Turkeys!

Tom in full display on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, 2010.

Turkeys! Love 'em or hate 'em, they're now very much a part of the biota here in New England, and in many other parts of the country as well. As I write on a chilly, 20-something morning the day before Thanksgiving, Turkeys have been a more-or-less constant presence in my yard. A flock of seventeen cruised through early on, making the rounds of my bird feeders, scratching the ground underneath in search of seed that the Chickadees, Juncos, Nuthatches, et al have scattered. They were followed an hour or so later by a group of seven. The second bunch may have found slim pickings, but they're all looking pretty plump these days.

Things weren't always this way, of course. The comeback of Wild Turkeys is one of the big success stories of 20th century wildlife management. I clearly remember when I saw my first one. In the spring and summer of 1972 I worked  for a farm supply company based in Greenfield, MA, driving a small truck applying liquid fertilizer to farms in the region. I covered a lot of ground. One day when I happened to be driving on Route 9 through my hometown in Hampshire County, a large, brown bird came out of the woods on my right and flew across the road right in front of me. After a few nanoseconds of disbelief, I recognized it for what it had to be--a Wild Turkey. Not only was I astonished merely to see one--at that point I'd heard nothing about any restoration programs--but also to see a bird that bulky, flying with such apparent ease well above the surface of the road.

When I told people what I had seen they greeted my story with a combination of skepticism and the sort of pitying looks that let me know they thought I was nuts. No matter...within a few years Turkey sightings in Western Massachusetts had become relatively commonplace. By 1980 the population was deemed healthy enough that the state instituted a spring hunting season.

Nevertheless, it was still something of a treat in the early 1980s to see a few. One summer, probably in 1984 or '85, when I was doing some tractor work in the big field above the barn on the family farm, a small flock of Turkeys appeared in the pasture across the brook that runs through the property. I stopped the tractor, got off, and tried to get a closer look at the birds. Not surprisingly, my approach spooked them; they took off and flew into the neighbor's cornfield. When I clambered over the stone wall between the two fields to look for them I had a major "Aha!" moment, as the meaning of the phrase from the old song,  "He was long gone, like a turkey through the corn," suddenly became abundantly clear to me. I had not a chance of seeing them again!

Although the idea that the Pilgrims and native Wampanoags dined on Wild Turkey at the harvest celebration held in Plymouth in 1621 that has become mythologized as "the first Thanksgiving" is just one element of the extensive body of apocrypha surrounding the event, Turkeys did function as an important food source in the early days of English colonization. So important that our forefathers seem to have done their best to wipe them out through over-hunting. No surprise there. As early as 1672 English traveler and writer John Josselyn wrote that "'tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the woods." By the end of the 18th century Turkeys were all but gone from most parts of Massachusetts and elsewhere in the Northeast. Edward Howe Forbush does not include an entry on them in his Birds of Massachusetts (1925-1929), but gives a comprehensive survey of their history and decline in the section on "Species Extinct or Extirpated," in his 1912 work, A History of the Game Birds, Wild-Fowl and Shore Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States (which is my source of the Josselyn quote).

Turkey in the Maine snow.

John James Audubon, writing in the 1830s or 1840s, also speaks of their relative rarity in the Northeast. "In the course of my rambles through Long Island, the State of New York, and the country around the Lakes, I did not meet with a single individual, although I was informed that some exist in those parts....Farther eastward, I do not think they are now to be found." He noted, however, that regions to the south and west, including parts of Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere, "are...most abundantly supplied with this magnificent bird."

Audubon's admiration for Turkeys is reflected in the fact that he included not one, but two, renderings of them--one of a female with chicks and one of a Tom--in his Birds of America, the only species that he so honored. He further demonstrated his esteem for the bird by granting his portrait of the Tom pride of place as the first plate in BoA.

 

It is regrettable that because Turkeys were not part of the active avifauna in Massachusetts at the time Forbush wrote his book on birds of the Bay State, we have no painting by Louis Agassiz Fuertes to go along with all the other wonderful ones he did for Forbush's volumes.

Historical inaccuracy notwithstanding, Turkeys are, of course, now an essential part of Americans' Thanksgiving celebrations. I'll no doubt consume my fair share in tomorrow's feast. I'll confess that I've never eaten Wild Turkey; I've heard from various folks who have that it leaves something to be desired. So the Turkeys who hang out in my yard have no need to fear that they might end up in our oven, though these guys are taking no chances:

"Hello, we must be going..."

