Birder's Bookshelf 2: Joseph Kastner, "A World of Watchers"

Joseph Kastner, A World of Watchers, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Whereas Kastner's first book, A Species of Eternity, was a broad survey of the development of the study of natural history in North America, A World of Watchers, his second, is a focused look at the history of bird watching.* Chronologically, Watchers picks up more or less where Eternity left off, i.e., in the latter half of the 19th century. Which makes sense. The men whose work was chronicled in the first book laid the broad foundation of knowledge in all the various areas that can be said to comprise the study of natural history. In this book, Kastner writes of the men--and now also some women--who built on this foundation and began to delve deeply into one particular branch of the field, i.e., the study of birds and bird life.

In today's world, bird watching, or birding, is among the most popular forms of outdoor activity. According to one study from 2011, there currently are an estimated 47 million bird watchers over the age of sixteen in the U.S. Birding clubs are numerous; anyone who develops an interest in birds and wants to flock together with similar-minded folks can find a local club without much difficulty.**

Things were not always so, of course. Early avian enthusiasts were, by and large, few and far between, folks who pursued their passion in relative isolation. Kastner tells us (p. 4 and Chapter 3) that the first organized bird club was not established until 1873, when the Nuttall Ornithological Club was founded in Cambridge, Mass. The formal organization was an outgrowth of the activities of two young ornithologists from that city, William Brewster and Henry Henshaw. Other clubs in other areas soon followed, and there was a concomitant growth in the number of bird watchers.

Kastner goes on to provide accounts both of professional ornithologists and amateur enthusiasts who made contributions to the growth of our knowledge about birds. Among the pros to whom Kastner devotes a chapter is one of my personal favorites, Edward Howe Forbush (1858-1929). Forbush was the state ornithologist in his native Massachusetts from 1891 until his death. His magnum opus was the three-volume Birds of Massachusetts, which was published by the Mass. Dept. of Agriculture from 1925-1929.

I mentioned this work in an earlier post, and will write more about Forbush in the future. For now I will just note that Kastner's chapter on Forbush, "A Friend of Bird and Birder," is a marvelous, affectionate portrait of a man who I wish I had known, and had had the opportunity to learn from. Kastner writes: "Going through his volumes is like going along on a long bird walk, getting to know birds through the eyes and ears and feelings of scores of birders--all their perceptions filtered through the mind of one of the finest and most literate ornithologists the country has ever known."

Amen to that. Many's the time I've observed a bird in the field, and noted some particular aspect of its behavior or appearance. Then, upon returning to the house and consulting Forbush, been delighted to find a perfect description of what it was that I had just seen, a description written in prose so lovely that it bordered on the poetic. It was as if he had been looking over my shoulder as I watched and made my own observations.

Apart from his own stellar work, Forbush's Massachusetts volumes are notable for the magnificent paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes that illustrate them. Fuertes (1874-1927) was a brilliant artist, the most important bird painter after Audubon, and arguably the best ever. Kastner employs small field sketches by Fuertes as epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, and includes a special section of color plates with a few samples of Fuertes' paintings. Fuertes' oeuvre was immense; his paintings graced the pages of many other bird books in addition to Forbush's. His story is as much a part of Kastner's narrative as is that of any ornithologist. I intend to devote a future post or two to him. For now I will just include a sample of his work, the small falcons--Kestrel and Merlin--from the Birds of New York, by Elon Howard Eaton.

Kastner writes also of the growth of the conservation movement; of the change from specimen collection to sight records; of numerous eminent pioneer ornithologists such as Elliot Coues, Witmer Stone, Frank Chapman, and Lowell Griscom; of the influential female writers such as Mabel Osgood Wright, Olive Miller, and Neltje Blanchan; and numerous other topics. His own prose is a delight to read. This, coupled with the evident comprehensive research that underlies the writing, makes A World of Watchers a much-valued item on my bookshelves. Like A Species of Eternity, it is also out of print, but copies are easy to come by on the used-book market. Definitely worth looking for.

*Given the importance of various optical devices to birdwatching--note the design of the book's dust jacket--there's probably a bad joke about focusing lurking in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

**Talk about bad jokes...

Explorations on Shank's Mare 1: The Eastern Trail in Snow

For the past year or so Sally and I have made walking our primary form of physical activity. Throughout the late summer and fall we greatly enjoyed discovering and exploring trails in the area that were new to us. I'll write about some of these in future posts. One of our long-time favorites, though is the Eastern Trail that connects Kittery in the south with South Portland in the north. (The ET is, in turn, part of the East Coast Greenway, a complex of roads and trails that stretches from Key West, FL to Calais, ME, at the Canadian border.) The Eastern Trail presently consists of a combination of on-road routes and off-road trail sections. We're fortunate to have a nice 6.1 mile off-road section that connects Kennebunk and Biddeford within easy striking distance of our house.

