Searching eastern woodlands for birds

Spotting an eastern bluebird in Pennsylvania was a treat for Cheyenne birders Barb and Mark Gorges. Photo by Mark Gorges.

Cheyenne birders search Pennsylvania and New York woodlands for eastern birds

By Barb Gorges

            Mark and I couldn’t hear any birds over the sound of wind in the leaves. That’s not unusual for Wyoming, but we were in Pennsylvania where the trees will grow a complete canopy without anyone planting them. Finding birds is dependent on hearing them, even more so than here.

            We were at the Churchville Nature Center in Bucks County, my favorite place to bird when visiting my aunt. The goldenrod and purple asters were in full bloom in the little meadow and robins were picking fruit from all kinds of shrubs. But in the trees, it seemed birdless until we reached a little swale protected from the wind and suddenly there was a swarm of chickadees, titmice and warblers for a few minutes.

            There were no birds to be seen on the reservoir. The waterbirds and shorebirds must have already tucked in for the coming storm, waiting for the afternoon’s deluge.

We counted only 11 species altogether. For the Saturday morning bird walk before our visit, 19 local birders listed 64 species. Timing and experience make a big difference. I keep forgetting to look into hiring local bird guides when we travel.

            In the Ithaca, New York, area, we had the help of our son Bryan and his wife, Jessie, both avid birders. They have experience identifying birds we rarely see in Cheyenne, like black-throated green warbler. They pointed out the sound of a Carolina wren, unseen in the brush. They also pointed out that sometimes one-note calls in the trees are chipmunks or tree frogs.

            The Finger Lakes region has a plethora of public land to explore and bird. We hiked the gorge at Watkins Glen State Park our first morning, as early as Jessie could get us on the road. It is black shale sculpted by water, dim and deep and deafening—no birds could be heard over the numerous waterfalls full of rain. The sun rarely reaches into the gorge at 9 a.m. but later the steep trail is crowded with people.

            Have you heard of Finger Lakes National Forest? It’s a scattering of parcels between Seneca and Cayuga lakes, tiny compared to any of the national forests in Wyoming, but then again, with all those trees in the way, the boundaries are not very noticeable. We hiked the Potomac trails where in late September fall color was just beginning to show.

Finger Lakes National Forest, late September. Photo by Barb Gorges.

            Our second day of birding hikes began with the Dorothy McIlroy Bird Sanctuary northeast of Ithaca. A creek and wetlands attract a lot of birds to this property owned and managed by the Finger Lakes Land Trust. It commemorates a woman who had a significant role in the early days of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The shrub fen and peat swamp were bordered by hemlock trees, unusual for the immediate area, but old friends of mine from my central Wisconsin days.

            Next, we hiked and birded nearby Bear Swamp State Forest Park. Didn’t see any bears but found interesting mushrooms and Jessie found a red eft, the teenage stage of the eastern newt.

I’ve read that the overpopulation of deer has affected eastern forests, browsing the shrub and young tree understory layer of vegetation to the point that you can see quite a way through the tree trunks. It must negatively affect birds that specialize in that layer.

Where there was normal understory, I made a new friend, a small tree, striped maple, named for the vertical ridges on its stems. It is also known as moosewood. It’s a favorite moose food and the name of my favorite Ithaca restaurant.

One stop we made between Philadelphia and Ithaca was to see the Rodale Institute, a proponent of organic gardening and farming beginning in 1947. Back in 1978 I contributed a story to their magazine, an interview with the designer of a safer bluebird house. Mark and I opted for the self-guided tour of the fields and greenhouses, which you can hear at their website.

Rodale is now a proponent of organic regenerative agriculture, as well as planting for pollinators. However, they apparently haven’t banned outdoor cats yet, so they aren’t entirely bird-friendly. Ironically, in the shrubbery by the creek there were a lot of catbirds.

While we wistfully compared the unwanted extra precipitation the East has had lately with our western drought, we are still happy with our choice to live in Wyoming, where the horizon stretches much farther.

There are animals besides birds in the trees. Eastern Gray Squirrel by Mark Gorges.

