size of an American Robin. She asked me what it was, knowing of course that I could not see the bird. Thinking quickly of the habitat and rummaging in my memory, I suggested that it might be a meadowlark, though I could not conjure up the visual difference between the Eastern and Western meadowlarks, both of which occur in this location. Another birder passed by and confirmed that it was an Eastern Meadowlark.

Now, that bird may have been easy to identify by description, but it made me think of how many birds I could identify by someone else’s description of what they see. It also made me wonder if I could accurately describe birds from my memory. I think the answer for both questions is not as well as I would like, which suggests that I have a new challenge to work on. I should more often ask Bob to describe what he sees so that I can try to identify the bird by description. For example, he was looking at a photo of what he described as a rare bird that showed up on Nantucket in late January 2016. I asked him to describe the bird, and he said, “Well, it is colorful, has about four colors to it, including a yellow breast, blue, and red...” Before he could complete his description, I suggested a male Painted Bunting, and indeed it was. I was definitely proud of myself, even if this is perhaps an easy bird to describe and identify from words.

I have strong memories of many birding experiences and visual images. It may be a little unusual for a birder to learn birding visually without the ability to hear birds (in my case, due to hearing loss) and then, some twenty years into my birding avocation, switch from visual to auditory identification thanks to cochlear implants. The Arizona trip highlighted my desire to better commit to or strengthen my memory of what birds look like along with what they sound like. I believe that would also help me remember many wonderful circumstances of seeing a bird, as well as aspects of the bird’s natural history. At Jan’s description of the meadowlark, I immediately thought of our Eastern Meadowlarks returning to New England, with specific images of birds teeing up near our home in Vermont every spring. I thought of its signature song and how thrilled I am at hearing them, a sure sign of our returning migrants. After celebrating the Arizona Sandhill Cranes, Bob and I reminisced about one of the best birding trips we have ever taken, to the Platte River in Nebraska during the truly spectacular spring migration of this species.

I realize now that I have a lot to learn about remembering the field marks of specific birds. When it comes down to it, can I describe from my memory the difference between a Lincoln’s Sparrow and a Vesper Sparrow, or between a Black- backed Woodpecker and a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker? I confess I will need to work some more! But at least this trip clarified for me the need to do more studying and my desire to have Bob or anyone who is birding with me take a moment and describe what they see so that I can have a chance to participate in identifying what is there. Perhaps that will hone all of our skills in describing a bird and in enhancing our mutual experiences now and in the future.

The effort of remembering what birds look like, particularly those that I so enjoyed looking at, reminds me of a quote attributed to an 18th and 19th century German writer, Jean Paul (pseudonym for Johann Paul Friedrich Richter) (www.wikiquote.org, February 2, 2016): “Memory is the only paradise from which we cannot be driven.” Yes, I am sometimes saddened by the loss of my ability to see my birds, but I retain many memories of seeing them and the circumstances of so many specific experiences with birds and the people I was with. And I certainly remind myself that, despite my vision loss, my birding career is far from over. I have a lot to learn in auditory identification. It is absolutely thrilling to hear a song, a call note, or other vocalization and know what bird I just heard. I had a similar feeling when my friend described the meadowlark and I was able to suggest what bird it likely was.

There are multiple ways to be a birder regardless of your visual, physical, or auditory capabilities, and we will all go through adjustments as we age with concomitant declines in vision, hearing, or other physical attributes.

Remember, birding is not just about seeing a bird. It is everything about the circumstances of the experience that goes well beyond what you actually see. As Jan enjoyed looking at the meadowlark, I enjoyed her excitement, the wide open expanse of Sonoran Desert, the warmth of the sun on our faces, and the distant sounds of Sandhill Cranes in flight. Jan’s eyes were pinned to her binoculars, but mine were closed, soaking in a moment that I will not soon forget and listening intently to anything I could hear.

Martha Steele, a former editor of Bird Observer, has been progressively losing vision due to retinitis pigmentosa and is legally blind. Thanks to a cochlear implant, she is now learning to identify birds from their songs and calls. Martha lives with her husband, Bob Stymeist, in Arlington. Martha can be reached at marthajs@verizon.net.

