Page 37 – Birding New Jersey

September 10, 2016September 10, 2016

A Berlin Birder

Gottfried Schiermann

Gottfried Schiermann, a pioneer in the study of bird populations, died 70 years ago today in the ruins of Berlin.

His much younger friend Ernst Mayr would later describe him not only as “a superb field ornithologist”but as “among the highest of all human beings I have ever been fortunate enough to meet.” In the photograph above, Schiermann is admiring the nest of a Savi’s warbler, which he and Mayr discovered in the Kremmener Luch.

common crane

I did not know Schiermann, and I do not know anyone who knew Schiermann. But in a couple of weeks we’ll be watching common cranes at the Luch, and thinking of those whose early work in field and museum preserved that and the other precious wild spaces that make our birding possible.

September 4, 2016August 31, 2016

Not So Happily, Not So Ever After

Screenshot 2016-08-31 12.53.56

Shufeldt and Audubon’s granddaughter were married on September 4, 1895.

We all know how that one ended up.

Florence Audubon, long after the divorce from Robert Shufeldt

September 1, 2016

A Famous Name

A 22-year-old Rollo Beck works on outfitting himself.

Rollo H. Beck exchange

I don’t know how successful this Nidiologist ad was, but it is a rare glimpse into the beginnings of one of the most remarkable careers in North American collecting history.

August 4, 2016

Mountain Thunder

They say that the name “Huachuca” means “thunder mountain,” and this most beautiful of the border ranges lives up to its name and then some this time of year.

The monsoon rains come almost every afternoon, brief and powerful, flooding the washes and pushing soil and rocks onto roads.

The storms announce themselves from a distance with some of the most awesome thunder I’ve ever heard.

It begins as a rolling rumble from afar, then cracks and snaps before descending into the canyons, where it echoes from the high steep cliffs, bouncing back and forth between the walls until the thunder doesn’t so much sound as feel, less a sonic phenomenon than a solid mass that tumbles down the canyon to submerse anyone fortunate enough to be abroad in it.

It’s exhilarating and frightening all at once.

As the sublime should be.

August 2, 2016August 4, 2016

Lectures and Field Trips in August

August is the classic time to visit southeast Arizona. The monsoons have cooled the air and greened the desert, and all the late summer breeders are singing, the “Mexican” specialties are fledging young, and northern migrants are passing through in large numbers. As if that weren’t enough, August is high season for vagrants from the Pacific and from Middle America. Who knows what this year will turn up?