Wilderness

The Week in Review for today's New York Times contains an article on remaining wilderness areas within the United States as well as the problems they face. Pollution, overgrazing (by cattle or deer), and housing developments are only some of the challenges. Bush's repeal of Clinton's roadless rule for certain wild areas does not help the situation. A map of development versus wilderness across the lower 48 states is particularly interesting. Most wilderness is in the west, while the east is almost solidly developed, with a few small exceptions like the Adirondacks in New York. This short piece is worth a look.

Trip Report: Sandy Hook, NJ

I am still out of town, visiting family in New Jersey and New York, and I will continue to be doing some occasional birding during that time. This afternoon I, along with several family members, visited one of the birding shore birding spots in Central Jersey, Sandy Hook. (The virtual tours in that link are highly recommended.)

In summer there is a $10 fee to enter Sandy Hook, but it is still free for birders who park in certain lots. (The fee is really only to cover the cost of providing life guards and other services for the swimming beaches.) So we went all the way out to the north end where there is a hawk watch platform. This platform is built on top of one of the old gun emplacements from when Sandy Hook was a military base to protect New York harbor. Now there is still a Coast Guard base at the very tip of the hook, but the rest of the bunkers that litter the hook are off-limits and in varying states of decay. The view to the beach is blocked at the parking lot for the hawk watch by a line of bunkers that are now crowned by sumacs and poison ivy rather than the naval siege guns aimed at German submarines during the two world wars. A field in the parking lot was overgrown with grasses and wildflowers, ideal for many butterfly species, including monarchs, a mourning cloak, clouded sulphurs, cabbage whites, and a silver-spotted skipper. My sister thought a viceroy was in the mix as well. When we first arrived there was a cloud of butterflies, but these slowly dispersed before we could identify all of them.

The hawk watch is only active during spring migration, but there were still raptors to be seen from the observation deck as most osprey nests were still operative. Unfortunately I could not make out any chicks in the nests, but many of the platforms had two adult osprey perched upon them. From the observation deck we were given a show by two brown thrashers who took sand baths in the dunes and then began sparring with each other.

The beach is a long walk along the Fishermen's Trail from the hawk watch. Because of the frequent foot traffic, the sand along the trail is very difficult for walking, to the point that some people have begun walking over the intact parts of the dunes as well. I hope that NJ Audubon will put up a fence to stop this; otherwise the whole dune will be destroyed sooner or later. There are ponds on either side of the trail. The one on the left had a large congregation of shorebirds and gulls. Unfortunately I could not make out much without a scope. There did appear to be some larger shorebirds, perhaps yellowlegs, but this could not be confirmed. Large chunks of the beach have been closed off with temporary fencing for nesting shorebirds and terns, but there is still plenty of room for walking in the surf and surf fishing. See, birds and people can get along no matter how much people complain about restrictions.

One of my hobby horses on this blog has been the state of certain species of concern, especially the least tern and piping plover. Well, this afternoon we saw least terns and a single piping
plover, two birds on NJ's endangered species list. The piping plover was a lifer for me. It was alone with a group of sanderlings, who later took off, leaving the plover all alone. This group was a few yards inside of the restriced area, while we watched from a few yards outside of the restricted area. The piping plover blended in with the sand quite well, and it required several sweeps with the binoculars for me to make it out. Further down the beach was an American oystercatcher, one of my all-time favorite birds. (Need I explain?) The least and common terns, both of which nest at the hook, were vocalizing in a way that I had never heard before. Now that I am home five hours later I cannot describe this call adequately; it was kind of like a gull's, except more raucous and throaty. I assume this active vocalization was related to their proximity to nesting territories. The signs marking the restriced areas also mentioned black skimmers as nesting there, but I saw none; I do not know if any actually bred there this summer.

Sanderling amaze me with the way they can run back and forth, dodging the incoming waves while snatching the bits of food washed up by the surf. I am surprised that more of them are not drowned by the waves. Terns also amaze me by their ability to dive into the waves and pick out small fish, while avoiding the oncoming waves. All such species require an uncanny sense of the rhythm of the surf greater than that of even the best human surfers.

In winter one can usually see New York from the end of the Fishermen's Trail. Today Brooklyn was barely visible and I could see only the ghost of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge with my binoculars. Manhattan was right out. Oddly enough Staten Island was invisible as well.

There are several places to stop and bird on the bay side of the hook. Today we only stopped at the southernmost cove. (I believe this is Spermacetti Cove, but I may be wrong.) We did not add much here except for a semipalmated plover, spotted sandpiper, and least sandpiper. Several heron species perched in the trees above the marsh grasses. The mosquitos were more apparent than birds along that trail, so we left before providing any more dinner for the hungry insects.

Note

I am out of town for a week or two, so the posts to my blog have been and will be a little less frequent than usual. However, I do plan to get some longer posts up at the beginning of next week, so do have patience and check back once in a while. Once I am back in Washington, I will get back to my normal posting routine.

This afternoon I saw a mourning cloak butterfly for the first time.

Bird News

The Christian Science Monitor reviews two books on birding. The first is William Souder's Under a Wild Sky, a book about John James Audubon and the beginning of American ornithology. The second is Tim Gallagher's The Grail Bird, an account of his chase after the ivory-billed woodpecker, a chase that he claims was ultimately successful when he and Bobby Harrison saw the bird from a canoe. The reviewer claims that the authors are better at portraying the strange people that their subjects encounter than the birds themselves. One ought to consider the intended subjects of the books before seeing this as criticism. Meanwhile, the Macon Telegraph has a list of the books concerning the ivory-billed woodpecker.

