Information – Page 57 – Birding New Jersey

June 26, 2014October 27, 2018

Door County, Wisconsin: Day Three — Submarine Detectors

The scenic drama of the Niagara Escarpment, the limestone spine ridging Door County, can hardly be overstated. We got to admire it today from land and from water alike, first with a “trolley” ride through Peninsula State Park and then, on a cool and breezy afternoon, from the deck of a boat that took us out towards the Sister Islands and their white haze of ring-billed and herring gulls.

Exactly 100 years ago today, on June 26, 1914, R.M. Strong paid his own first visit to the Sisters as part of his study of the herring gulls breeding in Door County.

Over the course of that summer, Strong visited colonies on several of the county’s islands, making detailed records of their behavior and breeding from a cramped blind “made from dark green cambric lining cloth, costing seven cents a yard.”

From here, Strong was able to watch the birds pairing, building, incubating, brooding, feeding, and, of course, fighting. Our trip this afternoon confirmed that at least that last component of larid behavior persists.

Strong’s work in Green Bay ranked him among the authorities of his day on gull behavior. In 1917, a few months after the entry of the United States into the war, he turned his expertise to the investigation of another, more immediately practical problem:

I read in ‘Science’ the recommendation of the Committee on Zoology of the National Research Council that the problem of “utilization of gulls and other aquatic seabirds in locating submarines be studied.”

Strong’s experience had taught him that it would useless to try to train gulls captured as adults, so he secured a small corps of chicks of flighted juveniles to work with. His preliminary results were encouraging: the young birds quickly grew tolerant of their human keepers, and herring gulls, he found, could recognize new situations in their environment — the hope was, of course, that they could be taught to recognize submarines and somehow “alert” their human monitors to the threatening presence.

Strong’s scheme proposed capturing large numbers of unfledged gulls, raising them, and keeping them on board navy ships until “regions of danger” had been reached. Once released, he predicted, the gulls would make short feeding flights from their “home” ship, when

by careful watching … variations in their movements would at least suggest that an unusual object was in the water.

The plan — of which Strong admitted “that the chances of success were limited, to say the least” — was never carried out. While Strong and his colleagues were working out the details, other, “very efficient methods for detection of submarines were developed,” and the “raid” on the gulls’ nesting colonies was never carried out.

The herring gulls of Lake Michigan could go back to their loafing and squabbling, activities they continue to excel in today.

Strong never tells us what else he saw out in the gulleries of Wisconsin and Michigan. So here’s our day list from a hundred years later:

Canada goose

mallard

American white pelican

double-crested cormorant

great egret

turkey vulture

osprey

bald eagle

sharp-shinned hawk

red-tailed hawk

killdeer

ring-billed gull

herring gull

Caspian tern

rock pigeon

mourning dove

chimney swift

northern flicker

red-eyed vireo

American crow

common raven

blue jay

purple martin

tree swallow

northern rough-winged swallow

cliff swallow

barn swallow

black-capped chickadee

house wren

American robin

European starling

cedar waxwing

yellow warbler

American redstart

chipping sparrow

song sparrow

northern cardinal

red-winged blackbird

common grackle

brown-headed cowbird

American goldfinch

house sparrow

June 25, 2014June 28, 2014

Door County, Wisconsin: Day Two

The fog made for an eerie morning here in Baileys Harbor, an impression only heightened by the screeches of invisible Caspian terns over the lake. But nothing can deter birders when they’re in a new place, and after breakfast, Marnie and I met up with Paul for an introduction to some of this long peninsula’s many and varied habitats.

We started off on the bayshore of Peninsula State Park, where I was finally able to make sense of that mysterious word “alvar.” A bar far offshore was drifted with American white pelicans, and small groups, family groups, of red-breasted mergansers — a funny bird to see in the summer — dived and flew up and down in front of us.

The boggy woods across the road in the park must be great for migrants earlier in the season, and even in late June are surely good for breeding birds earlier in the day. The dominant voices late this morning were red-eyed vireos and American redstarts, with ovenbirds, common yellowthroats, yellow warblers, and a distant Nashville warbler rounding out our parulid list for the site.

From Peninsula we went on to Mud Lake, approaching along a road that reminded me more of a tamarisk marsh in Maine or New Brunswick than of the Midwest.

Delightful as it was to hear an alder flycatcher sneezing out in the alders, the roadside orchids were even more welcome a sight.

We looked for but did not see the rare Hine’s emerald, though a couple of other odonate species were flying; Paul identified a corporal, a darner, and a twelve-spotted skimmer. In spite of the overcast, we found pearl crescents, a white admiral, and several mourning cloaks — and impressively vast numbers of the insects the locals call “mosquitoes.” They seem thirstier than the ones I’m used to.