An Appreciation of Swallows...and of Edward Howe Forbush

Tree Swallow, West Kennebunk, ME

One day late in the summer of 1984 I was mowing a nice crop of rowen in the upper part of the big field that we called the Drake Lot, on the family farm in western Massachusetts. It was a gorgeous, damn-near perfect August day; sunny, with a few white puffy clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky, temperature in the mid-70s, just a bit of a breeze blowing. The air was crisp and dry; I knew that the grass I was cutting would be ready for raking and baling by the next afternoon. It was the kind of day when riding a tractor for a several hours was as pleasant an activity as anything else I might have been doing.

After I'd been around the field three or four times I was delighted to find myself accompanied by a sizable flock of swallows. They were constantly in motion, swooping and diving gracefully as they feasted on the insects that the mower was stirring up. Birds would come in low over the field behind me, flying swiftly over the swath I'd just cut. They'd snatch up a few morsels as the grass fell, go into a vertical climb over the mower, bank sharply to the right or left, then loop back to make another circuit. Others would come in from the sides, or the front, sweeping as many bugs as they could into their open mouths as they flew. With all the activity it was impossible to get anything approaching a precise count but there were at least a couple of dozen birds following me. Their numbers swelled with each successive lap I made around the field.

Their aerial acrobatics were such a joy to watch that it was all I could do to keep my mind on the mowing. The grace, speed, and precision of their flight was enthralling. George Lucas and his cohorts must have had the flight of swallows in mind when they developed some of the maneuvers of the tie fighters and other small spacecraft in the battle scenes of the Star Wars movies.

As the multitude of birds around me grew, I started to pay more attention to just what kinds of swallows they were. The familiar Barn Swallows, with their blue backs, reddish-orange bellies, and long forked tails, were much in evidence. They were equaled or perhaps surpassed in number by Tree Swallows, whose iridescent gunmetal blue-green backs and pristine white undersides flashed brilliantly in the afternoon sun.

I eventually realized, however, that there were a couple of other, much less-familiar species in the mix. Some had brown backs, and white bellies similar to the Tree Swallows but with brown bands across their upper chests. Their tails had a bit of a fork in them, though nowhere near as pronounced as those of the Barn Swallows. Others had coloration somewhat similar to Barn Swallows but were chunkier, and lacked the classic forked "swallowtail." I scratched my head about these two and resigned myself to having to look them up when I got back to the house for dinner.

Upon reaching home I turned to one of the few bird books I owned at the time: A Natural History of American Birds of Eastern and Central North America. This is essentially an abridged version of Edward Howe Forbush's monumental three volume work, Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States (1925-1929). I quickly learned that the brown birds with the chest stripes were Bank Swallows, a species I knew about but had seen only rarely. Cool. Even cooler was learning that the more colorful ones were Cliff Swallows, a species that was entirely new to me. I had not yet begun keeping a life list at this time but it was still a great treat to have spotted, and learned about, a new bird.

The real joy of doing this bit of research, however, came when I turned to Forbush's description of the Barn Swallow: 
No bird in North America is better known or more truly the friend and companion of man than the swift and graceful Barn Swallow. It nests within his buildings, and with a flight that seems the very 'poetry of motion' it follows the cattle afield or swoops about the house dog as he rushes through the tall grass, and gathers up the flying insects disturbed by his clumsy progress. When the mowing machine takes the field, there is a continual rush of flashing wings over the rattling cutter-bar just where the grass is trembling to its fall. The Barn Swallow delights to follow everybody and everything that stirs up flying insects--even the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car, has no terrors for it.

Wow. It was as if he'd not only been riding along with me on the tractor as I mowed, but had crawled inside my head and described what I'd been seeing. It was more than a little spooky to read something that I felt as if I could have written myself...though Forbush said it better than I could have.

Although I'd been familiar with Forbush's work for some time, up until that afternoon I had not fully appreciated what a fine descriptive writer he was. This was far from the last time that I would turn to him for information about some bird or bit of behavior that had aroused my curiosity, and have him describe exactly what it was that I had just seen. In an earlier post I wrote about watching a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers working away on a pine tree near my house. Forbush, writing roughly ninety years earlier, summed up what I saw quite well:
Pileated Woodpeckers are such powerful birds that they can split off large slabs from decaying stumps, strip bushels of bark from dead trees, and chisel out large holes in either sound, dead, or decaying wood. They like to strip the bark from dead pines, spruces, and especially hemlocks. Their size and strength and their long spear-like tongues enable them to penetrate large trees and draw out borers from the very heart of the tree.

