Posts Tagged ‘Upland Birds’

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Thinking Adirondack Birds On Earth Day

On this Earth Day of 2010 I find myself thinking. First, thinking of the abuses this planet has taken and is still taking. Then I think of some of the more positive things that we have witnessed, as we slowly bring about the changes this planet needs…”Be the change that you want to see in the world”-Gandhi

I recently “rediscovered ” a book I have entitled Important Bird Areas of New York
and as I paged though it I came to a map depicting all the Important Bird Areas(IBA) of northern New York. Looking closely at the map it shows all the IBA’s in small gray circles. Some bigger, some smaller. Each one designating a large IBA or a smaller IBA.

Then I got out my calculator and started adding up the number of acres each IBA contained. To my surprise, in an area that runs north of the NYS Thruway and bound by Lake Champlain on the east, Lake Ontario on the West, and the St Lawrence River to the north, I count over 902,000 acres designated as IBA.

Now this is just an estimate-it could be greater. But smack dab in the middle of all these gray circles of IBA’s sits our Adirondack Park. Some areas within the Blueline are IBA’s but looking at the big picture we can take a calming breath knowing that over 2 million acres are protected for birdlife (and other forms of wildlife of course) in our “park”.

This was truly an eye-opener when I recently looked at a map showing all the IBA’s in the United States. If you look at the upper right corner of the map you see a large green blob. That’s the protected Adirondack Park with all it’s avian inhabitants. Pretty cool when you consider the size of the blob in relation to all the other blobs on the map.

But what does this afford us? Well for one thing it gives recognition that we have something unique here in our own backyards. We have a Park that encompasses over 12 different critical habitats that wildlife need, ranging from endangered alpine summits to precious peatland bogs and wetlands that provide habitat to millions of organisms.

Birds have depended on these habitats of the Adirondacks for thousands of years. Bicknell’s thrush can safely raise young in the thickets of spruce-fir forest on our mountains; spruce grouse may get a second chance at survival in our carefully managed forests; olive-sided flycatchers can seek out protected wetlands as they return from a 2,000 mile spring journey from a tropical rainforest; and rusty blackbirds, though numbers severely depleted, can still find habitat in our acreage.

We may never see the day when all the “green blobs” on the IBA map will meld into one big blob, but it’s nice to know that we are trying.

Photo credit: Savannah Sparrow-Brian McAllister


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Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ruffed Grouse – Wild Chicken of the Adirondacks

This winter has been a good one for grouse. At least in the tracking sense it has been a good one for grouse. Almost every day I have found fresh grouse tracks in the woods, along the roads, down driveways. I’ve even flushed a couple of the birds, their thunderous take-offs turning a few more hairs white, but mostly it’s their tracks I’ve seen.

The ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) is one of two grouse species that call the Adirondacks home. The second is the spruce grouse (Falcipennis canadensis), which is an uncommon boreal species found in only a very few pockets within the Park. Therefore, I will stick to the ruffed grouse in this piece since that is the one most readers are likely to encounter.

Ruffed grouse are so called because of the ruff of dark feathers they have on either side the neck. Both the males and the females sport this ruff, which is raised when the bird is excited, making it look like a feathered version of Elizabethan royalty. Knowing what I do about the starched lace ruffs worn by the nobility of Western Europe back in the mid-15th to mid-16th centuries, I think I’d prefer the feathered ruff of our native bird.

Winter is the best time, in my humble opinion, to go looking for grouse, for it is at this time of year that we can find where they have been (these birds are famously shy and very well camouflaged), and we can experience some of their more interesting traits.

For example, by the time winter has rolled around, the ruffed grouse has grown special projections along the sides of each toe. These fringe-like growths give the grouse a leg up in winter, for they increase the surface area of each foot, effectively creating snowshoes that will keep this short-legged bird from wallowing in the deep north country snows. And since snowshoes are not needed in the summer, the projections wear off during the spring, leaving clean, streamlined toes for the following season.

A grouse’s foot is pretty characteristic, even without its fringe. There are four toes on each foot. A tiny toe points backwards, a long toe points forwards. The remaining two toes, each shorter than the front toe and longer than the back toe, stick out one to each side. The resulting footprint looks something like a sword with very long hilts. When the animal struts along through the snow, it leaves a rather shuffling pattern behind, which looks like nothing else in our winter woods.

