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.

Blowing My Own Horn

“Opposable Chums: Guts & Glory at The World Series of Birding” will have it’s broadcast premiere on NJ-PBS timed to coincide with the 26th Annual World Series of Birding. The film will be screened four times a day between May 5th and May 11th (which is Mother’s Day, for all you forgetful folk), neatly surrounding the upcoming World Series, which is on May 9th. The station is NJN; please consult, as they say, your local listings.

IN addition, the film has won The Bronze Medal at The 2009 Telly Awards.

Also in May, “Opposable Chums” will be in what is probably the most important festival of environmental films, The Reel Earth Festival in New Zealand. This will be the film’s 10th festival.

“Opposable Chums” will also be screened at The Midwest Birding Symposium on September 17th, 2009, and at The Cape May Autumn Weekend, date to be determined.

The film can also be found in the bookstores of The Cape May Bird Observatory, The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Mass Audubon.

Looks like the chick has fledged!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Some Guy Named David Sibley

OK: time to come clean.

I’d LIKE to be able to say that all of the elements of the production of “Opposable Chums: Guts & Glory at The World Series of Birding” were carefully planned in advance, and executed to a “T.”

However, the realities of documentary filmmaking, especially documentary filmmaking with a 2-week lead-time, are otherwise.

Case in point:

I was in Cape May on a fine autumn day, able-bodied Assistant Cameraman Steve Marruzelli by my side, just to get some generic Cape May shots for the film.

I had no idea that New Jersey Audubon’s annual “Fall Weekend” was happening. The event, bringing in speakers, authors, vendors, and enthusiasts, had eluded my addled pate.

But that’s what Steve and I found ourselves in the middle of.

And who was having a book signing?

David Sibley.

For those who’ve been living in a cave that Osama Bin Laden might envy, David Sibley, aside from being a brilliant ornithologist and gifted artist, is the author of “The Sibley Guide to Birds,” the most revolutionary field guide in a generation.

Whereas Roger Tory Peterson’s ground-breaking “A Field Guide To The Birds” showed for the first time, with a simple but ingenious system of pointers, what to look for in the field, David Sibley’s guide, with multiple illustrations of varying seasonal plumage, showed you what the bird would look like when you got there.

The guy was a hero of mine; his efforts had enriched my own birdwatching by an untellable magnitude, and the feeling seemed to be the same with every birder I encountered.

And here he was, signing books. The line to get his autograph, went through the hall and out the door, confirming the seismic rumble this man had made in ornithology.

He was an Orn Star.

And here he was, right in front of me. Could I…would it be possible for me to…can you imagine if…

Well, documentary filmmaking is no place for the shy, and so I manhandled my native reticence to the mat and asked.

Sure, he’d love to do an interview. But he can only give me 20 minutes.

Ai yi yi… 20 minutes of a David Sibley interview for my little, self-funded labor of love. If there’s a God, he loves birdwatchers.

Well, the lighting wasn’t great. The glare in his glasses from the windows was disturbing, and any amount of futzing I did to ameliorate the situation was time spent not interviewing him. So I rolled tape.

Winging the interview wasn’t much of a problem: I’m a birder- I have a million questions for David Sibley encoded in my DNA. And he was, of course, gracious, educated, opinionated, and brilliant. A documentary filmmaker’s dream.

But, I gotta come clean. I didn’t have a “publicist” who “reached out” to his “team” to arrange a “face-to-face.”

It was dumb luck, the same luck that dogged the heels of this film from the get-go. If there’s a God…

About The Author

There's a delightful web site devoted to podcasts about birds and birding.  Originating out of Georgia, Steve Moore's BIRDWATCH RADIO covers birding news and events from around the country.  Steve was nice enough to contact me regarding an interview, and the results can be found here:

An interview with Yours Truly

How I Got Into This Mess In The First Place

Several years ago, I directed a documentary, “A Thief Among the Angels: Barry Moser and The Making of The Pennyroyal Caxton Bible.” Didn’t do too badly; won some awards on the festival circuit, played on PBS, got picked up by a distributor. Due to my industry connections, I was able to get the equipment and editing for free. But equipment and editing, while being the bulk of a film’s cost, don’t represent ALL of a film’s cost, not by a long shot, and I wound up in debt.

