I really like birdwatching. I took to it about a year and a half ago and it’s a nice little hobby. I don’t like drive places or go on trips for it, but it’s something interesting to keep track of in the neighborhood or on trips elsewhere. It’s keeps me engaged with the outdoors and I think it really addresses the “collecting drive” without costing anything and taking up all the space in the house. “Ooh! An american bittern!” I say, make a note in my little red Audubon book of N. American Birds,Western Region, check Sibley to see if it was something odd (much more detail) and get on with life.
And there are cool birds here. I get really excited when something colorful shows up in the neighborhood.
So am I getting old prematurely? I’m only 30-- is this normal behavior?
Oh–we have a pair of black-shouldered kites living in the field next door–very cool. Still have not seen a condor, although we should be in the general area. We have the pacific snowy plover here, too. And a bunch of those night herons-- they rock.
We have a beautiful pair of Eastern Bluebirds nesting 10 feet from our back door. They were here last year too and fledged 2 sets of eggs. The Eastern Bluebirds numbers must be increasing dramatically because I can’t recall seeing them in our yard prior to last year. What a gorgeous bird, brilliant blue with a rose colored breast.
There are also pair of Cardinals nesting in the Arborvite in front of our house.
No, you are not getting old. I have been interested in birds since I was 8 or 9, and your friend Sibley has been veritably obssessed from as early as he can remember, apparently (he lives near here, although I have never met him).
In my small town neighborhood we have the usual assortment of #@%*ing sparrows, starlings and pigeons. But we are also blessed with an abundance of chimney swifts during all the daylight hours, flying over and eating insects, bless their little hearts! Lying in bed in the early morning I can identify by song mockingbirds, cardinals, house wrens, Carolina wrens, mourning doves, goldfinches, tufted titmice, robins, crows, grackles, house finches, flickers, chickadees and nuthatches. I see red tailed hawks practicaly every day driving to work, turkey vultures, sometimes turkeys. The other day a Northern oriole flew right in front of the car. We hear screech owls practically every night in summer, one night lying in bed we heard a Great Horned Owl, and one spring day I heard an odd song which I later identified as that of the Saw-whet owl. Last Saturday two Broad-winged hawks were flying and diving over our church. Not a very impressive list, but this is all done without really trying.
I heartily recommend learning the songs of birds in your area. The “Birding by Ear” series is a good one. Knowing the birds by song vastly increases your knowledge of what birds are in your area, and I make many identifications that way.
For me, birding also adds a new dimension to travel. Whenever I go somewhere I make sure I have a field guide that covers the area. You can often find things you wouldn’t normally see.
capybara, I started out watching birds in Southern California. Lots of terrific birding spots there. I used to go to Newport Backbay and Tucker Wildlife Santuary in Orange County. The coast, chaparral, montaine and desert regions give such a diversity of habitats. And sometimes you see the completely unexpected. On a brilliant blue day at Salton Sea, I saw two high flying birds. Bright pink, black wingtips, with neck and legs extended. “What the…?!?” Flamingoes. They likely were escapees from San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park. Very cool.
Even the apparently ordinary can be fascinating to watch. Starlings are nesting outside my work. There is a pair whose nest entrance is between the brick wall and wooden eaves. The parents land on an air conditioner about 4 feet below the entrance and jump up to get in. They often have to make several attempts to get in - it’s not easy, I guess. But they are so persistant. I find them mesmerising.
I agree with Laughing Lagomorph about the use of song as an ID aid. I wish my auditory memory was better than it is, though. I suck. But, surprisingly, it hasn’t been a detriment professionally (I’m an ornithologist :eek: ). Guess that’s why I studied corvids.
I think I read somewhere about 70% of Bird ID’s are bagged by their call once you get into the groove of things. Here in the midwest the forests get pretty thick and hairy in the summer – and some species are more or less pretty shy.
The Pileated Woodpecker, for example, I’ve rarely actually seen, maybe once or twice, but heard them dozens of times… They make square-ish holes in dead trees, unique evidence of their presence and their call is more or less just like “woody the woodpecker” once you hear it, you won’t mistake it for anything else.
For a few years, I had a really nice place for birdfeeding: a roof right outside/below my apartment window. I had one feeder hanging in front of the window from the gutter, another suction-cupped to the window, and birdseed all over the roof below. Birds everywhere, and they would come right up to the window screen, so you could see them from just a few feet away if you were quiet.
I was sitting one day enjoying the “bird show”, when something swooped right at my face and landed on the screen mere inches away. It was a male rose-breasted grosbeak, which I recognized instantly from pictures, but had never seen in person. What an extraordinarily beautiful bird; the most intense pink I have ever seen. He hit my place about three times a day for a week, and then I never saw him again.
Well, I have to admit it was hard for me to learn the bird songs too. I essentially went at it like one might learn a foreign language…I played the tapes in my car every day on my commute, 45 minutes to an hour each way. I didn’t necesarilly concentrate every minute, I just had it on loud enough so that if I paid attention I could follow what was being said, but could also ignore it at times. The “Birding by Ear” series is good in that like a field guide it has birds grouped not by similar looks, but by similar songs, so that the ones that are most likely to confuse you are right next to each other. When you throw in such real life cues as habitat, location and time of year you can really narrow down what it is you might be hearing.
They also teach you phrases you can use as mnemonic devices. Eventually you hear one of the songs, think to yourself “per chik-o-ree”…oh, yes, thats the American Goldfinch. I got to the point where I had to write the mnemonic phrases into my regular field guide, because I kept saying things like “All right, who sings “eee-oh-lay” again?”
Birding is a great hobby, whether you do it seriously or casually. It gives you interest in every new place you go, sharpens your powers of observation, gets you up early and outdoors and introduces you to new friends.
There are some drawbacks. They say you’re not a serious birder until it affects your driving for the worse. And you look back on the places you visited before you were a birder and wonder how you could have been so stupid as to fail to take notice of the great birds that were there under your nose.
Xema, I know. I lived in Hawai’i for 6 years and didn’t really notice anything except mynahs, cardinals and something the locals called a ‘rice-bird’ that might have been a kind of junco. I want to kick myself. I was a kid, but my dad had actually bought me binoculars and a local bird chart and I just never took it up for real.
I don’t mind not being a ‘real’ birder. By being an amateur dabbler I get to retain some self-respect in the eyes of my peers.
:o Ran into a friend’s future MIL’s van (at about 2 mph) when we were all birding. And the usual sudden swerves off the road. But, hey! I thought I saw something!
Actually, I’m not as serious a birder as I could potentially be, but I guess that’s because my job involves actually catching birds. I don’t list (I do band, and by default, list to the Feds), but I have a gazillion field guides. I don’t specifically plan trips to watch birds, but I do plan to watch birds wherever I go. (And I do want to say that this is one area where “amateurs” can truly add to science - Christmas and breeding bird counts are invaluable aids to ornithologists and cannot be done without the corps of volunteers whose love is to watch birds. And I have had my own perceptions on bird behavior expanded by talking with people who have simply taken the time to watch.)
Well, I did go to Brigantine today. It was HOT and the greenhead flies were out in droves. On the other hand, I watched an Osprey nest with 2 kids for about 2 hours. Dad had just flown off when I came on scene, so I just waited. The kids panted and scooted up to the edge of the nest to poop. What shooters! Mom was vigilant as there were plenty of Great Black-backed Gulls flying about. I don’t know if they’d go after chicks, but they are aggressive gulls. After about an hour and a half, Dad came back with a nice big fish. Mom tore up the fish and fed it piece by tiny piece to mostly one chick (the other looked pretty well fed, but smaller).