Gleanings: Wood Thrushes Sleeping Around

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Using song recordings and mist nets, the authors captured territorial males and fitted them with VHF transmitters. Female mates of some of the males were captured and radio-tagged on territory as well. These transmitters allowed the researchers to follow the movements of the birds during the day, outlining the birds’ diurnal home range (DHR). At night, the transmitters helped reveal the nocturnal roosts of the same birds. Habitat characteristics were determined by light detection and ranging (LiDAR) measurements on breeding territories and roost sites. In order to address the nesting status, nests were checked every three days for evidence of eggs, nestlings, feeding, and other breeding evidence.

Interestingly, although female Wood Thrushes were essentially always found within the DHR (females do all of the incubation and so were on the nests), males often (31%) roosted outside of the DHR (average of 116 meters from the center). Most male roost locations were not consistent from night to night. Males roosted an average 6.8 meters off the ground in holly, beech, maple, and pawpaw trees. Consistently, males selected roost sites with higher vegetation density than randomly selected points in the areas, suggesting that either microclimate characteristics or predator-avoidance helped inform roost selection. Roost characteristics differed with bird age. Younger males roosted twice as far from diurnal activity centers than did the older males, presumably because the older males had better quality DHRs, perhaps including higher quality roost sites. Males might have chosen distant roost sites to avoid attracting predators to the nesting area. However, it is also possible, and perhaps likely, that use of distant roost sites allowed more opportunity for males to engage in extra-pair copulations (EPC) with neighboring females in the early morning or late afternoon hours when females were more receptive (Birkhead et al.,1996).

Roost locations of paired birds varied with nest status. If a pair had an active nest, the females roosted on the nest and males nested at a distance within or outside of the DHR. Pairs without active nests—after the young were independent or if the nest was predated—slept side by side, presumably so that the males could protect against EPC by the females during the time that they were most fertile. Although it is possible that roosting outside of the DHR allows for males to obtain more EPC, this hypothesis is confounded by the fact that most EPC are accorded to older males, but the younger males stray farther from home at night. Perhaps the older males do not need to stray as far due to greater experience.

This comprehensive report clearly demonstrates that male Wood Thrushes do not necessarily roost within their diurnal home range and that nesting status and age of the males are both variable. But it does not settle the question of why the males sleep away from home. More research is needed to resolve this issue.

References

Birkhead, T. R., E. J. A. Cunningham, and K. M. Cheng. 1996. The insemination window provides a distorted view of sperm competition in birds. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 263: 1187-92.
Jirinec, V., C. P. Varian, C. J. Smith, and M. Leu. 2016. Mismatch between diurnal home ranges and roosting areas in the Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina): Possible role of habitat and breeding stage. The Auk 133 (1): 1-12.

David M. Larson, PhD, is the Science and Education Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center in Newburyport, the Director of Mass Audubon’s Birder’s Certificate Program and the Certificate Program in Bird Ecology (a course for naturalist guides in Belize), a domestic and international tour leader, Vice President of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, and a member of the editorial staff of Bird Observer.

Book Review: Desperately Seeking The Robin Snipe

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

In Massachusetts, we never see large numbers of Red Knots, but we do occasionally encounter small flocks. Small compared to what their numbers once were. There are six “lineages” (subspecies populations) of Red Knots worldwide, with a global population of about one million birds. Every lineage is declining. “There are signs of trouble on almost all the flyways—in Africa and Asia, in Europe and North America.” (p. 27)

In North and South America we have the Calidris canutus rufa lineage. It breeds in the Canadian Arctic, migrates down the Atlantic coast, and heads south to the very tip of South America. The Red Knot is known as Playero Árctico in Argentina and Chile, where it overwinters. More generically, the Inuit of Nunavut refer to Red Knots as siijariaq, or “birds of the beach,” where they breed. The knot’s migratory journey covers a total of 9700 miles one way, with a few stops in select areas to refuel and rebuild fat reserves for the next leg of the voyage. They are airborne continuously for several days at a time, flying nonstop day and night. Their decline began in the 19th century because Red Knots, like many other shorebirds, were hunted for the table.