We fled the buzzing horde to look for some farmland specialties.

Paul knew a bobolink field, so we spent several enjoyable minutes watching the males sing and dance over the tall grass; I got to see one female fly in and land in the grass with something wriggly in her bill, so maybe they can bring off young before the rest of the field is hayed. Savannah sparrows shared the hayfield and perched on the wires, and two male dickcissels buzzed at a frustrating distance before one came closer to the road and sang for us as we pulled away.

Over the course of the morning we also found two pairs of sandhill cranes.

Paul had been watching this pair, which, he told us, has a large but still flightless chick. The colt must have been hidden in the grass when we arrive — but no complaints about missing it after such a wonderful and quintessentially midwestern morning in the field.

Today’s list:

Canada goose

mallard

hooded merganser

red-breasted merganser

wild turkey

American white pelican

double-crested cormorant

great egret

turkey vulture

osprey

red-tailed hawk

killdeer

ring-billed gull

herring gull

Caspian tern

rock pigeon

mourning dove

chimney swift

ruby-throated hummingbird

alder flycatcher

eastern phoebe

eastern kingbird

red-eyed vireo

blue jay

American crow

common raven

purple martin

tree swallow

northern rough-winged swallow

cliff swallow

barn swallow

house wren

eastern bluebird

American robin

European starling

cedar waxwing

Nashville warbler

yellow warbler

chestnut-sided warbler

American redstart

ovenbird

common yellowthroat

chipping sparrow

field sparrow

vesper sparrow

Savannah sparrow

song sparrow

indigo bunting

bobolink

red-winged blackbird

eastern meadowlark

common grackle

brown-headed cowbird

house finch

American goldfinch

house sparrow

June 24, 2014June 28, 2014

Door County, Wisconsin: Day One

I’d driven through Wisconsin once, long ago, on the way to points far west, but Monday marked the first time I’d ever set foot on Badger soil outside of an airport. I like it.

The drive north from Green Bay on that funny pointed peninsula was encouragingly rural, with small farms and fields and orchards lining the roads. Eastern kingbirds and meadowlarks ornamented the fences, and high above it all American white pelicans soared, alternating blinding white with near invisibility as they turned in the sky.

I’m staying in Bailey’s Harbor, at the Blacksmith Inn, a quiet and comfortable place right on the water. My little porch looks out at a bit of marsh, noisy with red-winged blackbirds and yellow warblers, and then on to the harbor itself, happy hunting ground for ring-billed and herring gulls and prehistoric-looking Caspian terns. The little yard attracts chipping sparrows and American robins, and a busy American redstart has her nest and her still tiny nestlings in a tree just at the corner.

Dinner that first evening was in Fish Creek, an appropriate place, I thought, to have my first Great Lakes perch. The birds had the same inspiration: an adult bald eagle flew over carrying something scaled and struggling, and two black-crowned night-herons flapped past the restaurant windows hoping to catch their own in the dusk.

Here’s the complete list from the first day, if you’re interested:

June 23, 2014

Door County, Wisconsin

Canada Goose, Mallard

American White Pelican

Great Egret

Black-crowned Night-Heron

Turkey Vulture

Bald Eagle

Red-tailed Hawk

Killdeer

Herring Gull

Ring-billed Gull

Caspian Tern

Rock Pigeon

Mourning Dove

Downy Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

Northern Flicker

Eastern Phoebe

Eastern Kingbird

Red-eyed Vireo

Blue Jay

American Crow

Barn Swallow

Tree Swallow

American Robin

Eastern Bluebird

European Starling

Cedar Waxwing

Yellow Warbler

American Redstart

Chipping Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Red-winged Blackbird

Eastern Meadowlark

Brown-headed Cowbird

Common Grackle

American Goldfinch

House Sparrow

June 21, 2014

Fried and Roasted

Yes, I can tell you exactly, precisely, accurately how many Ross’s gulls I’ve seen in my lifetime: one, on a wonderful morning in Maryland nearly thirty years ago.

It’s a happy memory, and one that makes it even more interesting to read accounts like this one, from the pen of Charles D. Brower at Barrow, Alaska:

I did get a good crack at the Ross gulls again this fall [1928]. One day, the 26th of September, they were around in thousands…. this fall I had them fried and roasted until I almost turned into a Ross Gull myself.

And what did these dainty dishes taste like? Chicken, right?

No:

They taste just as do the Golden Plover, and are just as fat in the fall.

June 12, 2014June 12, 2014

Looking for Chapman

Mark Twain saw a lot of the outdoors over a long life that took him from the Mississippi to California to Connecticut. As I think back on what I’ve read of Twain, though, nature — Nature — doesn’t play much of a role at all. Landscape, even so dominant a feature as Huckleberry Finn’s river, never seems to be more than narrative convenience or metaphoric convention.