I have yet to witness this myself, but ruffed grouse are notorious for roosting under the snow. They create a snow roost in a couple different ways. First, there’s the lazy bird’s roost: it just sits down and lets the snow cover it. Then there’s the clever bird’s roost: it dives headlong into a patch of fluffy snow, makes a 90-degree turn, then hunkers down facing the direction from which it just came. The latter gives the bird just that much more advantage should a predator come looking for a meal: the sharp turn in its snowy tunnel may give the grouse an extra fraction of a second to get away. Many years ago I came across a snow roost, but the grouse was long gone. This is probably just as well, for if a grouse taking wing in the summer woods is startling, imagine one bursting out of the snow at your feet!

Anyone who has gone tracking with me knows that I get very excited when I find scat. Scats are great to find, for they give you an idea of what animals have been eating. Plus, we don’t find them all that often, so that makes them even more special. Well, a couple winters ago I found some really nice grouse scats (see photo above). They are easily recognized by their color, texture and shape. However, I also found some that were rather liquidy and brown, looking more like slugs than grouse scats. I’d never seen these before and they confounded me. I put some in a baggie (when you walk a dog as often as I do, you always have baggies in your pockets) and took it to a wildlife ecologist to see if she knew what it was. Nada.

Today, however, I found the answer in one of my tracking books. It seems that grouse are one of those birds that have two kinds of scats, based on which part of the digestive tract was evacuated. The lower portion of the tract produces the tight, fibrous scats with which I was familiar. When the bird evacuates the upper portion of the tract (the cecum), the resulting scats are a darker brown and more liquidy. Often with birds who have this dual scat production, you will find piles of the fibrous scats with the liquid scats on top. The ruffed grouse, however, tends to deposit each type in its own separate pile. So there you have it – another mystery solved.

When I see a grouse standing in the middle of the road, with traffic bearing down on it, I can’t help but think it’s got to be one of the dumbest birds out there. It doesn’t bat an eye, it doesn’t run or try to fly away. It just stands there and stares at the on-coming car(s). Stick it in the woods, however, where it rightly belongs, and it is one of the cleverest and most alert birds around. Once it knows you are there, it gets out of Dodge quicker than it takes your brain to register its presence. The only times I’ve seen a grouse hold its ground in the woods is when a male is drumming on a log (its mind is clearly focused on elsewhere). Once I came across two males strutting about the ground beneath a shrub in which a hen was perched, but as soon as they got wind of my presence, all three took off deeper into the woods. So maybe it’s something about the road itself, and its inherent lack of any protective cover, that leaves the birds standing in profound stupidity, unable to decide what to do.

I’ve read several accounts of how grouse populations are declining across parts of North America. As with many species, this is due to loss of habitat. Ruffed grouse need fairly large tracts of forest, with a mixture of older and newer growth. Whether one is a hunter or a nature enthusiast, it’s kind of nice to know that with the protections put on the land within the Adirondack Park, ruffed grouse are likely to enjoy continued existence in our corner of the world.


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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Dinosaurs in the Adirondacks – The Wild Turkey

Anyone who doesn’t believe that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs needs only one look at a running turkey to have a change of heart. This winter a female turkey has made my back yard a daily stop in her travels, and let me tell you: there are few things in life so prehistoric-looking than a turkey going full tilt trying to escape your camera lens.

The wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is one of two species of turkeys in the world. The other is a denizen of Central America and as such is of little importance to us here in the Adirondacks. No, we are concerned with our own native bird, the one of such character and pride that Ben Franklin thought it should be the symbol of our country.

When Europeans first descended upon the eastern shores of North America, turkeys ruled the roost, so to speak. Millions of them populated the woodlands, providing food for man and beast alike. But, as is the habit of mankind, forests were cut and turkeys were eaten. As early as 1672 keen observers of nature were already remarking that turkey populations were not what they once had been. In 1844, the last wild turkey in New York was reported in the extreme southwestern part of the state; after that, they were gone.