New York’s luxurious Astor House, whose guests included Abraham Lincoln, listed on its October 11, 1849, menu roasted wood ducks, dowitchers, plovers, mallards, and broiled robin snipe (Red Knot). An article in the June 11, 1887, issue of Good Housekeeping entitled “Table Supplies and Economics: What to Buy, and How to Buy Wisely and Well” praises the offerings in a New York market, which include robin snipe at $1.75 a dozen, smaller yellowlegs at $1.50, and greater yellowlegs at $3.00. Henry Fleckenstein, author of many books on bird decoys, wrote that birds were “hauled from the meadows in wagons heaped full over the boards,” packed in barrels, and shipped by train or boat to city markets. Birds that weren’t as good to eat were used as packing for the others. Not all the shorebirds made it to market. Barrels of knots, turnstones, and plovers shipped to Boston spoiled during passage and were tossed overboard. (p. 69)

The rapid decline in numbers of Red Knots was noted by sportsmen even then, and some speculated on their imminent extinction. The Lacey and Migratory Bird Treaty Acts put an end to the unsustainable market gunning and hunting, but most species of shorebirds never recovered their population levels prior to the 19th century.

Flying there with researchers who monitor knot populations every year, Cramer began her book on the Atlantic side of the Straits of Magellan. For many years, no one knew where knots overwintered. In the early 1980s, Guy Morrison of the Canadian Wildlife Service and Brian Harrington of what was then the Manomet Bird Observatory decided to look for wintering knots by driving south from Buenos Aires along the coast of Argentina, poking into every shore overlook they could find. They did this in a beat- up Citroën. Finally, after thousands of miles and an eventual switch to aerial surveys, they lucked out, and one of the great mysteries of ornithology was solved.

But that was only part of the knots’ story. In order to complete their migratory trip, knots and other shorebirds must stop en route to feed; they lose much weight flying so many miles. In a few days of feeding they have to double their arrival weight. They must find beaches that offer high-energy food like horseshoe crab eggs. One of the most famous stopover spots is Delaware Bay. In the early 1980s, Pete Dunne, Clay Sutton, Wade Wander, and David Sibley discovered the amazing spectacle of an estimated 150,000 Red Knots in a feeding frenzy along with an estimated 1,500,000 other shorebirds in Delaware Bay. Why wasn’t this critical feeding location, so close to well-known birding spots, not discovered until the 1980s? There are records that Delaware Bay had been visited by a number of sportsmen and ornithologists over the past century. Why had no one previously noted the throngs of shorebirds gobbling the horseshoe crab eggs? One suggestion is that no one had gone to Delaware Bay during the narrow window in spring when the knots and other shorebirds are there in peak numbers.

Horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) come ashore to mate in spring and deposit the eggs that are so critical to the Red Knot. The crabs need shallows in areas along barrier beaches. Over the millennia the northward migratory routes of shorebirds have evolved so that they coincide with the laying of the crab eggs. In 1875, the eggs in Delaware Bay shallows were described as so thick that they could be shoveled up and collected by the wagonload. The numbers of horseshoe crabs have dramatically declined since, and nowhere do we see that many eggs along our shores.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, horseshoe crabs were harvested in large numbers for a variety of uses. Early on, they were collected to feed pigs. Later, they were taken in much larger numbers and used as a commercial fertilizer, Cancerine. Today they are still being “harvested” in large numbers locally as bait for eels and whelk, most of which are exported. To give you an idea of how many horseshoe crabs are taken, in 1999, one Virginia fisherman took 1.4 million horseshoe crabs. Combine these harvests with a loss of shore habitat to human development and the effects of pollution, and little wonder that since the 1960s and 1970s horseshoe crab populations, like the knot, have declined dramatically. Some states have now banned the taking of horseshoe crabs, and in those areas populations appear to have stabilized for the moment. In other states, the unsustainable harvest continues.

Perhaps the most unusual use humans have found for horseshoe crabs is the relatively recent discovery that their blood is the source for LAL, limulus amebocyte lysate. A hidden danger with any medical injection is that the substance to be injected can be tainted with potentially lethal bacteria, leading to what was historically called “injection fever.” It was discovered that the blue blood of the horseshoe crab clots in the presence of gram-negative bacteria and is therefore a fine indicator of these endotoxin contaminants. Consequently huge numbers of horseshoe crabs are now harvested alive by biomedical companies and shipped to various labs where some of their blood is taken. These horseshoe crabs are then shipped back and released into the wild. This practice appears to be a better way to use these ancient invertebrates because we are only borrowing them for some bloodletting. But it has been discovered that horseshoe crabs that have been bled and released are lethargic and do not behave normally for up to six months, a condition that may lead to weakened stocks.

Red Knot in flight. Photograph by Gregory Breese/USFWS (CC BY 2.0).