We've been enjoying our pedestrian excursions thoroughly and hated the thought of having to suspend them through the winter months when all the trails are covered with snow. The solution: snowshoes for each other for Christmas! Yeah! Bring it, Ol' Man Winter! We're ready!

But then...Christmas arrived and there was nary a speck of snow on the ground. The 5"-6" we got before Thanksgiving had long since disappeared. The new snowshoes remained in their boxes, unopened. When we did get snow, on the first weekend of the month, it was only a few inches, and was immediately followed by freezing rain. Crust everywhere; no nice, soft powder.

Not to worry. It's January and this is Maine; more snow arrived this past week. Again, not so very much, but enough to inspire us to mount an expotition today to break in the new snowshoes. There were even a few flurries in the air as we headed for Biddeford and the upper terminus of the Kennebunk-to-Biddeford section of the Eastern Trail.

It took us both a few minutes to get accustomed to the new appendages, and to do some tweaking of the bindings. But after that--man, what great fun! Why didn't we do this a long time ago? It felt so good just to be out and about after spending too much time indoors lately. The thought of being able now to explore the woods in winter, to check out all the animal tracks, to perhaps catch some glimpses of the animals that make the tracks, and to see what birds inhabit our woods in the winter, is very liberating!

The snowfall picked up quite a bit while we were walking, which added another layer of beauty to the scene. Sally noted that it was like walking in a snow globe.

There were not very many birds out today; just a few Blue Jays (which seem to be ubiquitous this winter) and a few small things fluttering about in a distant tree, too small and too far away to identify without binoculars. Lots and lots of animal tracks, though--time to brush up on my track identification skills!

Mostly what we saw were squirrel tracks, with probably a few rabbit tracks mixed in. But then there were others that we suspect might indicate the presence of Woozles! 

We started our walk at the trailhead in the parking lot of the Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford. From there we trekked southward for a little over half an hour, and turned around at the Arundel town line.There are markers along the trail at quarter-mile intervals, so we're able to figure that we did about two miles total. Not so very far, but not bad for an initial shake-down venture testing out new gear. We certainly felt evidence of our exertions in our legs, knees, and ankles!

We ended up feeling tired but exhilarated. Can't wait to get out for many more winter walks!

p.s. If you don't know what a Woozle is, and have never been on an expotition to look for one, you clearly had a deprived childhood! I recommend that you rectify the situation by consulting the works of A.A. Milne at your earliest opportunity!

Birder's Bookshelf 1: Joseph Kastner, "A Species of Eternity"

With this post I begin a series of reviews--though perhaps "discussions" would be a more apt term--of books from my personal library, books that I have found to be particularly influential, useful, or simply interesting. Don't look here for reviews of the latest and greatest new field guides, though that might happen at some point. Most of the works that I will be writing about will either be old, out-of-print books about birds (mostly), or newer ones that deal in some way with the history of ornithology, bird painting, and of humans' relationship with birds. I begin with a book not specifically about birds, but one that had an enormous impact on me when I read it (c. 1982). I will follow up this post with a look at a related work (that is just on birds) by the same author, Joseph Kastner, a long-time writer and editor at Life magazine. Both Kastner books played a big role in sparking the interest that led to the acquisition of many of the other books that I will be writing about.
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Joseph Kastner. A Species of Eternity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

It would be overly dramatic, but not entirely inaccurate, to say that this book changed the course of my life. It certainly sent me down paths that I had not previously traveled and started me on a journey that continues today, more than thirty years after I read it.

Kastner's book is a chronicle of the lives, work, and adventures of the men--and they were all men--from the Colonial Era to roughly the middle of the 19th century who laid the groundwork for the study of natural history in North America. It was a colorful cast of characters -- some rich, some poor; some with extensive formal education, others entirely self-taught; some eccentric and flamboyant, some staid and introverted; some working within the structure of an institution, others pursing their interests on their own. All were blessed (cursed?) with passionate curiosity about the natural world and had the drive to probe its mysteries.

Painter and ornithologist John James Audubon is the only one among them whose name is likely to be familiar to most people today, but the cohort included many others: Mark Catesby, an Englishman who made some of the earliest depictions of American flora and fauna; the Bartrams, John and William, a father-and-son pair known best for their contributions to the study of botany; Charles Willson Peale, painter, naturalist, and father not only to one of the first museums in America but also to a large family that included several more painters and naturalists; Alexander Wilson, a Scottish immigrant who is regarded as "the father of American ornithology" and whose own monumental collection of bird paintings preceded Audubon's by just a few years but has been forever overshadowed by it; and on and on. Their stories are invariably fascinating and Kastner relates them in engaging, eminently readable prose.