For years nothing was done to rectify the state of things, turkey-wise. By the turn of the century (c. 1900), approximately 75% of New York had been cleared, agriculture and development dominating where once forests grew. Without healthy forests, turkeys could not survive (hard mast, such as acorns and beechnuts, is a major part of their diet). As the century plodded along, however, many farmers left home, moving to the cities where jobs were more likely to be had. Old farmland began to revert to forests, and slowly turkeys started to come back, making their way northward from Pennsylvania. By the 1940s, the southwestern part of the state was once more populated with these large bronze birds.

To help things along, New York State converted a central New York pheasant hatchery into a turkey hatchery in 1952. Over the next several years, thousands of turkeys were released into the wild. Sadly, this operation was doomed to failure. Speculation was that the released birds were too tame and therefore lacked the brains to escape (or fight) predators. It was also thought that their natural reproduction was too low to sustain a viable population. So the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) went to Plan B: capture wild turkeys and relocate them.

This new plan began in 1959 and saw New York’s wild turkey population successfully soar from about 2000 birds to over 65,000 by 1990. The relocation program was so successful that the DEC started shipping birds to neighboring states to help them reestablish their own dwindling populations.

I saw my first wild turkey in the early ‘80s out at Letchworth State Park. There were two or three of them, and they flew up into a tree along the edge of a small ravine. Prior to this I never would’ve guessed that turkeys could fly. Three years later, a friend of mine shot a turkey and decided we should give it to my mother for Mother’s Day; so he and I and all my roommates drove to my parents’ house with the turkey in tow. It barely fit in the oven, but it was a mighty tasty bird. Ten years later, turkeys were all over the farm fields back home: whole herds of them marching along the rows of cut corn. (And yes, I use the word “herd” intentionally, for when they are walking along the ground en masse, they are definitely a herd.)

Back in the ‘80s it was believed by biologists that turkeys wouldn’t be able to survive the harsh winters the Adirondacks can dish out. Imagine their surprise when turkeys not only moved into the mountains, but thrived! Hardly a week goes by all year that I don’t see a turkey or two, or ten. Sometimes they lurk along the roadsides, picking up grit or maybe hunting insects; other times they are strutting across a neighbor’s yard.

A couple years ago, I came across a hen and her poults hiding in the shrubbery between the second and fourth holes on the local golf course. I was walking the dog, and of course he started barking, so the hen took off, dashing away into the trees with most of her progeny in hot pursuit. Two, however, were left behind. I sat the dog down and we waited. And waited. One of the poults peeped and trotted off after the long-gone parent, but the other remained behind, peeping its distress. Even though I knew better, the pitiful cries got to me and I finally decided to go “rescue” the thing. My plan was to carry it to the patch of woods in which its mother had disappeared and set it down where she could get to it without having to come near me and the dog. Big mistake. No sooner had I picked up the ungrateful bird then it let out a squawking and wailing that brought the mother running and flapping from the woods. A velociraptor had nothing on her. Fearing for my safety (I’ve heard tales of the damage a turkey can do with its spurs), I dropped the poult, snagged the dog’s leash, and we high-tailed it out of there. That was the last time I tried to help a “stranded” wildlife baby.

And just in case you needed further convincing that turkeys are dinosaurs in disguise, watch a herd of them come trotting across a lawn or field when the early morning fog is lying close to the ground. All you need is to cue up the music and you are staring at a living tableau from Jurassic Park. Add a rock wall for them to jump on, and the scene is complete.

It was -7 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, but I don’t think the local turkeys were much fazed by this. Indeed, I think they are here to stay, and that’s a nice thing, for every patch of wilderness should have its resident dinosaurs, and for us the wild turkey fills the bill nicely.


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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Balsam Fir – An Adirondack Classic

The smell of balsam fir (Abies balsamea) brings a rush of Adirondack memories to anyone who has spent even a smidgeon of time in the Park. Whether it’s from sun-warmed needles scenting summer days at camp, or the woodsy scent of a balsam pillow on a cold winter day, for many people balsam fir means Adirondacks.

Now, I could use this post to regurgitate the statistical facts of the tree (it has blunt needles up to an inch and a half long, dark purplish cones two to four inches long, smooth to thinly scaly bark studded with resin blisters, grows forty to eighty feet tall and can live up to two-hundred years), but that would be boring. Instead, I’d like to take a look at how the balsam fir has ingratiated itself into the lives of so many people.