Cramer’s last stop on her grand tour in search of knots was Southampton Island in the Canadian Arctic in the province of Nunavut, a very isolated spot. Before she could go, she had to be trained to use a 12-gauge shotgun. Polar bears were very much present, and she had to be able to defend herself and others. Cramer joined a small band of researchers and Inuit who were studying a variety of wildlife that inhabited the Arctic tundra. It was very windy, cold, and wet most of the time, and walking across the tundra was physically tough. It was very easy to get lost even a short distance from camp. Knot nests were extremely hard to find, particularly since that bird’s populations had declined. In most seasons researchers found no nests. Still, they kept returning year after year or at least until the polar bears got to be too much of a threat. Global climate change was on everyone’s mind because they could see the first effects of the ice starting to dwindle. It was a wild and sobering end for Cramer’s quest.

There is a chapter in The Narrow Edge in which Cramer attempts to answer the questions I posed at the beginning of this review: “Does Losing One More Bird Matter?” (p. 158). For the rest of The Narrow Edge, Cramer is the clear-headed journalist, professionally reporting from her various destinations, but in this one chapter, she writes with a deep passion. It is the intellectual heart of the book and is a stand-alone essay that encourages every reader to find his or her own answers to grim questions no one really wants to think about.

What is the financial value of that which nurtures the human spirit? And what kind of uneasy moral terrain do we inhabit when, on the basis of financial expediency, we choose which species will live and which will die? (p. 174)

The Narrow Edge is an important book, but is also a fine and fascinating armchair travelogue. Cramer spends time with some very dedicated scientists working long hours to learn more about and hopefully save the remaining populations of knots and other shorebirds. Some of these same scientists have gone beyond their academic pursuits to help local governments preserve pieces of habitat or stop local sources of pollution. I think it is not a stretch to call these scientists heroes. The Narrow Edge is an inspiring and sobering account of how our coastal ecology works, what is wrong with it, and what can be done about it. The lives of the Red Knot and the horseshoe crab, intimately intertwined, are both declining worldwide and continue to face challenges from habitat loss, red tide, pollution, overuse, and ultimately, global warming. Horseshoe crabs are still being harvested in many locations, and Red Knots continue to be trapped and shot along their migratory route in South America. We know what can be done to save both species, and by doing so, to save other species and maybe ourselves. But do we have the will to do so?

Recently I interviewed Deborah Cramer, and I bluntly asked her if she were still upbeat about the future of both species despite the human-caused problems. She was quick to respond that she strives to be an objective reporter and is careful in expressing personal opinions. But in meeting so many dedicated people working on the challenges confronting the knots and crabs, she found hard-won inspiration and hope. And despite the problems mentioned above, both the knot and the horseshoe crab have hung on. She expressed a guarded optimism that future generations will still be able to witness flocks of knots massing in a feeding frenzy to devour horseshoe crab eggs.

The story of the red knot is a story of loss that turns toward restoration and renewal. It is a story of the tenacity and resilience of birds under terrible pressure making long journeys year after year, even as their homes are diminished and their food grows scarce. As we lose our own bearings, their long flights offer a compass. (p. 223)

Bird Sightings: November/December 2015

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Golden Eagle, photographed by Craig Jackson on November 14, 2015 while he was hawk watching from Pinnacle Rock in Malden, MA.

Front Cover: April 2016

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

The Chipping Sparrow is a wide-ranging, largely migratory species, breeding from eastern Alaska across Canada to southern Newfoundland and across the United States south to near the Gulf Coast and southern California and Arizona. They are generally absent in the south central part of the United States. Southern states, particularly in the east, host year-round populations of Chipping Sparrow. Year-round populations occur in suitable habitat through Mexico and most of Central America. Migratory birds winter in the southernmost United States and the northern half of Mexico. In Massachusetts the Chipping Sparrow is a common breeder and migrant. It is a rare winter resident but in recent years has been recorded more frequently here. Chipping Sparrows migrate in flocks, often in mixed species flocks. They arrive in Massachusetts in April and early May, and leave in late September and October.

