Extreme birding!

I went on my first ever Christmas bird count this weekend. Until recently I had no idea that in the weeks around Christmas teams of birders here split up and take districts and count how many birds they see. The data is compiled, and so there is a record of the number and species of birds rising or falling over time in the face of rampant overdevelopment, climate pressures, and conservation efforts. Sounds sane and reasonable -- if you lived in northeast America all your life, and snow and ice and wind that feels like countless microscopic razor blades is normal to you. Christmas for me was always cold roast chicken, a trip to the fish market for prawns, and collapsing under the shade of a tree in the backyard. In contrast, the Christmas bird count in New Haven county meant getting up at 3 a.m. and standing in below-freezing conditions by the side of lonely roads skirting dairy farms and fields and frozen swamps, listening for screech owls call their spooky calls.

Screech owls don't screech. (There seems to be a great tradition of naming birds seemingly just to make identification as counterintuitive as possible.) Screech owls in fact make a whinnying sound like a ghost horse. We went from one dark, quiet place no human has any business being in during the predawn hours to another and another, until the sun came up. The true cold descended just before dawn. I checked later, and it turned out that the "feels like" temperature -- taking wind chill and all that into account -- was minus 6 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 21 degrees Celsius.

Okay, sorry, but that's not birding any more. It's some kind of lunacy. Thing is, I discovered it's one of the most fun things I can imagine doing. The quietness and clarity. The surrealness of being out of step with ordinary life, like that feeling you get when you have to go to the emergency room in the middle of the night -- you're not tucked up in bed like everyone else but have stepped away into some other time and space. The world looks so different at that hour: Later that day we went through the same fields and wooded areas, and I had the jarring sensation that the predawn visit was a dream. Time got bent out of shape, and it seemed that we had done that days or weeks before, or in another lifetime. Those little owls were no longer active, and instead we counted comforting daytime birds -- geese, ducks, gulls, robins, sparrows, bluebirds.

Perhaps the most beautiful bird of the day was the Snow Bunting . . . at the dump. Birders don't get distracted by ugly or hostile environments. It's all about the birds. I love that level of focus. But I don't have it. I tend to get distracted and suddenly realize I've wandered away from the group, looking at trees or streams or clouds -- or in the case of the dump, a deer skeleton and the fur it left behind, melting into the ground in a rough deer shape. In a desolate cabbage farm -- the farmers had failed to harvest, and their vegetables were snap frozen in the ground -- there were frozen puddles in tire tracks that looked almost like fossils.

Fall fell

The burning trees of early autumn are just a dim memory. I got a shock when I looked at my last posting and saw all those gorgeous colors. Was that really my park? The bright flurry was stunningly short lived. There were searingly blue skies, air that crackled with the smell of dry leaves, and the ground was thick with squirrels burying acorns. Swarms of tiny birds descended in a frenzy of eating before millions of wing beats took them to warmth and sun; I filled pages of my notebook with lists of species. Then in the swing of a pendulum, all was gone. Now the trees are gray twig fingers stretching up into a glowering sky, and to spot a bird is a special treat.

The tree that I spent every day looking at and willing to turn color lost all its leaves in one sharp day. A storm came, and the buttery leaves were gone. I have been walking past it every day lately and not even noticing that it's there. (Sorry, tree.)

This was it on October 27th and then October 28th.



The leaves are gone, but the colder weather has its own beauty. And it never seems to stop the Canada geese . . .

Nature will always surprise you

Even when you are keeping a close eye on nature, it surprises you. All around me trees have been bursting into orange and red flames the past couple of weeks.

But the tree I have been tracking the progress of every day -- taking its photo, carefully observing for a change in color -- was staying resolutely green.

It sounds ridiculous, but I was almost getting frustrated that it seemed unwilling to surrender to the fall. I was beginning to get less enthusiastic about going out and looking at it. And then yesterday I walked up, and in front of me, seemingly overnight, the tree was light yellow. It didn't happen in patches; it didn't happen gradually. All of a sudden, the whole tree was noticeably changed.

And now look at it today, brightening into buttercup yellow. To someone walking along for the first time, it would be a different tree to the one it was only a few days ago. The changes that transformed this living thing were imperceptible to my eye in their increments, but they were happening nonetheless -- just like they are no doubt happening to you and me, under our own radar, but still day by day turning us into some new version of ourselves.