    

Recognizing celebrity birders

Pete Dunne’s preferred habitat is the hawk watching platform at the Cape May Bird Observatory in Cape May, New Jersey. Courtesy Wikipedia.

Published Dec. 16, 2012, in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, “Nationally known birders have nothing on birds, the true celebs.”

2014 Update: In September our local Audubon chapter celebrated its 40^th anniversary and was fortunate to be joined by John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Ted Floyd, editor of Birding magazine, flagship publication of the American Birding Association.

By Barb Gorges

Studying birds in your field guide will help you identify them when you finally see them in the field. But don’t neglect to study the author photo on the back cover—you never know when you’ll have a chance to identify them as well.

Over Thanksgiving, Mark and I attended a family wedding in Philadelphia. One of my new shirttail relations, John, is a birder and came with us to Cape May for a day.

The southern tip of New Jersey has long been recognized for its numerous and varied migrating birds and has lots of public access for birding. We stopped at the Cape May Bird Observatory hawk-watching platform first, figuring that official migration observers might still be around and help us Westerners and John, an Irishman living in England, identify local birds.

The first ID I made was that the observer on deck was Pete Dunne, author of several books I’ve reviewed for this paper, including “Pete Dunne’s Essential Field Guide Companion” and the first three of his seasonal quartet beginning with “Prairie Spring.” He’s also a co-author of “Hawks in Flight,” along with other entertaining books and articles for birding magazines.

Pete’s day jobs are director of CMBO and chief communications officer for New Jersey Audubon Society. But they let him out of the office to count birds. He can distinguish a turkey vulture from a black vulture, even when they are mere specks overhead. Without his help, we would not have identified the red-shouldered hawk or determined that the Cooper’s hawk in flight was not a sharp-shinned.

If you go to bird festivals, you too, will meet nationally recognized birders. Nearly 30 years ago, I shook hands with Roger Tory Peterson at a National Audubon convention. A few years later at another one, I correctly identified, from a distance, without using binoculars, the man in the middle of a flock of middle-aged women as author Kenn Kaufman.

But we met Pete at home, in his own habitat, with no printed agenda or groupies to indicate his status.

 

John James Audubon explored the bird life around Mill Grove in 1803. Photo by Barb Gorges.

The next day we visited the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, in Audubon, Penn., where one of the world’s most famous bird artists lived when he first came to the U.S. in 1803 at age 18. Hiking the trails around the house, now a museum, through the woods and fields overlooking Perkiomen Creek, I was able to add a singing Carolina wren to my life list, imagining Audubon first hearing it here as well.

A week later, the wedding couple, my uncle and my new aunt–both knowledgeable birders–were able to refind Pete on the same deck at Cape May.

Pete remembered the three of us from the week before, and conversely, said the sighting of Wyoming birders was a lot rarer event than meeting John, even though he came further. There are just over half a million Wyomingites, after all, compared to 62 million Brits. Many of us from the Cowboy State, by nature of our choice of residence, and especially those attracted to birding, prefer travelling to remote places rather than congested coasts.

We were too late to meet superstar storm Sandy, luckily. Cape May was untouched because Sandy landed some miles up the coast at Atlantic City where she devastated Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge and the barrier islands.

We still noticed Sandy’s damage in the suburban-rural area north of Philadelphia, mostly toppled pines and hardwoods, including one that impaled the second story of a house.

What happens to birds in severe storms? My aunt forwarded a New York Times article by Natalie Angier, published Nov. 12, reporting how perching birds have toes that automatically lock around a branch when they bend their legs. So they are as safe as the branch they sit on.

Angier reported birds feel the changes in air pressure from an approaching storm and those migrating may steer around it or correct course afterwards. Some get a boost, having been documented as flying into a storm at 7 mph and coming out the other side at 90.

No matter how many well-known birders I may meet, the birds are the true celebrities. The migrants propelling themselves over dangerous distances, as well as the ordinary house finch weathering another winter, are to be celebrated.

So if I attend the National Audubon convention in Stevenson, Wash., in July, I will be sure to identify the keynote speakers, but the local birds will be the real stars.