Sh*t Birders Say to Other Birders

Sh*t Non-Birders Say

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Sh*t Birders Say

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Those of us who watch birds often wonder whether it's the "same" birds we see in our yards year after year. Sometimes it seems as if they use the identical perch as the same species did last year, or reuse last season's nest, but we can never really be sure. How can we tell one individual male robin from the another?

Last year I had a lively traffic in hummingbirds, lured to my suburban patio in part by voluminous red flowers. Last week, I had my first-of-the-season hummer, who came zipping right in to the feeder. However, I have no flowers at all just yet, and the feeder, while red, is under a dark portico, hardly a thing that some passing migrant might stumble upon. Was it one of last years birds? No way to say for sure, but I feel as many of us do when the returning birds of spring manifest seemingly comfortable habits: very probably so.

There Are 8 Million Stories In The Naked City

What's For Lunch?

A few weeks ago, a friend found this curious guy staring INTO his office window, smack dab in the heart of Trenton, New Jersey. I guess a steady diet of pigeons and rats would wear out its welcome after awhile, and that bagel thingy does look intriguing.

It reminded me of the time several years ago when, on a lunchtime walk along Central Park South, a sub-adult Red-tailed hawk, evidently one of Pale Male’s truant teens, came swooping across 59th Street to sink its talons into a pigeon that was sunning itself on a ledge about three feet over my head. It was just playing, apparently, since it took up a perch right next to the stunned and probably eviscerated pigeon and casually took in the sights.

The hawk then flew off north back into the park, the pigeon flew wobbly east towards one of those “You-won’t-believe-what-just-happened-to-me” conversations with his pals, and I tottered west back to the office to have a similar exchange with my co-workers.

These hardy opportunists are certainly making some urban inroads.

Pete Dunne: Birding in 3-D

In 2002, I scored the plum of my career when Pete Dunne agreed to be interviewed for my film, “Opposable Chums: Guts & Glory at The World Series of Birding.” Pete is, of course, not only one of the country’s most famous birders, but he’s also the best-selling author of a dozen great birding books.

Oh, yeah: and he’s the founder of The World Series of Birding. I’d long been a fan.

At the conclusion of the interview, we were chatting as the equipment got packed up, when Pete said something that struck me as, well, odd.

He mentioned an idea he had of a birding guide with no illustrations.

The first words that ran through my head were, “Is he out of his cotton-pickin’…”

But before I could even finish the thought, I remembered something that happened to me once:

As a nascent birder a decade before, I was traveling south along the east coast on a birding holiday, when I became convinced that some of the vultures I was seeing kettling overhead were not the Turkey Vultures I was used to, but were Black Vultures, lifers I’d never seen. Frustrated, I just couldn’t yet tell the difference. The field guide illustrations were great if you were sitting twenty feet away from a proudly posing bird, but these birds were silhouetted a half mile above.

So that night, in my dingy room at the On-Ramp Motel, I consulted one of the many books I’d brought along on my safari, “Hawk Watch: A Guide for Beginners,” by Pete, with Debbie Keller and Rene Kochenberger.

The next morning, having memorized some of the field marks of Black Vultures as described, I hit the road and soon found myself staring up into a kettle of Vultures.

Yup: “very squat, broadly fanned tail…holds its wings flat or with a slight dihedral.” And the underwing markings confirmed it. My first Black Vulture.

Now, “Hawk Watch” is indeed illustrated, very well, in fact, by the great artist and bird identification expert David Sibley. But it was those two phrases, which I’d read the night before, that put the bird in my pocket.

So, I reasoned ten years later as we wrapped up our interview, if anyone could create an illustration-free bird guide, Pete Dunne could.

And he has.

“Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion” is a ground-breaking entrant into the justly exalted realm of bird identification guides, a discipline ushered into the modern era by Roger Tory Peterson’s “A Field Guide to The Birds,” and reaching its current pinnacle with the afore-mentioned David Sibley’s state-of-the-art “The Sibley Guide to Birds.” But whereas these two books advanced the field of bird identification chiefly through targeted illustrations, Pete’s book verbally describes each species in terms of geographical status, visual presentation, behavior, flight characteristics, and vocalizations.

In the book, each species description is preceded by a “nickname” designed as a handy mnemonic: the Blue Jay is “The Noisy Coxcomb,” the Magnolia Warbler is “A Bird of Short Phrases,” the American Woodcock is “Meatloaf on a Stick,” etc. He then discusses where the bird can be found and what it looks like, but it’s the paragraphs that detail the bird’s behavior that, for me, offer the most valuable clues to some of the more difficult-to-be really-sure birds.

Yellowlegs, for instance. Remember, I’m a City boy.

Now, I’ve seen hundreds of Yellowlegs in my travels, but I was never sure enough about the distinction between the Greater and the Lesser Yellowlegs. The field guides offer hints such as bill-to-head-size ratios that are subtle and hard to eyeball when the bird can keep its bill buried in the mud for most of the day. And there’s too much overlap in size between the two species for a novice to differentiate one way or another.

It was frustrating. I’d be staring at a gaggle of shorebirds, sure that at least two were lifers, but I was too unclear to claim them as mine.

So, when Pete’s book came out, I headed to the nearest shorebird habitat, having read that the Greater Yellowlegs is, “a more active, angry, and aggressive feeder than the Lesser Yellowlegs. Walks with longer strides, a Tyrannosaurus of a shorebird.” About the Lesser Yellowlegs, Pete had written that, “everything about this bird -- bill, neck, body, legs -- is slender; a shorebird to inspire El Greco.”

Yup. There they were, just as advertised. The difference was now plain, and has been ever since. Two lifers, just like that, after years of frustration.

Thanks, Pete.

“Pete Dunne’s Essential Guide Field Guide Companion” is now a permanent part of my arsenal when I go birding. It stays in the car with the Sibley, of course; neither is designed to carry into the field, a job for which the Peterson still serves admirably.

I see it this way: Peterson shows you what to look for in the field, Sibley shows you what it’ll look like when you get there, and Pete tells you what it’ll be doing.

The three combined give you a true three-dimensional picture of a species appearance in all its plumages, its geographical and habitat preferences, and its behavior. Indeed, quite an arsenal of information, from three of the greatest bird brains the field has ever known.