It took a couple of years to get back in the black and, when I did, I celebrated Birder-Style: rent a car, throw 3 t-shirts, 30 cigars, and 60 CD’s in the trunk, and hit the open road. Bird my way south, hugging the coast, visit with family in North Carolina, bird my way home.

Ahhhhhhhhhh…

When you’re a filmmaker today, you spend much of your life in a darkened room in front of a bank of computer screens that resembles nothing so much as a tanning salon. And when you live in Manhattan, as I do, the claustrophobic feelings are compounded. The open road, after-breakfast cigars, Hank Williams and Grieg, birdwatching all day, hilarious local TV news in rural Motel 6’s at night…if you know of a better way to decompress, bottle it quick and call me.

And so I hit the road. All the while, I was giving myself a good talking-to: this “filmmaking thing," while mad fun, just wasn’t working. Too much effort, too much cost, too little reward. I "wasn’t a kid anymore." I needed to find "a new way to exercise my creativity," and to "get my messages across," that wouldn’t leave me "broke as an undergrad."

That’s when I saw it.

I was at Jake’s Landing, trolling for Black Rails at dusk (you know the spot: the second of the hidden eddies that ambles off towards the sunset as you break free of the trees). I’d just watched an Osprey land on its nesting platform after the final lap of the day when I saw, in the deepening indigo, a piece of paper stapled to a fence post.

It read, “18th Annual World Series of Birding.”

And I remember my exact thought at that exact moment: “Oh, crap.”

They say you can’t pick your relatives. You know what? You can’t pick your moments of inspiration either. “The World Series of Birding.” Being something of a solitary birder, I’d actually never heard of it. But it stomped into my life with my name writ large all over it’s beaming face.

I continued my way south; I suspected I was sunk.

In one of the deleted scenes from “Opposable Chums,” which can be found with the DVD extras, Pete Dunne, the founder of The World Series of Birding, describes calling Roger Tory Peterson when the idea of a competitive birdwatching event occurred to him. “You couldn’t possibly have a competitive birdwatching event without consulting…God, which is essentially what Roger Tory Peterson was in the birding world at the time.”

It was the same with me. I couldn’t possibly make a film about The World Series of Birding without consulting…God, which is essentially what Pete Dunne is in the birding world today. Besides, Pete founded The World Series of Birding

Down in North Carolina, my family disported themselves seaside and carefree. I made some notes and a phone call. I called Pete Dunne, best-selling author, birder extraordinaire, hero to many besides me. Yup: I just cold-called him.

To my amazement, God answered the phone. “Sure. Come on up. How’s Wednesday at 3?”

Ai yi yi…what had I done? I was supposed to NOT be making any more films.

Wednesday at 3 didn’t find me any less nervous. The pristine Witmer Stone “Bird Studies at Old Cape May” volumes on Pete’s shelf didn’t help much either (rare book collecting can be as debilitating an infection as birding and Lyme disease; if you’ve suffered from all three, as I have, sitting before a first edition Witmer Stone is like stumbling upon Stonehenge when you were just out for a quick, al fresco whizz).

We chatted. He was a bit wary. I was a tad terrified. But, in the end, he cheerfully gave me what I’ve come to call my “Papal dispensation.”

There was just one problem.

The 18th Annual World Series of Birding was only two weeks away, not nearly enough time to organize such a complex and far-reaching shoot. Not enough time, either, to convince several professional Manhattan camerapeople that riding around in a cramped van shooting for 24 hours straight "will be fun." Not really even enough time to contact competitive birding teams and convince them to cart along on their Most Important Day Of The Year some dead weight who’d do them no good.

But to wait an additional year would have spoiled whatever gossamer momentum I'd just mustered, and would’ve risked someone else swooping in to grab what I thought was The Most Perfect Film Idea In The History Of Mankind. MY idea.

What happened next was so arduous and intense that an insane 24-hour birding event came to feel like a vacation. Tune in next time, for, “Repeatedly Smacking Yourself In The Head With a Ball-Peen Hammer.”