But first, let’s address this conifer’s role as a member of the northern forest community. Balsam fir is typically seen as an identifying species for boreal forests (the Spruce-Fir biome), which first appears in New York State in the Adirondacks. Boreal forests, also called taiga, are often characterized by soils that have very high moisture content, sometimes being downright saturated. This suits the balsam fir quite nicely, and because it grows in such soggy conditions, it naturally has a rather shallow root system (rarely going more than 30 inches deep).

Looking at the wildlife of the boreal zone, one might expect that they have a close relationship with balsam fir, either as food or shelter. Both are true, but perhaps not quite to the extent one would imagine. Moose, the charismatic megafauna of the north woods, really dig balsam fir. In fact, in the winter this conifer becomes a major component in the moose’s diet. The smaller member of the deer family, however, pretty much ignores balsam fir as a food source. Instead, for the white-tailed deer balsam fir is sought out only as a shelter, for its dense branches, which reach to the ground, form good windbreaks, providing welcome respite from the arctic blasts of winter. Other wildlife sheltering in beneath (or within) the balsam’s boughs include snowshoe hares, assorted songbirds, red squirrels, grouse (ruffed and spruce), mice and voles.

Does any other wildlife seek out the balsam fir for food? Mice and voles will eat some seeds and may gnaw away at the inner bark; red squirrels will also eat some seeds, bark and wood, but prefer noshing on the flower buds. Black bears have been known to strip the bark from a fir and then lick the exposed wood – do they have a taste for the resin? Grouse are also known to dine upon balsam fir, more in the winter than the summer, but not to any great extent. Their preferred morsels are the buds, branch tips, and needles.

Now, how about people? In the world of logging, balsam fir used to be reviled, for its sticky resinous sap would gum up the blades of saw and axe alike. Today, however, it is actively harvested for its fibers, which are of good quality and make good paper. But the use that most of us usually associate with the balsam fir is its place in our lives as Christmas trees, wreaths and the filler for balsam pillows. Did you know that balsam first have been coveted as Christmas trees for over 400 years? And today they rank as one of the top three species used just for this purpose.

But balsam fir filled many other roles historically. The resin, for example, was once popularly used in the making of microscope slides (it still is today, but to a lesser extent). Not only would it permanently glue the cover slips in place, but it would anchor the specimen and prevent the growth of bacteria or fungi from ruining it in the future. Even more importantly, balsam fir resin has the same index of refraction as glass, which means that when one peered at one’s specimen through the lens of the microscope, it would not be distorted – a real plus in many fields of study.

Balsam resin’s antiseptic and stimulatory qualities have been known for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Long before Europeans entered the picture, the native peoples of this continent used balsam resin for all sorts of medicines. A short list would include treatments for congestion, bronchitis, cystitis, burns, bruises, and general cuts and wounds. It’s also a source of vitamin C, so it was used in the treatment of scurvy.

In these modern times, though, we don’t see too much use in the medical realm for balsam resin, aka Canada Balsam. You can, however, still find it in the product “Save the Baby,” which some of our older readers might recognize. This ointment is very similar to Vick’s Vapo-rub and serves the same purpose: it is rubbed onto the chest of a congested patient and the fumes waft up the nose, into the respiratory system, providing relief and filling the air with a pleasant, non-medicinal, scent.

Still at this time of year, it is the holiday spirit that brings the balsam fir close to home. A balsam fir will grace the living space of many an Adirondack home, and a balsam fir wreath will great visitors at the door. Holiday guests may recline on beds in guestrooms that have small balsam pillows strategically located, some with the classic rhyme:

I miss you in the summer
I miss you in the fall, some
But ‘specially at Christmas time,
I pine fir yew and balsam.

But for me, balsam fir will remain the scent of the north woods in winter. And maybe, just maybe, some day I will snowshoe past a balsam fir and see that elusive moose munching away.


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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

One Adirondack Turkey Gives Thanks

This is George, a turkey who lives down the hill. She’s so cute and sociable she’s been granted a Thanksgiving reprieve. She was hatched this summer in Standish and brought to Saranac Lake by a family who intended to fatten her up for a November feast. George endeared herself so much that she’s the one who’ll be feasting.

She lives with eight peacocks and probably thinks she is one. Have a happy Thanksgiving, George.