Where I live now, on the banks of the Mousam River in southern Maine, I often enjoy the sight of Wood Ducks cruising past on the open stream, or paddling around the boggy backwaters. Again, Forbush's description of watching these striking ducks matches exactly what I have observed myself. He writes with such grace, beauty, and affection that reading his words brings another whole level of enjoyment and appreciation to the experience: 

Male Wood Duck, Murfreesboro, TN

See that mating pair on the dark and shaded flood of a little woodland river; they seem to float as lightly as the drifting leaves. The male glides along proudly, his head ruffled and his crest distended, his scapular feathers raised and lowered at will, while his plumes flash with metallic luster wherever the sun's rays sifting through the foliage intercept his course. She coyly retires; he daintily follows, exhibiting all his graces, the darkling colors of his plumage relieved by the pure white markings of head and breast and the bright reds of feet and bill and large lustrous eye.

Forbush wrote with knowledge and affection in equal measure. I will repeat the quote from Joseph Kastner about Forbush that I included in a previous post: "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." Would that I could tag along with him on such a walk.

Forbush, who lived from 1858 to 1929, was writing in and of a New England that has now largely vanished, the New England of family farms, open country, and minimal suburban sprawl. It was a quieter world, a world in which "the rush and roar of the modern juggernaut, the motor-car" had only begun to make incursions. Although my bird-loving, farming father was of a generation after Forbush, he still lived much of his life in this same world.

I came along only at the tail end of this era but it has, in many ways defined me as well, particularly in my relationship with, and love for, birds. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up doing things like mowing hay in the summer while swallows swarmed around me, and fixing fence in the spring when the woods and pastures were filled with the sights and sounds of warblers and other returning migrants, and hauling wood in the fall with flocks of southbound Canada Geese honking overhead. I am grateful also to have had a father who had an interest in, and was knowledgeable about, birds. As I have written previously, my father's copy of volume 3 of Forbush's Birds of Massachusetts was one of the books that set me on the path of my own efforts to learn about birds. These factors combine to give me an attachment to Forbush and his work that I simply do not get from any modern field guide or smartphone birding app.

I intend to write more about Forbush in the future, and examine some of his books, but for now I'll wrap up this post by returning to swallows. Tree Swallows this time. Forbush wrote of them:
In August, thousands of Tree Swallows, with other species, arrive at the seashore, where they roost in the marshes. They scatter about in the daytime, feeding on insects and berries. Their numbers continue to grow by accessions from the interior, until many thousands are gathered along the coast. Sometimes they alight on telegraph wires, covering them for miles, or they may light on the beaches until the sand is black with their hosts.

I experienced this phenomenon first-hand while visiting Plum Island, near Newburyport, Massachusetts, in September of 2012. Tree Swallows filled the air around me--many hundreds more than had accompanied me while I was mowing back in 1984! It was hard to believe that these were birds; it felt more as if I was caught in a swarm of very large insects.

I had my camera with me that day and captured a bit of the experience:

The human world may, indeed, have undergone vast changes between the time Forbush wrote about the late summer gathering of Tree Swallows and the day I found myself in the midst of a virtual cloud of them, but this seasonal behavior of the birds continues. The timelessness of this annual mustering of swallows makes Forbush's description of it equally timeless; his words are just as apt today as they were when he wrote them decades ago. I take comfort in this.

How Do They Know?

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

It's a source of wonder to me how regular and predictable migrating birds can be. We've lived in this house for five years and I've kept desultory notes on the comings and goings of the bird life around us for all this time. The data I've gathered (such as they are) give me some sense of what (or who) to expect, and when.

Each year I eagerly look forward to the first week in May--i.e., now!--as this is the time when Spring migrants really begin to arrive. Not only is it cool simply to have some new birds to look at, but those who typically show up during this period are among the most colorful birds we see all year. Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, Indigo Buntings, warblers of various sorts, Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, Baltimore Orioles, and Scarlet Tanagers--each species brings its own special brand of bling to the table. There are often times during the winter when the bird life in the yard seems like an avian take on of Fifty Shades of Grey. Although the chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, Hairy & Downy Woodpeckers, and juncos look stately and elegant, colorful they are not. Our pair of more-or-less-resident cardinals provides virtually the only spark of color among the birds of a Maine winter.