I was surprised, then, to find a notable selection of natural history titles among the books Twain donated to the library in Redding, Connecticut, in the last years of his life.

It turns out that most had been gifts to his daughter Jean.

On her early death in 1909, Jean Clemens’s father wrote that

She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds, beasts, and everything — even snakes — an inheritance from me. She knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore.

And she learned her bird lore the way most people did in the first years of the twentieth century: from the works of Frank Michler Chapman.

Jean Clemens owned Chapman’s Warblers and his 1903 Handbook, two works that remained standards for birders (and ornithologists) for decades.

Today, however, on Chapman’s 150th birthday, even those of us who remember those books and his many others can forget how prominent this ornithologist, conservationist, and author was in his day. In the first decades of the twentieth century, natural history hobbyists referred to their “Chapman” with the same matter-of-factness with which we today cite our “Sibley” or our “Peterson,” and by 1900, as he would later write,

so many were the requests for lectures … that it was not possible to accept all of them.

Think about it this way: if Frank Chapman had lived into our celebrity-tainted age, it’s easy to predict which bird bloggers would be elbowing their shrill way to a “selfy” with him.

Chapman’s contributions to the culture and development of the American Museum, where he served — and eventually reigned, as “The Chief” — for a full 52 years, are well discussed by, among others, François Vuilleumier, who wrote on the sixtieth anniversary of Chapman’s death

Chapman was a truly remarkable individual, whose full mark on ornithology remains to be documented,

a rewarding task for a young historian with time on her hands.

Meanwhile, in this sesquicentennial year, I’m more interested for the moment by Chapman’s life on this side of the Hudson. Even most New Jersey birders seem to think of him as a New Yorker, but Chapman was born in West Englewood, just back from the Palisades, and he was buried in Englewood’s Brookside Cemetery on his death in November 1945.

So what do Frank Chapman’s boyhood haunts look like now?

“I lived,” Chapman wrote in his Autobiography, “in the place of my birth until I reached middle age.”

A fine house it was, too, built by Chapman’s wealthy parents a year before his birth. This house, and the one that replaced it after a fire in 1890, occupied an old fruit farm on Teaneck Road at West Englewood Avenue.

On forty suburban acres, the family kept horses, pigs, poultry, and cows (and though Chapman neglects to mention it, the staff to care for them). The house and barn and other outbuildings were “the scene of many boyish adventures” for the privileged only child.

If I read the maps correctly, part of the Chapman estate is now part of Argonne Park in Teaneck.

The Chapmans’ neighbor to the south was William Walter Phelps, owner of the largest estate in the area. Phelps served as a congressman and as envoy to Germany and to Austria-Hungary, but his great love was trees. Chapman writes

This estate was posted and became, in effect, a bird sanctuary years before this term was used. Whether as gunner or bird student, this was the hunting-ground of my boyhood.

The Phelps mansion, too, burnt, in 1889, but was not rebuilt. The ruins were finally demolished in 1925, and Teaneck constructed a new municipal complex on the site of Chapman’s boyhood playground.

West of the Chapman farm,

there were extensive forests penetrated only by wood roads, and a brook where trout could be found. Beyond, on the slopes reaching up to the crest of the hills overlooking the valley of the Hackensack, were fields partly grown with red cedar, bayberry and sweet gum.

The forested lands around the train station, Chapman recalled, were

as good collecting ground as there was in the New York City region. The woods surrounding it stretched for miles north and south, forming a highway for the diurnal journeys of migrating birds.

When Chapman showed those woods to a respected older colleague one June evening, John Burroughs listened to the chorus of veerys and wood thrushes and turned to his companion to say simply,

No wonder you love birds!

Two slender slivers of wooded parkland now flank the railroad station where the Sage of Slabsides disembarked. Neither remnant is especially promising for the birder.

Chapman himself saw the future.

Sadly I saw the forests fall and the fields erupt flimsy cottages… I had not the heart to witness the rapid dismemberment of haunts on which I had held a “rambler’s lease” so long that they seemed to be mine.

The ornithologist abandoned his boyhood home and moved a couple of miles east into the city of Englewood. There, too, though,

the changes came so rapidly that each week-end found some cherished shrine invaded or destroyed,

and the Chapmans “took refuge in New York City,” with periodic escapes to the Catskills or to Panama. Not until death overtook them — Fanny Embury Chapman first, in September 1944, followed by her husband in November 1945 — did the Chapmans return to Englewood for good.

Mark Twain and Jean Clemens had been dead a full generation by then. Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide was almost a dozen years old.

But Frank Chapman even in death remained a powerful force in American conservation and birding. He deserves to be remembered, especially by those of us who live in the state where he first saw the light of day.