Yellow in Winter is Nice to See

[The long-staying Western Kingbird at Cape May Point State Park, NJ, January 10, 2020. click to enlarge photos.]

Mark Garland and I wandered around Cape May Point this morning, two old curmudgeons enjoying birds (I said "I like birds;" Mark allowed he had heard that. He does, too.) But we groused, me mainly, about the state of bird conservation, failings therein, bird-banding without purpose, social injustice, poor healthcare . . . but we like birds. Birds with yellow in winter are especially nice.

[One of two female Baltimore Orioles at a Lighthouse Avenue feeder, Cape May Point, NJ January 10 2020.Were it a bullock's Oriole, it would be brightest on the jaw, not the breast.]

Other birders were about on this especially nice winter day, including Tom Reed, man of mystery, Claudia Burns, and many others. Tell me again why climate change is bad? Oh, I will, it's coming to a blog near you, and Reed and I and many others are going to find out why as we watch our homes float away. . .

Birds. Mark pointed out it's nice to see Tundra Swans regularly in Cape May. I so agree, I love these birds, who's problem here is being driven off by Mute Swans.

 

[Above and below, Tundra Swans, Cape May Point State Park, NJ January 10, 2020.]

 



Our State Park list is below.

Cape May Point SP, Cape May, New Jersey, US
Jan 10, 2020 10:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Protocol: Traveling
0.8 mile(s)
41 species

Canada Goose  10
Mute Swan  15
Tundra Swan  4
Northern Shoveler  10
Gadwall  40
American Wigeon  30
Mallard  50
Northern Pintail  4
Green-winged Teal  6
Hooded Merganser  2
Ruddy Duck  4
Pied-billed Grebe  1
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon)  4
Mourning Dove  1
American Coot  1
Great Blue Heron  1
Downy Woodpecker  1
Northern Flicker  3
Western Kingbird  1     Continuing, photos.
Blue Jay  4
Carolina Chickadee  3
Ruby-crowned Kinglet  1
Carolina Wren  8
European Starling  50
Brown Thrasher  1
Northern Mockingbird  3
Hermit Thrush  1
American Robin  35
Cedar Waxwing  15
House Sparrow  4
House Finch  4
Fox Sparrow  2
White-throated Sparrow  10
Song Sparrow  1
Swamp Sparrow  2
Eastern Towhee  1
Red-winged Blackbird  10
Orange-crowned Warbler  1
Nashville Warbler  1     Continuing, near Al’s pond, chipped several times: sharp, slightly burry spik.
Yellow-rumped Warbler  20
Northern Cardinal  4

View this checklist online at https://ebird.org/checklist/S63239593

Thoughtful Thursday: The Color Purple

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
―  Alice Walker,  The Color Purple

[Purple Sandpipers do wear purple when viewed closely. This one was at the 8th street jetty in Avalon, NJ.]

New Jersey Bird Life, First Preamble: What We Can Do, What we Can't Do, and Who Decides What We Should Do

[Want more White-tailed Deer, or less? We know how to do either, and can. Same question, resident Canada Geese? Same answer. Ruffed Grouse, saltmarsh birds, freshwater marsh birds, beach-nesting birds, forest songbirds. . .um, uh, um, well, you see. . .]

Please note that throughout the following few blog posts, I will use "we" to mean people who care about birds: scientists, professional conservationists, professional birders, amateur birders, backyard birders, somebody who enjoys the robins on their lawn or the chickadees at their feeder, or even people who notice those big white swans on the pond.

Let's get to it. Here's what we're NOT going to do, because we can't. We're not going to get rid of NJ's hardscape, which I define as places where humans have made it impossible for water to get into the soil (aka impermeable surfaces) and for plants and other living things to get out of the soil. We've got a lot of that, I don't know exactly how much but I'm sure my friends in the Rutgers GIS lab could tap their keyboards a few times and tell us exactly the acreage, square miles or land cover percent of NJ that is hardscape. GIS stands for Geographic Information System, although back in the 1980's one of my major professors, Dr. Jim Applegate, wryly called it Guaranteed Income Stream for those proficient in it hoping to enter the environmental conservation fields. However, crusty old biologists are still needed to figure out what we should ask GIS to tell us.