We moved into this house permanently in late April, 2010. Because we had to deal with the chaos of unpacking and setting things up, my bird notes for that first Spring are pretty sketchy. I did note, however, that by May 10 we had Baltimore Orioles, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and Scarlet Tanagers in the yard. The first Indigo Bunting showed up the following day. I have no notes on hummingbirds--we probably did not hang feeders until a bit later--but we had had a warbler species or two by the time I made my first records. In 2011, the grosbeaks, orioles, buntings, and hummers, plus a single Black-and-white Warbler, all made their first appearance on May 4. A couple of Grey Catbirds had already been around for a few days that year.
 

Indigo Bunting

In 2012 it was again on May 4th when I saw the first Rose-breasted Grosbeak, together with a couple of warblers. Two days later the orioles graced us with their presence, while the first buntings and hummingbirds did not arrive until the 8th.

The colorful returnees were a bit tardier the following year; my notes tell me that it was not until May 11, 2013 that I saw the year's first grosbeak, and May 12th the first oriole. Last year the first grosbeak was a bit more prompt, showing up on May 3rd. I apparently failed to note the arrival of the first oriole of the year but a pair of Scarlet Tanagers was here, happily feeding on my suet, by May 12th.

Scarlet Tanager

So, here it is, May 4th (aka Star Wars Day) and things are right on schedule. This morning when I looked out of my office window into the woods, the first bird I saw was a Black-throated Blue Warbler! Upon going outside with binoculars for a better look, I saw that he was accompanied by a Yellow-rump. A bit later in the day a Black-and-white was busily skittering up and down tree trunks. Around 1:15 a male Rose-breasted Grosbeak was pigging out on sunflower seed in the window feeder. Earlier in the day I'd made up a batch of nectar for hummingbirds. I hung out the first feeder about the time I saw the grosbeak and had a customer within 15 minutes. I also put out an orange half for the orioles but so far it's gone unsampled.

I look forward to celebrating the return of more of our avian prodigals in the next few days. The Indigo Buntings and Scarlet Tanagers should be along soon, as well as many more species of warblers. It's a bit surprising that catbirds have yet to show themselves but they'll surely be here soon. The best part of having all these guys come through now is that the trees are just beginning to bud out. For the next couple of weeks our ability to spot and identify tiny birds bopping around in the treetops is as good as it's ever going to be.

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I will again ask the question that I posed in the title to this post: how do migrating birds manage to keep to a schedule that is, if not exactly precise, at least predictable within a fairly small range of deviation? Ornithologists have devoted a good deal of time and attention in an effort to come up with an explanation for this and other mysteries surrounding bird migration.

Frankly, I don't really want to know, at least not on a technical level. I don't want to trouble myself with matters of migration triggers, or shifting seasonal resources, or trying to calculate the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow (either African or European!). While it's wonderful that there are intelligent people in the world who work long and hard to understand the whys and wherefores of such things, I prefer to let my question stand as a rhetorical one. It is simply enough to know that the birds will be back around the same time next year, when they will again brighten both the visual and aural environment around our house. In the words of Iris DeMent (singing about larger metaphysical issues), I'm content to let the mystery be.

Photos (all of male birds) taken May 12, 2014.

"And smale fowles maken melodye..."

Ever since we left March behind and moved on into April, the opening lines of the "General Prologue" to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been running through my brain:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour...*

Although we have not had an overabundance of shoures sote this month and March was not so much plagued by droghte as it was by snow and ice lingering from the horrendous February that Maine endured, Spring seems finally to have arrived. Granted, small piles of snow remain in those dark corners that don't get much sun, or lie buried under layers of gravel pushed up by snowplows (like those at the end of my driveway!). Average daily temperatures have yet to get very far out of the 40s but floures are beginning to bloom, adding some much-welcome color to the landscape. Given how much snow we had dumped on us in February it's pretty remarkable how quickly it disappeared. A walk in the woods two weeks ago required wearing snow boots; now light hiking boots are more than sufficient. The downside of this quick flipping of seasons: ticks are already active. I've taken a few off both myself and the cat in the past few days. Sheesh....snow one week, ticks the next. In the immortal words of Celtics announcer Tommy Heinsohn: "Gimme a break!"

The best thing about Aprille though, is that it marks the time of year when, once again, as Chaucer tells us, smale fowles maken melodye. In some ways things are not so different today from the way they were in late 14th century England. The annual bird migration is gaining momentum here in southern Maine and the changing of the guard is well underway. As the warblers, sparrows, swallows, plovers, blackbirds, raptors and many other species arrive, we say farewell to the Juncos, Pine Siskins, Snowy Owls, Tree Sparrows, and whatnot who endured the winter with us. I say "endured," but for them, coming to Maine was the equivalent of human snowbirds heading to Florida for the winter.

