The Bird Page

I am down the birding rabbit hole these days. What has always been a passing interest has become a daily obsession. I’m a little prone to falling down rabbit holes. Sourdough bread, home brewing, scuba, rappelling.

But birds have always been with me. If you have been a regular reader here you know that I have been bird watching since I was a kid, when my grandfather taught me how to use his bird book and binoculars to identify birds at his feeder in Northern Michigan. I have been at it ever since. I have poked around the edges of birding all my life, and have spent plenty of time on my own and with friends on dedicated birding outings in places from my native Michigan, to Arizona, California and Oregon.

I have always been keenly interested in all animals, so much so that my mother bought me a set of wildlife encyclopedias when I was six. I consumed this 22 volume set cover to cover. My love of birds was just a natural expression of my love of animals in general.

My interest was also about wanting to be an all around outdoorsman. By outdoorsman I don’t mean simply hunting and fishing, but all outdoors activities- hiking, camping, foraging, canoeing, cutting wood- being comfortable in the outdoors, a denizen and not a visitor. To me that meant not just going outside to take- I wanted to know what all the Things are- the birds, the trees, the animals, the plants, the stars even. I am a person who is never happier than when I am outside in nature simply being. My pursuits out there are an excuse.

So why focus on birds? Because they’re there I guess. The property I live on is loaded with wildlife. I know this from observations, trail cameras, and driving home at night catching the possums in my driveway. We have skunks, deer, red and gray foxes, squirrels, coyotes, armadillos, lizards, snakes, frogs, cotton rats (a small native rodent) and more, but the most abundant, dynamic and diverse wildlife we have are birds. While other wildlife skulk about trying not to be seen, birds seem to go out of their way to be visible. Their ability to fly coupled with a high metabolism means they go about their business in plain sight and close up. They are also probably the most diverse and colorful wildlife we all have access to. I pretty much named all the mammalian wildlife on the property which is what, a dozen species? On any given day we have at least 30-40 species of birds on our place, from vultures, hawks and owls, on down to sparrows, warblers and finches of various species.

You also get to observe a wide variety of behaviors- the white-throated sparrows, towhees and brown thrashers skulking in the brush. The mockingbirds in the hedgerows, the red-shouldered hawks coursing through the forest, the red-tailed hawk soaring overhead, and the occasional kamikaze flyby of a merlin hunting other birds.

There is also a romance to birds, as simple as their singing and the deafening cacophony of the morning chorus, to their migrations making them enigmatic visitors and harbingers of seasons and change. In Michigan the appearance of robins are a sure and welcome sign of spring. The honk of geese flying in V’s are a sign of late fall and the coming winter. As Poe capture in The Raven, birds can also be harbingers of loss, or even our own demise.

My new-found zeal for birding has been growing the last few years, but my canoe trip down the Altamaha River last April really electrified it. We floated through flocks of thousands of white ibis in the cypress swamps there, accompanied by great and snowy egrets, great blue herons, little blue herons, yellow-crowned night herons etc. I shot hundreds of photos, but the limitations of my gear convinced me to finally upgrade my camera and get a couple better lenses. I got a 2X extender with my Christmas bonus, and now I’m off to the races.

White Ibis on the Altamaha

In December my friend Tom sent me the links to the eBird app tutorials and I’m finding I really like using the app, one of the few things on my phone that actually enhances my enjoyment of the outdoors, as it is a simple, easy way to keep track of observations and report what I find. The lists I submit in some small way contribute to the data the Cornell Lab of Ornithology uses to study birds.

black vulture soaring over our pasture

The intense focus on birds I’ve had over the last couple months has really helped me. For instance, I’ve always struggled with sparrows, but I’m finally able to tell a song sparrow from a white-chinned sparrow from a chipping sparrow at a glance. This is happening with all my local winter birds. I finally know the difference between a downy and hairy woodpecker; between a red-bellied and redheaded woodpecker. I am much quicker at recognizing most of the common birds in my area by outline, habits, or manner of flying.

The importance of this isn’t simply smug satisfaction. It means that when a new or rare bird shows up I am much quicker to pick them out. I subscribe to the rare bird lists from eBird for the state of Georgia, and it’s amazing how many wanderers show up here, such as hooded orioles which normally live from the Rio Grande valley south. I have also been the first to see several rare species for my area not yet reported by other local birders, such as canvasbacks on a nearby lake, and my reports have helped other local birders find them. On a recent visit to Lake Lanier I saw some horned grebes, which apparently are rare enough my sighting wasn’t included in the rare bird alert for fear they would be mobbed by birders eager to add them to their life list.

You don’t have to be an avid birder to take an interest in birds, but buying a field guide or downloading Merlin (the bird ID app also from Cornell) will certainly enhance your enjoyment of the outdoors or even your own backyard.

I’m adding this section, The Bird Page to Fontinalis Rising. If you’re not interested in birds that’s fine, I’ll still be publishing my other outdoor pursuits in the other sections. For you who are interested in birds I’ll share pics and stories and reports from birding outings. We’ll enjoy this adventure together.

Some photos from the last couple months