So think Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Morristown, New Brunswick, Flemington, Camden, most of the Jersey Shore. These places are hardscaped and they're going to stay that way, although places like Woodbridge are buying and demolishing houses in the face of sea level rise, and eventually (spoiler alert) that force is going to de-hardscape the Jersey shore, or more likely force the hardscape inland.

Similarly, we're not going to put back all the rock we've cut off the Palisades, Watchungs and other rocky places to make the hardscape. Done deal, though I would argue that quarries have not done a whole lot to NJ bird populations.

One final thing I don't think we're going to do, although we eventually could and maybe already can: we're not going to un-extinct species. We could grow some Great Auk eggs in a petri dish, implant them in, I don't know, Thick-billed Murres or puffins, and bingo we've got another tick for our life lists. Ditto Carolina Parakeet and their closest South American relative. How about some mastodons while we're at it? Just think of the emotional scarring the foster African or Indian elephant would develop when it gave birth to one of those things. . . OK, I'm being facetious, but even if this stuff could work, we're looking at billions of dollars. Not gonna happen.

Now we get down to what we can do and what we should do. Another major professor of mine, Dr. Len Wolgast, taught us that wildlife management is "The manipulation of wildlife populations, habitat and people for a specific human goal." When 10 years later I was back at Rutgers teaching Lenny's classes while he was on sabbatical, I used the same definition. It works, though I would add that the word "manipulation" is used without any negative connotation.

Here's our first challenge: what is our specific human goal? Which goes straight to who decides, and the answer when it comes to NJ birds is that collective "we" I mentioned above. If you think of humans and nature as separate (I don't, and I think the notion is dangerous), and if you think we should just let nature take its course without human involvement, here's the newsflash: it has been over two million years since humans were not involved, and like it or not, we are involved now.  Perhaps you've read the best-selling book 1491? If you haven't, it makes a fine start when it comes to North America, because it demonstrates that humans were affecting nature on this continent for a loooong time before Columbus, and then the arrival of Europeans turned that whole bit on its head, and here we are. So, WE decide what the goal for NJ birds is, and while I'm going to confine myself to NJ, the line of thinking applies to the entire planet's bird life.

I'm comfortable saying our goal is lots of birds of lots of species. Where humans have caused species declines, let's set it right if we can and if we know how. The devil is indeed in the details: more to come.

Fri-D: "No."

I was 19, and had transmogrified from a kid who didn't even know other people looked at birds to a rabid birder. Interning as a naturalist and do-everything-elser (a common affliction of naturalists) at Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary, one May morning I saw a Prothonotary Warbler. (NOT the bird in the photo.) Or so I thought.

My boss was Rich Kane, who will ever be enshrined in my mind as the dean of NJ birders. The mold was broken when they made Rich, and while he wasn't exactly my birding mentor, I learned a TON from the master. For example, when Pete Dunne told me in great excitement that he had this cassette tape produced by a guy named Bill Evans of the nocturnal flight calls of migrating thrushes just in time for my first World Series of Birding with Pete (of what eventually were more than 25), I said, "Uh, I already know them." That was from Rich, or RK as he was known in American Birds and Records of New Jersey Birds.

Anyhow, I told RK about my Prothonotary, which I had seen behind the Hoffman building in upland woods, and he said one word:

"No."

Ouch. Then he asked what it had looked like, and when I told him he said, "Was it even a warbler?"

Double ouch.

To this day, I don't know what I saw other than that it was not a PRWA, but Rich had done me a great service, though perhaps less diplomatically than I now try to be.

For example, when the recent Mountain Bluebird appeared in Cape May, we were watching it fraternizing with some Eastern Bluebirds, and a birder I did not know exclaimed, "There are TWO Mountain Bluebirds!" Another birder chimed in, "Yes! There are!"

No. Maybe it was just me, but the "we" I refer to included pretty much everybody who was anybody in the Cape May birding community, from O'Brien to Crossley to Lanzone to Whittle and many others, and not just from Cape May. All watching one, count'em, one (1) Mountain Bluebird.

I simply said, "I only see one Mountain Bluebird." The door was wide open, but the two 2-MOBL'ers didn't walk through, and I let it drop. But I encourage everyone to walk through open doors. . . I sure do. Thanks, Rich.

Thoughtful Thursday: Fog

[Ring-necked Ducks, Lily Lake, Cape May Point, NJ December 30, 2019.]

“One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, "We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life.

 The Fog Horn blew.”

―  Ray Bradbury,  The Fog Horn