As noted in an earlier post, my own interest in the natural world extends back to my childhood growing up on a farm. Even as a youngster I had often wondered about how the plants and animals that I saw around me, and read about in guide books, had come to be named, and who had first identified them. A Species of Eternity opened the door to the world and work of those who began the task of making sense of the complexities of the natural world, those who charted the previously uncharted. How strange and wonderful and overwhelming it must have been to live at a time when so much about the world around us was unknown, when there were no books to tell people what they were seeing.

As eye-opening and fascinating as it was to read about the adventures and contributions of Catesby, Alexander Garden, Cadwallader Colden, Constantine Rafinesque, et al, what really hooked me in to wanting to find out more about some of these characters was learning that both Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon were musicians! Aha -- a link between the two worlds that I love the most! Sweet.

Audubon played fiddle and flute, and also worked as a dancing master for a time before he began work on Birds of America, his magnum opus. Through subsequent reading of his published journals I learned that he often played with local musicians on his travels--which encompassed a huge swath of territory, from New Orleans to Labrador. We know less about Wilson's musical activities. Kastner quotes a letter Wilson wrote to William Bartram in 1803 in which he says: "I have had many pursuits, Mathematics, the German language, music, drawing, etc..." (p. 163). Audubon himself gives us a glimpse into Wilson as a musician. The two men met only one time during their lives, in 1807 when the Scotsman happened to stop into the store near Louisville, Kentucky, that Audubon ran for a time. Audubon wrote of Wilson: "His retired habits exhibited a strong discontent or a decided melancholy," and further, "The Scotch airs that he played sweetly on his flute made me melancholy too." (p. 178). I will write more about both Audubon and Wilson, and what is known of their musical activities, in future posts.

The door that Joseph Kastner opened for me with A Species of Eternity has never closed. In the three decades since reading it I have continued my explorations into the history of natural history (as it were), with a focus on the development of ornithology and the activity of bird-watching. A second book by Kastner, A World of Watchers, that deals specifically with the history of (as the jacket blurb puts it) the "history of the American passion for birds," fed this interest. It introduced me to the literature of many early writers about birds and, as noted earlier, was in large measure responsible for me seeking out and acquiring many of the well-worn volumes that crowd the bookshelves in our living room. It, and the books it inspired me to collect, will be the subjects of future posts.

A Four Woodpecker Day

Four different species, that is. The lousy weather we had in southern Maine yesterday and today--roughly four inches of snow, followed by a light rain that put a thin, crisp crust on everything--brought a lot of traffic to our bird feeders. We had the usual abundance of Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, American Goldfinches, Blue Jays,White-breasted Nuthatches, and Juncos, but also a few somewhat less frequent visitors: several Tree Sparrows, a pair of Cardinals, and the first Red-breasted Nuthatch that I'd seen in some months. Because our house backs up on some woods we are blessed with having a lot of woodpeckers among the regulars. The little Downys are the most common--some days recently we've had as many as six at one time--and there are usually a few Hairys and a pair of Red-bellies around as well.

A pair of Pileateds has inhabited our woods for as long as we've owned the place--that is, I'm assuming it's been the same pair over the years, though I have no evidence to support that notion--but our sightings of them typically have been quite rare and fleeting. On a few occasions we've been able to get somewhat extended looks when they appeared on trees near the house, and in April, 2013, the male spent enough time exploring the hollow of an old branch on the old apple tree in the front yard for me to get a bit of video footage of him.

Until today, that had been the best look I'd had. About 2:30 or so this afternoon, when I should have been out shoveling the walks, I was instead watching the activity at the feeders in our side yard. I was particularly enjoying the sight of numerous woodpeckers competing for space on the suet cakes, and thought how great it would be if one or both of the Pileateds would show themselves to complement the ranks of their smaller cousins. I was enormously delighted, then, when I looked down into the woods a short way and saw one, working away on the side of a White Pine! I was even more pleased when a second bird joined the first.

We keep a pair of binoculars and a spotting scope handy by the feeder viewing area, so we quickly were able to identify the first bird as a male and the second as the female. The male was quite persistently working away in a single spot on the tree. The female was less tenacious. She started pecking away at a place of her own near the male's excavation and every now and then would try to get closer to where he was working. He would have none of it, however, and quickly and decisively warded off all her advances. She soon flew off to other nearby trees. She'd work on one for awhile, then move to another, and then come back to where her (presumed) mate was whanging away. She managed one decent-size hole a quarter of the way around the same tree where he was working, but never showed nearly the same determination that he did.