With the migration, of course, comes nesting activity and the concomitant staking out of territory by singing males. Soon the chorus of smale fowles maken melodye outside our bedroom windows in the early morning hours will serve as a call to drag our sleepy butts out of our beds and go out to see what we can find by way of birdlife. Chaucer tells us that the season of birdsong evoked a different sort of longing in his protagonists:

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge stronds

To fern halwes, kowth in sondry londes.*

But our own April outings are pilgrimages of a sort. They may not take us to Canterbury, or even as far as shires ende, but we all have our fern halwes to which we venture in the hope of reveling in the sights and sounds of birds we have not seen since this time last year. Or, even better, spotting a new species or two that may have eluded us in prior years.

Even though I noted in one of my very early posts that I'm not much of a lister, the Spring migration seems to bring out in me the urge to tabulate and quantify my experience more than at any other time. My birding notebooks that are generally maintained in a pretty desultory fashion throughout the rest of the year suddenly become repositories of daily sightings once the migration gets underway. I suppose this is largely in response to the fact that the avian landscape outside the windows of my home and in the countryside around is now filled with new sights and sounds. After watching a relatively stable cast of characters play out their daily lives at my feeders and in the trees near the house, the influx of newcomers to the scene prompts me to note their presence as a means of celebrating their return.

All this notwithstanding, to me the act of logging what I see is perhaps the least important reason to go birding in the Spring. There is just something very special and soul-restoring about being outside this time of year and immersing oneself in the natural world. Three short ventures in recent weeks had the character of pilgrimages, and made me realize yet again how important it is to get out into the real world.

---

Two weeks ago I made an evening visit to the Kennebunk Plains, a property owned by the Nature Conservancy and one of the state's birding hot spots. I am fortunate that the area is not far from my home so I am able to visit frequently. It was a fairly cold, windy evening, and still a bit early in the season to expect to see some of the bird species that The Plains are famous for. In fact, it was not a very birdy evening at all.  A lone Kestrel, a couple of crows, an Eastern Phoebe or two, and a medium-sized mixed flock of blackbirds were pretty much it. No Meadowlarks, no Vesper Sparrows, no Upland Sandpipers. But simply being out at dusk on a Spring evening and experiencing the almost magical transition from day into night was sheer delight.

Finally, as I began the trek back to my vehicle, I caught sight of something I'd been hoping to see: a Gray Ghost--i.e., a male Northern Harrier--tilting from side to side as he glided low over the ground in search of his evening meal. As I stood and watched, marveling at his silent grace, I was rewarded with another unexpected treat--a second Harrier, following not far behind!

Edward Howe Forbush, my favorite bird writer, characterized the Harrier (known primarily as "Marsh Hawk" in Forbush's day) as a "slender, graceful...bird of tireless flight." The seemingly effortless way that Harriers skim close to the ground over open fields, looking for the small mammals that make up most of their diet, is always a joy to watch. I followed the two birds for as long as I could but they soon crossed over Route 99 and I lost them in the rapidly diminishing light.

It really made no difference that I saw so few other birds that night. The sight of the two Harriers was enough. The gray birds in the gray light of dusk was visual poetry.

---

Mousam River, May 15, 2013

The following afternoon I took a walk from my house, through the neighbor's woods, to the banks of the Mousam River. There's a special spot a short distance upstream from our own property where there is a lovely little cove, just below a bend in the river. It's a great vantage point from which to watch the activities of the birds and animals that are drawn to the water. I have occasionally  seen beaver and muskrat from this spot, and ducks, herons, swallows, woodpeckers, flycatchers, and many other birds are frequently present.

After a few minutes of quiet observation I noted some ripples on the water a little upstream from where I stood. I initially dismissed them as having been caused by the slight breeze that was blowing, but no! A dark brown, rounded head broke the surface of the water, moving in my direction. Then, a moment later, a second head appeared! My first thought was that it was a pair of beavers, but when a slender, almost snake-like body became visible above the surface and I got a glimpse of a tail that was flattened vertically rather than horizontally, I realized that I was seeing something even better--two River Otters! They twined around each other as they cavorted in the middle of the stream, repeatedly disappearing under the surface, then popping back up moments later.