Autumn's progress

October 7
Wake to drenching rain and leaden sky. I should test to see whether birds are out there. But bed is nice. Rain gives way to diabolical winds in the afternoon (30 mph / 50 kph). Flying branches and deadly high-speed acorns: I stay inside.

October 8
8:15 a.m. Tempest has given way to a glorious clear day. Sparrow Fest '09 continues in the reserve, and there are plentiful white-throated sparrows all frantically feeding amongst the fallen leaves and branches. Watch a male black-throated blue warbler chasing a female from twig to twig to twig. Fall has been given a hurry-up by the winds yesterday: The trees have lost a lot of green foliage; it makes a treacherous blanket on the ground hiding those damned ankle-twisting acorns.

October 9
5:00 p.m. Humid, uncomfortably muggy. What season is this again? Oh, that's right, New England season.
October 10
8:30 a.m. Rainy, still uncomfortably muggy. I did a course on Birding by Ear earlier in the week. This somehow only makes it more frustrating when I hear an impossibly melodic call coming from the reserve as I scoot through it rushing to catch the train for a day in New York. I am convinced I'll be able to commit the song to memory and call my birding expert friend so he can tell me what it is. Within about two minutes the tune has vanished from my mind like a wraith.

Later, when I come back through the park after my day in the city (those MTA announcements to beware of the closing doors, please, are a kind of birdsong to me, too) the weather has turned again. Whipping wind and dry cold air, and ice-crystal clouds high up in the sky. This is the fall weather I love, with its promises of frozen earth and naked twigs.

Ninja sparrows

Your passage through the woods is generally attended by sufficient noise to warn birds of your coming long before you see them. They are then suspicious and ill at ease, but secrete yourself near some spot loved by birds, and it may be your privilege to learn the secrets of the forest.
Birds of Eastern North America, Frank M. Chapman, 1922

I was walking through the park yesterday in the dying afternoon light and had a freaky experience. Dark wings and bodies silently lifting off from the ground and flooding through the undergrowth like a vapor. I'd spooked scores of white-throated sparrows feeding in the dead leaves. I'd made them suspicious and ill at ease. I have to admit, they did the same to me. I'd never seen a big flock like this, and I didn't know anything like this happened in the park that I thought I knew so well. And there was something eerie about them; they looked like some kind of CGI effect, all ethereal wings and shadows. I stopped dead and did like the book says: secreted myself. The flock forgot all about me and went back to feeding. With the naked eye, I could barely even make them out. Only with the binoculars could I see that they were everywhere, all around me. The ground was alive. They were moving more stealthily than I realized sparrows ever could. Ninja sparrows, one minute they would be there right in front of me, the next they would just melt into the shrubs. Spooky. They were there again this morning when we went to check out the park. They must have decided to rest up a bit and feast before continuing south. We counted at least 50, but could hear probably 50 more, chirping 360 degrees around us.

The trees are chirping!

October 5
7:45 a.m. Sunny, crisp, wind from the west-north-west. Birds are a reminder of how all creatures on this earth except for humans have no choice but to live according to the weather. The front that brought rain and dull skies passed yesterday, the wind changed direction, and now the migrating birds are on the move again. They flew through the night and then dropped down to feed this morning, surrounding my house so that I woke up to the sound of tzzzz-ing and chipping and chupping. The trees along the outer edge of the park, which get the biggest hit of morning sun, are overflowing with warblers. I have a ridiculous moment of panic when I realize I will never be able to spot and identify them all. There are so many different high-pitched notes coming from the treetops, from all angles, and I know I'm only seeing a fraction of the birds that are up there--twisting my neck and turning my head this way and that, I feel like those hapless fools in the Blair Witch Project staring out blindly into the forest trying to guess what's out there.

For certain, I can say black-throated green warbler, white-breasted nuthatch, downy woodpecker, black-capped chickadee, titmice, Eastern phoebe, ruby-crowned kinglet.

Quietness

October 4
8:30 a.m. Foggy, humidity 93%, gray skies. I am sleepy. The whole world is sleepy, wrapped in a misty blanket. Nothing stirs. Water drips from every branch and leaf. If there are birds here, they're not making a sound or movement. I walk the trails and absorb the green-ness and the quiet. Just as I am leaving, I round the corner on a trail and startle a flock of at least a dozen mourning doves. Perhaps they thought nothing was stirring in the park, either: They were feeding on the ground oblivious, as though they were the only creatures here. At the sound of my footfalls they all flutter up into the branches and stare down at me, suddenly nervous, alert.