The breeding biology of the Chipping Sparrow is poorly known. They have long been considered monogamous but recent studies in Ontario, Canada, indicate that at least in some populations, males wander and copulate with females in neighboring territories and are sometimes polygynous. Chipping Sparrows often produce two broods per year and sometimes three. Only the male sings. The song is a trill of the same pitch. Both sexes utter a variety of chip notes that give the species its name. Males usually sing from perches in trees or shrubs and their song serves as territorial display and to attract females. In threat displays the head is lowered, the bill is open, the wings are drooping, the feathers are fluffed, and the bird shifts from side to side. Fighting sometimes follows threat displays with chases, bill thrusts, and often head to head flights up to 10 feet in the air, with much fluttering and harsh calls. Courtship involves song, chases, hopping along the ground, and pulling at vegetation that some suggest is symbolic of nest material collection.

Chipping Sparrows prefer grassy open woodland habitats and avoid mature forest. They appear to favor ornamental conifers for nesting. Males arrive on territory about a week before the females. The pair searches for nest sites together but the female makes the final choice. The nest is usually three to ten feet above the ground in a tree or shrub in clusters of leaves or conifer needles, but nests have been constructed in bizarre locations such as mowing machines and hanging baskets. The female constructs the nest, a flimsy cup of grasses and rootlets lined with hair and fine plant material. Only the female develops a brood patch and she alone incubates the usual clutch of four blue eggs spotted with various colors for the 11 days until hatching. The male may bring food to the female at the nest. The young are altricial, helpless, naked, and with eyes closed. The female does most of the brooding for about 11 days to fledging. Both parents feed the young and occasionally helpers have been observed. The parents continue to feed the young for about three weeks after fledging. If the female renests, the male takes over the feeding duties for the fledglings.

Chipping Sparrows forage mostly for seeds on the ground or in low vegetation. On the ground they run or hop, scratching through debris on lawns or fields. They also feed directly on the seeds of grasses and weeds. During breeding season they take insects and may eat fruit. In winter they forage in mixed-species foraging flocks and may forage in rolling flocks where birds at the back of the flock fly to the front to search for seeds until they are at the back of the flock again; they then repeat their flight to the front of the flock.

Chipping Sparrows are subject to the usual nest predators: snakes, crows, jays, and squirrels. Hawks and falcons prey on juveniles and adults. Chipping Sparrows also suffer extensive nest parasitism by cowbirds. They faced intense competition from House Sparrows in the early 20th century due to their use of human-altered habitats, but are probably more common now than in colonial times. Some populations declined in the 20th century, mostly due to reforestation. However, the species has adapted well to humans, their ornamental plants, and agriculture, and this together with their vast nesting range suggests that most populations of Chipping Sparrows are secure.

At a Glance: April 2016

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Have you identified the bird in this photograph yet? Identification will be discussed in next issue's AT A GLANCE.

Hot Birds: April 2016

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

On February 27, Steve Arena called attention to an unprecedented loon show off Race Point near Provincetown, including triple- digit numbers of Red-throateds, more than 50 Common, at least 3 Pacific (see below), and the state’s first-ever documented record of Yellow-billed Loon, which continued to be seen for over a week after Steve originally noticed it. An as-yet unconfirmed Arctic Loon was more recently reported from nearby Truro. James Smith took the photograph above.

After an initial fly-by sighting of one bird on February 13, Steve Arena and other observers have repeatedly seen at least 3 Pacific Loons off Race Point through early March. The species has been reported (but not photographed) from at least two other locations in the state since January 1, a sighting from Cape Ann and at least two reports from Martha’s Vineyard. Steve Arena took the photograph above.

A male Painted Bunting showed up at a Nantucket homeowner’s bird feeder in late January and continued visiting through at least mid-February. Ginger Andrews took the photograph above.

Not long after MARC reversed their acceptance of the state’s only record of Yellow-legged Gull, an even better candidate for the species was found February 1 in Turners Falls by James Smith! The many birders who chased this gull are waiting anxiously to hear MARC’s decision about it…. James took the photograph above.

A visitor to Bird Watcher’s Supply & Gift in Newburyport reported that a Western Tanager was visiting their bird feeder in Rowley. The homeowner did not allow the sighting to be publicized, but one lucky birder (Margo Goetschkes) was allowed to document the bird with the photo above.

The former landfill now known as Bear Creek Sanctuary, on the heels of providing Massachusetts’ 10th Swainson’s Hawk during the local CBC in December, came up even bigger in January with the state’s third-ever record of Smith’s Longspur! Soheil Zendeh first spotted it on January 17. Marshall Iliff took the photograph above. See the full story on page 84 of this issue.

Advertisers: 44-2

Fri, 01 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

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