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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Adirondack Bird Research Resources

It’s 4 a.m. on a chilled morning in early June. Still three hours away from sunrise so my weak headlamp casts an eerie and unnatural glow to the trail as I pick my way through rock, stream, and unseen balsam fir branches. I’m heading to the summit of Wright Peak in the Adirondack High Peaks Region. Nearing the summit I must first stop every 250 meters from a predetermined point on my map. Here I listen for any bird song that might be heard and then record it in my notes. I chuckle as I think that it’s more like the first “yawn” I hear from these birds. Over a 30-day period myself and dozens of other crazy but doggedly determined volunteer birders are assisting an organization to acquire desperately needed information on some bird species that live on the mountains.

Fast-forward to the end of June, still early morning, and I’m slogging my way through a blackfly-infested bog in the wild regions of the Santa Clara Tract. I’m nearing an area known as the Madawaska Flow. Here I’m still listening for, identifying, and counting bird species but now I’m in a completely different habitat. This lowland environment reveals new species that need to be counted for another study.

Through a not-so-picturesque way I’m shedding light on what’s involved in gathering data for the most recent research of our Adirondack birdlife.

You may fancy the New York Times‘ Science Times section every Tuesday, as I do, but have you thought about the countless hours of research that goes into some of those tid-bits of science? Mind-numbing data is collected and analyzed and then those analyses are scoured and analyzed even more. Then finally results are spewed out on the computer, all to advance our knowledge and understanding.

Well it’s the same in the world of bird study, and thankfully here in the Adirondacks we have organizations that dwell on these processes. These organizations, like the Vermont Center for Ecostudies have called upon countless volunteers to gather lots of data on a rare bird, known as the Bicknell’s thrush, that faces many hardships on its Adirondack and other northeastern mountain-top breeding habitats.

The Bicknell’s thrush is dealt a tough hand as it tries to breed on the wind-blown and often freezing-cold, spruce-fir forests that ring the tops of many Adirondack mountains. If that’s not tough enough the birds then face an even bigger problem as they migrate south to overwinter in an ever-decreasing rainforest on the island of Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti share the island).

Research is also showing a very high level of toxic mercury in many Bicknell’s thrush that are sampled across the northeastern US. Then another “left hook” of habitat loss hits this species in its winter and summer grounds.

Closer to my area of work, we find the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) conducting research on Adirondack boreal birds, or those bird species that inhabit the coniferous woodlands and wetlands found at lower elevations.

Our crew has spent many a bug-swatting hour in bogs, along waterways, or deep into conifer thickets searching and counting tiny, colorful species of warbler, finch, sparrow, flycatcher, and the occasional grouse. Our seven years of data has added up to some interesting pictures of Adirondack birdlife. Basically the trends that we see in our early data seem to go along with the trends found elsewhere in the US. We find a decrease in many species but a rise in some others. The good with the bad!

Another candidate for intensive research throughout the park is the common loon. The loon is facing threats from a growing mercury and lead toxicity in some of our Adirondack waters. Through diligent efforts by staff and volunteers of Biodiversity Research Institute
we now have a clearer picture of what loons are dealing with during their breeding time here in the Adirondacks.

The Adirondack Ecological Center in Newcomb has become one of our leading institutes of Adirondack wildlife research, and better yet, it involves college students learning in the field and experiencing hands-on education.

We can also pay tribute to the hard-earned, data-gathering hours of even more volunteers that worked on the 2nd New York State Breeding Bird Atlas . Gathered over give years, this data shows what birds breed in which areas of New York. The art work and text associated with this book make it worthwhile purchase for the beginner and avid birder.

Other organizations that are focusing efforts on birds in Adirondacks are the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Adirondack Nature Conservancy

So, the alarm bells are ringing across the country and around the world about drastic changes in bird populations, as well as many other forms of wildlife, but here in our own backyards we’ve got dedicated folks wanting to find the answers to complicated questions.

Photo: A red-breasted nuthatch being banded by Paul Smiths College Ornithology students.


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Sunday, September 20, 2009

DEC Announces Pheasant Stocking Locations

In time for the opening of Pheasant Season October 1, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) will be stocking easily accessible areas where upland game bird hunting opportunities are generally limited. 2,500 pheasants will be distributed at locations in six counties. A second stocking will occur later this season.