This space has perhaps been unduly concerned with piping plovers and least terns. Well, there is room for at least one more article. The Billings Gazette reports that in North Dakota, at least, piping plovers and least terns are doing well, with the former at 1756 individuals and the latter at 904, both record numbers.

The South Bend-Elkhart Audubon Society in Indiana is looking for information about bird observations in local parks. The society wants to nominate Potato Creek, Boot Lake, and Bendix Meadows as important bird areas, and needs further data regarding observations - both species seen and number of individuals, if possible. Even though this is in Indiana, and not the D.C. area, I post it because it is an example of how layman birders can contribute to conservation through their hobby. Some other examples are listed here.

A Sultry Evening Twitch

A report on MDOsprey last night noted the presence of a yellow-crowned night-heron and a tundra swan, two locally uncommon species, near the Chain Bridge. The latter is not made out of chains, nor is there anything about it that suggests instability. I presume the name comes from an earlier version of the bridge. The Chain Bridge crosses the Potomac River and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal just inside Washington's border with Maryland. The walkway on the north spot looks down upon a series of ponds and meadows created by the rock formations in the river gorge below.

I debated with myself about whether to go look for these two birds. As likely as not they would not be around, I thought, and it was hot and the trip through Georgetown to the canal can be long at times. But I decided that two local rarities increased the odds enough, so off I went in the early evening. The bus dropped me near Fletcher's Boathouse around 7 pm, and I walked the half-mile or so from there to the Chain Bridge. The evening was hot and hazy. The thermometer sat around 92°F when I left and was only down to 89°F when I returned home; the humidity was about 60%. I could see the humidity in the thick haze that blanketed the river valley. Even though the sun was above the horizon, it was barely visible through the mix of clouds and haze.

Not many birds were stirring. I heard one pileated woodpecker and saw a wood duck with three ducklings in the same place I have seen a wood duck family for the past three summers. More wood ducks awaited when I mounted the Chain Bridge and began looking down into the ponds. The land below the bridge presents lush green foliage contrasting with the deep grays of the ponds and rocks, with the dark brown ribbon of the Potomac coursing just beyond. Within the meadows, white-tailed deer browse. As often as I have seen them there, they still can be a startling sight when I see their heads sticking up out of the grasses. The trees were alive with red-winged blackbirds and American goldfinches, while one gaudy yellow warbler wrestled with a caterpillar. About five green herons and three black-crowned night-herons patrolled the ponds. One first-summer night-heron bent over holding its bill in the water, presumably waiting for some fish to swim past.

Though I checked each pond carefully, I could not find the yellow-crowned night-heron. If I had, it would have been a year-bird and a DC-bird for me. As it is, the yellow-crowned night-heron will have to wait. This is one reason I tend to be reluctant to twitch; the cost in time and energy is quite high if I fail to see the reported species.

However, I did see the tundra swan. Tundra swans are fairly common along the east coast in winter; in the Washington area they winter along the Chesapeake Bay and in the Eastern Shore in great numbers. But the swans rarely come all the way up to Washington itself. (Even mute swans are rarely seen here.) My only other tundra swan within the district was last summer, on June 17.

This bird apparently showed up around May 15 of this year. This is clearly not a breeding individual since only one has been seen during the past two months. Most likely this swan chose not to make the long flight back to the tundra of northern Canada and Alaska, its normal breeding ground, and settled for the summer along the Potomac. I tend to think this is a first-summer bird because the head and neck were somewhat grayish. If tundra swans wait several years before their first breeding, as several other large species do, then this individual may be too young for breeding, and thus did not need to make the flight to the tundra. Unfortunately I was not able to confirm this breeding pattern in any of my books, though Frank C. Bellrose, in his Ducks, Geese, and Swans of North America, speculates that tundra swans wait to breed until their third summer.

This swan certainly looked out of place. I am used to seeing tundra swans on wide bays and lakes choked with ice, when I am bundled to stave off the cold, not in a small pond on one of the hottest nights of the summer. Tundra swans have as their scientific name cygnus columbianus, "dove-like swan." The white feathers and graceful shape contrasted sharply with the muddy embankment upon which it stood while it preened itself; grayish head aside, this bird's whiteness stood out like a beacon. And the swan was big; it easily dwarfed the wood ducks and green herons with which it shared the pond.

So was it worth the trip? Yes, even if I missed the main species I wanted to see. I had the opportunity to watch some herons at work, saw a swan that is unusual in Washington, and did those things in a beautiful spot. And that kind of combination is what keeps me birding.

Before sending this post to the server, I have to register a complaint. Washington, D.C., has many wonderful natural areas in addition to the more familiar memorials of the Mall. However, many of these natural areas are difficult to reach, either requiring long rides with multiple connections, or in places that are otherwise difficult to reach without a car. The C & O Canal is a case in point. Someone without a car has basically three choices to reach the canal. One is at the start of the canal in Georgetown. The other two are bridges across the canal at Fletcher's Boathouse and Arizona Avenue. The first requires a walk down a steep winding road without a sidewalk, followed by crossing the busy Canal Road without benefit of a stoplight near a blind curve. The second requires walking down a steep hill on a road, again without a sidewalk; at the end one has to walk up an embankment to reach a bicycle bridge to cross Canal Road and the Canal, and then walk down a steep embankment on the other side to reach the towpath. Neither of these is pedestrian-friendly. A city should not be this way.

BIRDS SEEN AND HEARD: 22

Great Blue Heron
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night-Heron
Tundra Swan
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Mallard
Ring-billed Gull
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Chimney Swift
Pileated Woodpecker
Eastern Kingbird
Northern Mockingbird
American Robin
European Starling
House Sparrow
American Goldfinch
Yellow Warbler
Northern Cardinal
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle