birding – Page 2 – Birding New Jersey

October 15, 2014October 15, 2014

Downtown Birds

A hundred years ago today, Joseph E. Gould of Norfolk, Virginia, was in New York City. At noon, he attended a service at Trinity Church, then birded the churchyard, “overshadowed by ‘sky-scrapers’ and flanked by surface and elevated street cars.”

Among the house sparrows he found two slate-colored juncos, a white-throated sparrow, a hermit thrush, and a brown creeper,

diligently scrambling up an old scarred and weather-beaten tombstone, peering into every crack and crevice for some tender morsel.

Sounds like autumn in the city.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

September 30, 2014

Do You Hear Hoofbeats?

Gellert and I are used to running into interesting birds on his walks: in just the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen a fine peregrine falcon, a common raven, and a smattering of the commoner southbound warblers. This morning, though, we came across something totally unexpected.

We screeched to a halt when a tiny, short-tailed gray thing flushed from the roadside into a low tree, and were startled to see a little zebra finch looking back at us.

It was a long flight on those short wings from this species’ native range. Or do you suppose — just suppose — that somebody left a window open last night?

July 3, 2014July 3, 2014

The List

Remember the mocking charge once leveled at the bookish young?

“I bet you read the dictionary!”

Well, maybe not read exactly, but for many of us, our earliest experiences with literacy did in fact include a good browse through the book of words, each entry suggesting another as time slips past. I still do it, if truth be told, but I’ve branched out over the years, letting association and chance lead me through lists and catalogues and inventories of all sorts.

Including, of course, bird lists.

James Graham Cooper spent July 3 and July 4, 1857, in the vicinity of Shawnee Mission, Kansas. I don’t have convenient access to Cooper’s diaries, or to the published biography, or, for some inscrutable e-reason, even to the classic Ibis article about the “father of Pacific coast ornithology.” But I do have — and so do you — Spencer Baird’s Birds of 1858. And that fine book is full of lists, lists just evocative enough to let us speculate about what Cooper experienced on his way west.

Did the eastern kingbird he shot dance around his head on quivering wingbeats? Were the male western meadowlark and the two male grasshopper sparrows still singing in their tallgrass fastnesses, or had the exertions of parental care pretty much silenced them by early July? Were the two dickcissels — a male and a female — Cooper sent back to Washington an ill-fated pair, or did he widow the mate of each? And why did he take only one juvenile northern rough-winged swallow? Were its siblings too fast, too far, too cute to shoot?

Taken together, those records, none of them more than a name and a date in a dry, factual table, conjure memories of early mornings on the prairie, the birds of open country busy singing and feeding and caring for their young while merely human life goes on around them.

Try it yourself. Trace a place or a naturalist through the lists in Baird or any other sober-sided ornithological compilation, and see what stories you can come up with. It’s even better than reading the dictionary.

June 11, 2014June 11, 2014

The Cardinals of Teaneck

I stepped out of the car at Argonne Park early this damp, dark morning to a familiar sound, the scratching chips of a family of northern cardinals.

Nice, but no big deal AD 2014.

The same birds would have been a big deal indeed just 75 years ago, when the northern limit of this familiar species’ range was still in southern New Jersey. Indeed, the neighborhood’s most famous birder did not encounter cardinals until he visited Milledgeville, Georgia, in the spring of 1872, in

a spacious garden having flower beds bordered with hyacinths…. It was in this garden, after a shower, that I saw my first Cardinal…. Doubtless the sun was shining, for the brilliance of its colors made a profound impression.

A very profound impression, and if there is such a thing as a “spark bird,” this, the northern cardinal, lit a light that would shine on American ornithology and birding for the next more than 70 years.

More tomorrow.

April 14, 2014April 14, 2014

Brookdale Park Birding

A warm spring morning — at long last — in Brookdale Park, and Helen, Mollie, Gary, and I ran into a couple of arrivals during our leisurely walk around the edges of the park.

Blue-gray Gnatcatchers whined and buzzed here and there, and a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, even tinier, was the first of what should soon be the regulid onslaught.

The arrival of the kinglets usually coincides with the earliest warblers. Though I did have a couple of Myrtle Warblers early on, I was beginning to worry that that would be it for the morning. But no: a creeping sprite in the dead wood below the tennis courts turned into a glorious male Black-and-white Warbler, my first this spring in our area.

We were just as excited to see the local Red-tailed Hawks still in residence and acting decidedly broody. One bird slunk around quietly in a tall pine, as if hoping to get onto a nest without being seen, while the other soared overhead with a rat in its feet. I was impressed once again by what good hunters these birds are: I could look for rats all day and not find one. (Not complaining about that, of course.)

Winter isn’t that far behind us, though. White-throated Sparrows were just as abundant and as conspicuous as Chipping Sparrows, and a lone Slate-colored Junco was still lurking around the stream, perhaps taking her last bath before heading into the Adirondacks to breed.

Best of all, perhaps, was a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers quietly feeding together on large snags on the west side of the park. Fingers crossed that these birds stick around and breed: a little bit of wilderness in Bloomfield.

Join the Brookdale Conservancy and me for May bird walks in the park: schedule is here under “Upcoming Events.”