Since some of the locations are on private land where the public is allowed to hunt, DEC asks hunters to maintain cooperative relationships with landowners by keeping hunting groups small, seeking permission, avoiding driving through fields or blocking roads or driveways, and staying in areas where public hunting is allowed.

For the third consecutive year DEC is providing a Youth Pheasant Hunting Weekend on September 26-27 to provide junior hunters (12-15 years old) an opportunity to hunt pheasant the weekend before to the regular season begins.

Listed below are pheasant stocking locations by county in DEC’s Region 5. “YH” indicates a site stocked prior to the youth hunt weekend and “RS” indicates a site stock prior to and during the regular season.

Clinton County

* North of Brand Hollow Road, west of Rt. 22B in the Town of Schuyler Falls (RS only)
* Lake Alice Wildlife Management Area in the Town of Chazy (YH & RS)
* NOTE: Monty Bay Wildlife Management Area will not be stocked due to better pheasant habitat at Lake Alice.

Essex County

* Near the junction of Lake Shore Road & Clark Road on state land in the Town of Westport (YH & RS)

Franklin County

* North of Rt. 11 between Brockway Road & Garvin Road in the Town of Bangor (RS only)
* Howard Road (also known as the Griffin Road) in the Town of Fort Covington (RS only)

Fulton County

* Rt. 140 west of the Village of Ephratah in the Town of Ephratah (RS only)
* Rt. 67 Ephratah Rod and Gun Club in the Town of Ephratah (RS only)

Saratoga County

* Daketown State Forest in the Town of Greenfield (YH & RS)

Washington County

* Carter’s Pond Wildlife Management Area in the Town of Greenwich (YH & RS)
* Eldridge Lane in the Town of Hartford (RS only)
* South of the Village of Whitehall between County Rt. 12 and the barge canal and along Greenmount Road in the Town of Whitehall (RS only)
* Eldridge Swamp State Forest in the Town of Jackson (YH & RS) – note that Eldridge Swamp is often wet, knee boots are recommended.

For further information on pheasant hunting and release sites contact the DEC Region Wildlife offices at 518-897-1291 (Ray Brook) or 518-623-1240 (Warrensburg) or visit the DEC web site at www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/9349.html for more information on pheasant hunting.


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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Commentary: Birding And Climate Change

An ornithologist visiting Oseetah Lake this summer thought he heard the call of a fish crow. Being a scientist he is a careful person, and when I contacted him he said he really couldn’t confirm his observation—there may be hybrids of fish crows and American crows out there. 

The common American crow has been in the Adirondacks at least since colonization, in the mid 19th century. Fish crows, which are smaller and voice more of an awh than a caw, reside primarily in the coastal southeastern United States and were once restricted in New York State to Long Island and the tidal Hudson River, according to The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State (2008) and John Bull’s Birds of New York State (1974). 

I was curious about the possibility of a fish crow near my home, but in a different way than I would’ve been a decade ago. If one were here as an “accidental,” a bird blown off territory by a storm, it would be a novelty, occasion for birders to go out with binoculars and add it to their lists. If, however, fish crows were establishing themselves near Saranac Lake and even breeding here, it would mark a milestone in a northward and inland expansion that began in the last third of the 20th century.

So I wonder, Will this be our next turkey vulture? Or cardinal, or tufted titmouse? Species that once reminded me of visits to an aunt and uncle in Virginia have been arriving in the Adirondack upland, nesting near boreal, cold-weather birds such as spruce grouse and gray jays that’ve been here for centuries. 

Diversity is often considered a sign of a valuable ecosystem, and many factors can influence the expansion of a bird’s range. But some species late to the Adirondack Park might be harbingers of unsettling change. “Nine new breeding birds have spread into the Adirondack interior over the past century,” Wildlife Conservation Society researcher Jerry Jenkins writes in a report to be published this year, Climate Change in the Adirondacks. “The distances the birds have moved correspond to the amount that the temperature has changed and suggest that the birds are tracking climate change and moving with it.”

“It is the privilege of the naturalist to concern himself with a world whose greater manifestations remain above and beyond the violences of man,” Henry Beston wrote in a foreword to his 1928 classic of nature observation on Cape Cod, The Outermost House. Birdwatching and the study of other fauna and flora is no longer such a refuge.

The more warblers, wildflowers and what Beston called “charming bits of life” I learn, the more I want to understand how they came to be where they are, and the more a pastime becomes an inquiry into human influence on other living things. As kids my brothers and I would catch smallmouth and see mallards in the park. We would later learn that conservation officials introduced these creatures by the tens of thousands around the state, reducing numbers of native fish and ducks as a consequence. “Playing the sorcerer’s apprentice,” our father called it. It was an early lesson in the idea that things we do as a species can unintentionally alter even nature’s “greater manifestations,” and do so in ways that take time to see. 

Painting by John James Audubon

See this page from Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s birding Web site for tips on how to tell a fish crow from an American crow.


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Monday, August 17, 2009

Adirondack Birding: 60 Great Places to Find Birds

It’s not every day that we get a book here at the Almanack that reaches my list of Adirondack must-haves. John Peterson and Gary Lee’s Adirondack Birding:60 Great Places to Find Birds (Lost Pond Press, softcover, 240 pages, $20.95) is the kind of book that you will want to have on your shelf – even if you’re not that into birds. Peterson (of Elizabethtown) and Lee (who hails from Inlet), are two of the Adirondack region’s most skilled birders. They drew on decades of experience in selecting the sites for this, the first comprehensive guidebook to birding hot spots in the Adirondacks.

Experienced birders can use the book to search for the Park’s most-coveted species, including boreal birds not found in the state outside the Adirondacks as well as uncommon winter visitors and rare migrants. What I find amazing about this book however, is that it offers the non-birder like me an opportunity to find natural places were I can see a lot of great birds – even if I don’t yet know what they are. If an afternoon exploration to a spot likely to be teeming with birds is what you’re after more than working to complete your birding checklist – this is a great book for you. That’s not to say the experienced birder won’t have something to learn here as well.

Other features of the book include a history of Adirondack birding that stretches into the 1740s, tips on finding boreal birds, an Index of Birds, and hand-drawn maps by Matthew Paul, a Saranac Lake artist. The site chapters not only list resident birds, but they also include records of rare sightings (such as the yellow-nosed albatross that flew over Crown Point in 1994) and unusual facts. I had no idea, for example, that Lows Lake has one of the Adirondack Park’s largest populations of Common Loons.

Adirondack Birding contains 46 color photographs of wild birds taken by Jeff Nadler, one of the region’s premier bird photographers. They include the Park’s boreal species, such as the Bicknell’s thrush, gray jay, rusty blackbird and spruce grouse, and other birds of interest, such as the bald eagle and common loon. The book also has more than 90 black-and-white photos of birds and landscapes. Many of the landscape shots were taken by Carl Heilman II.

Peterson, the longtime regional editor of The Kingbird, an ornithological journal, and Lee, a retired forest ranger, have been birding in the Adirondacks since the 1960s. Both contributed to the Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State.

In 2004, the authors collaborated on Birds of Hamilton County, N.Y., a brochure that lists all the species observed in the county, with dates and locations. Peterson also has authored or edited similar compilations for Franklin and Essex counties. But both saw a need for a guidebook that covered the whole 6-million-acre Adirondack Park and that offered detailed descriptions of sites and their birding potential.

Most of the 60-plus sites described in the book are in the Champlain Valley (such as Crown Point and Noblewood Park), the Tri-Lakes Region (including the High Peaks) or the boreal lowlands in the northwestern Adirondacks (such as Massawepie Mire), since these are the places that attract the species of most interest to birders. However, there are some sites in the southern Adirondacks as well.


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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

UPDATED: Constitutional Amendment for Power Line

One story has been lost in the drama coming out of the New York State Legislature lately: the Constitutional amendment. In May, before it became completely dysfunctional, the NYS Senate passed a bill that would give after-the-fact permission for a new power line from Stark Falls Reservoir to the Village of Tupper Lake. The Constitutional Amendment is necessary to provide an exception to the Forever Wild clause of the Constitution (Article 14, Section 1). The Forever Wild clause forbids logging or development on the Adirondack Forest Preserve, and that includes power lines. The Amendment requires passage by two separately elected legislatures, which is now complete, and then approval by voters on a statewide ballot this fall. » Continue Reading.


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