The speed of his labors was impressive! In ten minutes or less he had created a hole deep enough to engulf his entire bill and part of his face when he made his forward thrusts. I regretted that I had not begun my observations at the same time he started work so I could time his progress. Fortunately, after digging a hole that had an opening that looked to be perhaps three inches high, he re-positioned himself downward a bit and began working in a new spot. This time I was ready, and started the timer on my iPhone. In only two or three minutes he got all the bark chipped off in the new location, and after only three or four more had carved out significant depth. In less than fifteen he had created a hole roughly the same size as the first one.

He continued to expand the new hole downwards and after a total of about half an hour of work he had created a cavity more then twice the size of his first effort. Impressive, indeed. I tried to calculate the number of pecks per minute but his drumming was too irregular. Instead, I counted the number of pecks per burst of activity. These ranged from two to ten, in periods lasting no more than a second or two.

After he'd been working for nearly forty minutes he suddenly stopped and became perfectly still. As did the female who was, at this time, on the adjacent tree. As did the Juncos and Chickadees who were hanging out in the Rose of Sharon bush by the feeders. As did the Downy who was on one of the two suet feeders. A cliche from old Western movies came to mind: it was quiet...too quiet. I strongly suspect that a raptor was in the area, but damned if I could spot one anywhere. The birds-as-statues routine continued for several minutes, but they eventually resumed their activities as abruptly as they had halted them.

As I observed the male, he often took short breaks from his drumming to eat whatever it was that he was finding in the tree. The point of his labors was, after all, to find food. I was never able to see just what it was that he was eating, though presumably it was insects of some sort.

Later, after we did finally get out to do the shoveling, I took a side trip into the woods, yardstick in hand, to try to measure the bird's excavations. His first hole had an opening of about 2.5-3.0" while the second one was nearly 5.0". I was able to reach up and get the yardstick into the second hole and measure the depth. Not a terribly precise reading since the hole it was considerably above my head, but as near as I could determine the hole was on the order of 3.5-4.0" deep. Not bad for about 40 minutes of effort.

This was the best opportunity I've ever had for extended observation of a Pileated Woodpecker at work, and I'm grateful for the experience. This was also the first time that we've had all four species of resident woodpeckers--Downy, Hairy, Red-bellied, and Pileated--visible at the same time. Quite the treat! Had it been a different time of year we might have been able to add Flicker to the mix.

What kind of birder am I, anyway?

I don't remember a time in my life when I was not interested in birds. I was blessed with having a father who also loved birds, and who encouraged my own curiosity about them. One of my earliest memories of learning about birds is of seeing an unfamiliar one in our back yard one day, showing it to my father, and having him help me find it in a bird book. I was probably about five or six at the time. My parents always put out feeders for the birds so I had long since learned to identify the Chickadees, Nuthatches, Blue Jays, and Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers that hung around the house, but what I saw this day seemed to me to be far more exotic than any of those familiar friends. Of course my father, Francis, knew exactly what it was--a Northern Flicker (though he would not have included the "Northern")--and patiently helped me locate it in one of the few bird books he owned.

This little lesson was important not just because I learned the name of the bird I was seeing, but also because of what it taught me about using books as sources of information. At the time--this would have been c. 1956-57--there were not many bird books in the house. I don't think we even had a copy of the Peterson guide at this point. The bird books that my dad did have were large and bulky. With green covers. The one I remember best was Edward Howe Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States, though my dad owned only Volume 3. (He told me once that that was all he could afford.) It was not the Forbush book we looked at to find the picture of the Flicker--that's in Volume 2--but another green-backed tome the name of which I no longer recall. I think it was The Book of Birds, by Gilbert Grosvenor and Alexander Wetmore, published by the National Geographic Society, but I'm not certain of this. [see update below]

In later years I would come to have a great appreciation for Forbush and his writing, especially for his monumental work on Massachusetts birds. Of which I am now the proud owner of a complete set. The magnificent paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes that grace this work are also a stunning achievement and another personal favorite in the realm of ornithological literature (broadly speaking). But these are all topics for other days, and other posts.

To get back to my father...he was a farmer who possessed a keen sense of observation and a deep appreciation of the natural world around him. Birds were, of course, a large and integral part of this world. The idea of “going birding”--making a special effort to travel some place just for the sake of seeing something different--would never have occurred to him. Nor would he have taken the time away from the farm to do so. Rather, he enjoyed watching and learning about the birds that he encountered as he went about the business of "farmering,” as he sometimes referred to the way he made his living.