I stood and watched their play for several minutes but finally lost track of them when they got to the far side of the river. Just as with the Harriers the previous night, observing the two wild animals going about their lives, oblivious to my presence, was utterly marvelous. It was an enthralling, almost spiritual experience. As if this were not enough, the scene was enhanced further by the sight of two Great Blue Herons, a pair of Ring-necked Ducks, and a few Mallards that were also on the river. A Pileated Woodpecker cackled in the woods behind me and a small group (if there's only three of something, can it legitimately be called a "flock"?) of Canada Geese announced their presence with authority as they flew overhead to some destination downstream.

The spot from which I watched all this is, indeed, a shrine. My visit to it was as much a pilgrimage as was the journey of Chaucer's characters to Caunterbury, as they sought the hooly blisful martir.

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My third recent venture was a walk with Sally this past Saturday on the section of the Eastern Trail that runs from Kennebunk Elementary School to Limerick Road in Arundel. The highlight of this segment of the trail is the dedicated pedestrian bridge that passes over the Maine Turnpike just north of the Kennebunk Service Plaza.

Pink Lady's-slipper, June 8, 2014

This is one of our favorite walks. The round trip from the parking lot at the school to the crossing at Limerick Road and back makes a nice 5 mile walk. It's a fairly birdy corridor and there are spots along the trail where in another month or so Pink Lady's-slippers will be abundant. Last summer we dubbed the short section between the place where the spur trail from the school parking lot joins the main trail, and the bridge over I-95, "Vireo Alley." We could pretty much count on hearing at least one Red-eyed Vireo proclaiming his territorial rights every time we passed through his 'hood.

Perhaps the birdiest spot along the way is the area about 2/3rds of the way up to Limerick Road where the trail crosses a bridge over the Kennebunk River. The combination of water and fairly open, but brushy, habitat makes this an attractive location for many birds. There are often a couple of ducks in the water, an Eastern Phoebe or two in the trees, and even at times a Great Blue Heron wading in the river. Best of all, it seems to be prime "warbitat"--the kind  of area where warblers like to hang out.

Since it's still a bit early in the season my expectations of what we might see there in terms of warblers were fairly low. Happily, I was mistaken! In the trees right by the trailside we spotted a Yellow-rump, our first of the year. Then...a second one! And a third! And....well, we quickly lost count, as they were being their peripatetic little warbler selves and not staying in any one spot for more than a few seconds. (Warblers have the uncanny knack of sitting still for exactly as long as it takes for a human to focus a pair of binoculars on them, and then flitting off to another branch or a different tree.) We soon spotted a couple of Palms in the mix, and Sally gleefully picked out a Black-and-white, one of her favorites, in the tree next to us.

After a bit the action shifted across the river. There were many, many Yellow-rumps ("Butterbutts") bopping around the trees and bushes on the far bank, and several more Palms. We spent a very pleasant quarter of an hour or more just enjoying the sight of so many colorful little birds doing what they do, again seemingly with little or no awareness of our presence.

As delightful as this first big helping of warblers was, I know that, in the words of one of the trolls in one of my favorite scenes from The Hobbit, "There's more to come yet, or I'm mighty mistook." As the season progresses we can expect--or at least hope--to see and hear many other bird species in this and other places along the trail. Last summer, Chestnut-sided Warblers frequently hung out in the vicinity of the bridge. Common Yellowthroats could usually be heard singing their wichety-wichety-wichety song both in an area just south of the bridge as well as further north near the Limerick Road crossing. Ovenbirds, Veerys, Hermit Thrushes, Catbirds, and others should soon be arriving. There's also a little backwater just north of the bridge where a large chorus of Bullfrogs held forth last August, maken melodye in their own fashion.

I regard the Eastern Trail in general and the Kennebunk River bridge in particular as another shrine, another favorite destination for continued pilgrimages.

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I have no illusions that my characterization of these brief encounters with nature as pilgrimages, or as quasi-religious experiences, is in any way original. Thoreau, Muir, Burroughs, et al, have written far more eloquently than I about the healing, spiritual effects of immersing oneself in the natural world. But this does not in any way lessen the importance of doing so, for me or for anyone else. I regard myself as fortunate to have grown up with the opportunity to engage in such immersion regularly, and even more so now as an adult living in a society in which fewer and fewer people seem to know and understand the value of spending quiet time outdoors in the wild. I shall continue to treasure the chance to goon on pilgrimages, beckoned to do so by the sounds of the smale fowles [that] maken melodye in the world around me.
 
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*There are numerous websites that offer translations of Chaucer's prose into modern English. I have used this one from Librarius.com as my reference.

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.