Outside My Window

Weather:  We had an east wind today - not good in this land where the prevailing wind is from the southwest.   Eventually the wind dropped and it began to rain steadily.  I took a picture at 5:00pm near the Cathedral of Learning.  Dreary, dreary sky.  Not a good day for watching birds.

As of yesterday Pittsburgh’s precipitation was 2.39″ (that’s 37%) above normal for the year - in only 10 weeks.  No wonder the rivers are in flood.

Meanwhile my car developed a leak in the driver’s side door that made the carpet into a squishy, water-seeping bog.  I had it fixed today… I hope.

Crows:  Bonnie Jeanne Tibbetts brought an NPR story to my attention called “Taking Over the World One Crow at a Time.”  Apparently Josh Klein invented a box that teaches crows to pick up loose change in exchange for peanuts.  I have no idea if he’s tried it on wild crows yet, but I’d love to be there when he does. 

Bird song:  As the days lengthen, more birds are singing every day.  Yesterday was a good day to hear cardinals, robins, song sparrows, house finches, goldfinches and the mockingbird at Pitt.

Last Wednesday, March 5, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote a feature article about my addiction to peregrine falcons.  They included this picture of me by Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette.  Now my birding friends will be able to identify me in the field.   ;-)

Needless to say, I am very pleased. 

Click here or on the picture to read the article.

No birding trip to Central Florida is complete without a visit to Merritt Island, home of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and thousands upon thousands of birds. 

Chuck, Joan and I visited it a week ago to look for Florida scrub jays, painted buntings and roseate spoonbills (spoonbills photo by Chuck Tague). 

Heavy rain moved in from the north so our trip was abbreviated but we managed to stop at Palm Hammock Trail, Haulover Canal, Black Point Drive and the Visitors’ Center before it poured.  We couldn’t find any painted buntings - hungry mosquitoes chased us away! -  but I loved seeing an adult peregrine falcon, American avocets and my favorite pink bird: roseate spoonbills.

Merritt Island is a magical place so we were dismayed to learn that all of this beauty may soon be gone, its fate decided in the next six months.

NASA is proposing two possible sites for a 200-acre commercial space launch area.  Both sites will have an impact on wildlife but Site 2 would close all the places we visited including the Visitors Center.  No more visits to Merritt Island!

Because of federal budget issues, NASA is worried their Florida operation will be eliminated so the commercial launch site is being touted as a typical jobs-versus-environment argument.  What is lost in this discussion are the jobs generated by the 500,000 to 750,000 visitors per year who come from all over the world to see Merritt Island’s wildlife.

Last week there were public meetings in Titusville and New Smyrna Beach where NASA laid out their plans.  NASA owns the land and can take it back at will.  Their schedule for doing so is here.

For more information about the project and its impacts, see http://environmental.ksc.nasa.gov/projects/ksc-cvlc.htm. 

You can influence NASA’s site decision by submitting your comments to the address below.  You can also help by spreading the news to others who love Merritt Island. 

Send comments to:

Mario Busacca, Environmental Program Office
Mail Code TA-C3
Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899
Telephone: 321-867-8456; FAX: 321-867-8040
E-mail: KSC-CVLC@nasa.gov 

A friend and I were musing about the late 1980’s.  My goodness, how birding has changed in the last twenty years! 

Back then binoculars, a field guide and the rare bird hotline were our suite of tools.  I had a computer then (it’s my job) but Internet connections were so expensive that the software company I worked for didn’t have one.

Communication used to take a while.  A rare bird could come and go and only one person would ever know it was there.  If you wanted to tell someone, you had to drive to the nearest pay phone.  Now most birders have cell phones and those who search for rarities are in constant touch.

Other than my binoculars, the Internet is my favorite birding tool.  Email lists have replaced the telephone hotlines and Google enhances our field guides with easy access to bird identification websites. 

It is so easy to find information on the Internet that you hardly have to own a book about birds, though I am such a book lover I still want to own them all.  

Photography has changed birding dramatically.  Before the days of affordable digital cameras, it was expensive to develop film, it took an expert to edit the results and sharp details could only be achieved with high-powered lenses.  Digital photography has changed all that. Photo sharing websites give everyone access to thousands of excellent pictures. 

In the midst of all this change there is one constant:  friends.  The Internet has helped this too.  Online I’ve met birders from around the state and around the world.  At birding hotspots we meet in person, happy to put a face to the names we know so well. 

It is so satisfying to share a bird moment with friends - our sightings and knowledge, disappointments and joys.  That’s why I enjoy writing this blog.

All in all I think birding has improved considerably.

People often ask me why I’m interested in birds. 

My husband insists it was meant to be after I had a part in a French play at the age of six.  My costume was blue from head to toe and I had one line: ”Je suis un oiseau bleu.”   “I am a bluebird.”

But really, it’s because they fly.  They’re beautiful, and they fly, and they fly beautifully.  This rules out insects - but I never did like bugs.

I remember the first bird that fascinated me:  the common nighthawk.  When I was in grade school we lived in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, near an apartment building with a gravel roof.  Every summer I sat on our front steps and watched the nighthawks’ courtship, the flapping flight, the peenting, dive and boom. 

When I was twelve we moved to an area that had recently been a farm.  I spent my first summer there walking the remnant woods in the creek bottom.  One day I literally came face to face with a red-eyed, olive-green bird.  At home I searched my field guide.  It was a red-eyed vireo.

Over the years I’ve gotten better at identifying birds.  Each spring, after my ears get back in tune, I can identify many of them by voice. 

True confessions of a birder:  I can’t be at an outdoor party without silently identifying all the birds nearby.  I keep this ability under wraps (imagine not paying attention at an outdoor wedding!) but it is practically impossible for me not to see and hear them.  

I love the flash of wings. The red-eyed vireo looked me in the eye and I’ve been looking back ever since.

That’s me on an outing to Conneaut Marsh, photo by Z Taylor.

An animal-lover friend of mine began to feed the birds and was shocked when a coopers hawk killed a mourning dove at her feeder.  She does not eat meat and wanted to know if she could train the coopers not to eat meat either.  “If I put out more corn, will he eat the corn and not the doves?”

“No,” I said, “he will not eat corn.  He’s a carnivore.  That’s just how it is.”

Because humans are omnivores and we grow our own food, we find it hard to imagine the lives of creatures who must hunt to live.  If a coopers hawk is not an efficient hunter, if it does not kill birds, it will die.  It would be cruel to the hawk if it could not hunt. 

But what about the prey species?  Is it cruel to them that they are hunted? 

There is a beautiful poem by James Dickey in which he describes the heaven where wild animals go.  Called The Heaven of Animals he describes the predators in their heaven crouched on the limbs of trees and writes,

“And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance, compliance.”

The universe is structured so that everything is eaten by something - in the grave, if not before. What an amazing cycle.

That’s just how it is.