I carried this birds-as-a-part-of-daily-life attitude with me as my own love for and interest in them evolved. There have been times in my life when I've pursued this interest more actively than others, but for the most part I've done so on the fringes of the organized birding community. I was an enthusiastic non-joiner of bird clubs until some musician friends in Tennessee, who are also birders, persuaded me to sign on to the local chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society. Participating in a few seasonal counts with those folks was very eye-opening in terms of a) realizing how much I didn’t know and b) how much I could learn from others who shared my passion.

Upon moving to Maine in 2010 I attended a couple of meetings of the local (York County) Audubon Society and soon found myself drafted to serve on the group's board, ultimately sitting as president. There are some extremely knowledgeable bird people in the area and I enjoyed having the chance to learn from them. I even led a few bird walks myself under the auspices of the group. The association with YCAS came to an abrupt and unhappy end in the Spring of 2013 when I found myself on the receiving end of a vitriolic diatribe launched by one of the long-time members of the board, in a case of what the folks in Hollywood and Nashville call "creative differences." Deciding that I would be happier without the aggravation of trying to lead an organization, I resigned my position and went back to birding at my own pace. And am much happier for it.

So, what kind of birder am I?  I’ve never been much of a lister, and do not enjoy the competitive aspects of birding. I do keep a life list but have no real idea how many species are on it. Somewhere in the vicinity of 300 species, I think. No so very many, I suppose, for someone who is on the north side of 60 and has been interested in birds all his life. I get as excited as anyone when I see something new, but I'm not one to drive hundreds of miles just for the sake of tallying one more species in my personal census.

When I was young and first learning about birds, people who maintained an interest in birds were known as "bird watchers," and the activity was known--sometimes derisively--as "bird-watching." Somewhere along the line, in the early 1970s, I think, as more and more people took up the activity and the nature of the hobby changed, it became known as "birding" and people who took part in it became "birders." This was more than a simple semantic shift, as the nature of the activity changed as well. The emphasis shifted from leisurely observation to tallying numbers of species seen, in something of an avian variation of trainspotting. Though I confess to sometimes getting caught up in the numbers game myself, I'm consciously making more of an effort these days to watch, to observe, to learn, and not just concern myself with ticking off species on a checklist. (And I don't do eBird, though I may, at some point, relent.)

I watch for birds constantly, and often unconsciously, whether at home or out and about. I keep at least mental tabs on the avian activity in our yard and get excited when new visitors join the Usual Suspects. (As I type I'm pleased to see that Juncos have re-appeared for the season.) I love working outside around my house because it affords more opportunities to see what birds are present and active. I make frequent forays to favorite birding spots in the area such as the East Point Sanctuary in Biddeford Pool, Wells Reserve at Laudholm, in Wells, Scarborough Marsh in Scarborough, and various properties owned by the Kennebunk Land Trust. Because I travel back and forth to the Boston area with some degree of regularity I often hit other good locations between there and southern Maine. The Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, off Newburyport, Mass., is a favorite destination, as it is for many other birders. I will be writing about ventures to all of these locations in future posts.

I look forward to sharing some of what I see and learn about through this blog--though birds will by no means occupy all my thoughts and space here.

What kind of birder are you?
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Update, March 16, 2017: Yes, it was the Grosvenor/Nat'l Geographic book that my father owned; I have since obtained my own copy. The flicker--called "Yellow-shafted Flicker" in those days (1939)--was painted by Allan Brooks, a fine, Canadian-born painter who completed the plates for Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts after the principal artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, was killed in an automobile accident. The image of the Brooks painting of a Flicker is forever etched in my memory:

Taking Flight...Again

A few years back I began a blog, The Morning Thrush, devoted to birds and birding. I maintained it for several months but then, for no single, over-riding reason, quit posting to it. (I was just startled to realize that my initial post to that blog was exactly four years ago today, on September 29, 2010.) I made numerous vows to myself to re-start it, composed several posts in my head, and even sketched out a few drafts of posts, but never overcame the hurdles of inertia enough to complete anything. I think that my reluctance to follow through with any posts was due to subconscious dissatisfaction with the direction I was taking with it. In spite of a vow that I made I made to myself at the outset to not make it simply a log of birds that I'd seen recently, that was largely what it had become.

Also, I found myself feeling somewhat limited by the theme. I wanted to be able to stretch out a bit more as a writer, and delve into other topics that are central to my life and about which I care deeply--music, hiking, non-bird aspects of the natural world, rural and small town life in New England, books...and birds too, of course! So, rather than attempting to turn the Thrush into a Phoenix, I'm starting anew. Onward!