Birding or “bird-watching” has been a hobby and passion for much of my life but, particularly, since I started to retire in 1996.
I became interested in birds in my primary years as a result of my mother’s feeding birds outside the screened-in porch on the east side of our home at 87 West Wesley Road in Atlanta. Our family spent most summer evenings there since it was the cool side of the house and well-shaded by large hickory and oak trees. There was an ivy-covered bank dropping down to a formal garden with a small pond and fountain in the middle. Yard birds enjoyed the food, the protection in the trees and shrubs, the water and the shade. Frequent visitors included the Carolina Chickadee & Wren; White-throated, Fox and Field Sparrows; Downey and Hairy Woodpeckers; Purple and American Gold Finches; Tufted Titmouse; Rufous-sided (now Eastern) Towhee; Brown Thrasher; Cardinal; Wood Thrush; White-breasted Nuthatch; Brown Creeper.
As a Boy Scout, I completed the Bird Study Merit Badge with the help of a friend of my Mother’s, Mrs. Wilson. She had a much denser garden and more birds and knew them all. It was easy to get to the required 21 or so bird identifications with her. After that my interest in birds waned as I got into girls and more typical pursuits of an adolescent on into young adulthood.
It was not until I was married and transferred to Houston, TX, that my interest in birds was rekindled. An article in the Houston Post about the finding of a rare bird on Galveston Island caught my attention. A school teacher from Austin by the name of Victor Emanuel identified the bird as a rare Eskimo Curlew. Birders came from all over the country to see this bird. Regrettably, I was not one of them: that was the LAST sighting of the Eskimo Curlew. Victor went on to found Victor Emanuel Nature Tours (VENT) one of the most successful bird touring companies.
I was inspired, however, to join the Houston Audubon Society, bought a Golden Bird Guide and pair of inexpensive binoculars and started going out on Audubon field trips as a way to get outside during the hot & humid summers. I enjoyed the chase, the challenge and forgot the miserable heat! When we moved to Los Angeles I continued to hike into local canyons to find birds and get exercise. We also put up bird feeders. This practice continued as we moved around the country. I would usually record the birds I saw in a small notebook, indicating species, place and time. I threw these “lists” into a file. As I grew older I started going out with local Audubon groups and doing annual Christmas Bird Counts. I also started noticing birds during business and vacation trips in the US and overseas, usually keeping records of sightings.
When I returned to California for the final time in 1978, I attended a bird identification class at Foothill College taught by Ted Chandik, a naturalist with the city of Palo Alto. This class included class lectures with slides and field trips to different habitats around the San Francisco Bay Area. I continued to keep my sightings on individual trip lists and in notebooks. My bird file was growing thicker but was rarely revisited and never compiled.
When the the course was completed, several of us students asked Ted to continue and expand the field trips which he did throughout the school year. He extended our outings beyond the Bay Area to other habitats in the state, including Monterey, Yosemite National Park, the Eastern Sierra Nevada and Mono Lake and the Southern California deserts. We also made a “pelagic” trips, boat rides into the near Pacific Ocean from Monterey or Bodega Bay where we would look for sea birds and marine mammals.
Over subsequent years, I became more proficient and could identify most California birds by sight. I was also learning bird calls and songs, which was challenging but rewarding. I listened to tapes as I drove around Silicon Valley and during birding outings. Ted and I grew closer as he recognized my increasing skill level. I helped him during his trips, which were an important source of income to him and financed his birding trips around the world.
n 1996, Ted retired and phoned me in February, as I recall. By that time Trish and I had moved to Inverness. Ted: “Let’s do a big year in California, Rig”. I responded: “What the hell is a big year?”. He explained it meant we would try to identify as many bird species in a year in the state as we could. It did not take me long to accept and we were off and running all over the state in a very proscribed way to see as many species as we could during each season in appropriate places. We would also chase “rarities” when identified by others, such as driving to Orange County on a moment’s notice to see an Ivory Gull which, with great regret on my part, we missed but were able
to see a violet-crowned Hummingbird near San Diego.
We had a wonderful time and became close friends. Ted was living on a fixed income so we generally stayed at a Motel 6 and ate at a lot ofMcDonalds and small Mexican restaurants.
We met other birders along the way. One was Roy Poucher, from Orange County, who was on the same quest as we were but much more dedicated. Roy spent several nights with Trish and me as he drove around the state and finished the year at 473 total, a new record but he was outdone by a retired college professor from San Bernardino at 476. Ted saw 411 and I saw 407.
Our big (really “medium” for Ted & me…) year propelled me into LISTING, which constituted a major shift in my birding hobby. The act of keeping a list of all the birds you see in a year, a state, nation or area propels one into a quest to see more. At the end of 1996, I asked Ted: ”What do I do next; I have now seen all of the common birds in California and many of the uncommon ones. What now?” Ted responded: “how about the ABA (American Birding Association) list for North American (not including Mexico)?” This encouraged me to go back to that old file (which had expanded into a box) that I had carried around with me since early adulthood. So I started a North American list from all of my old lists, which were a good start but had many gaps which I determined to fill.
For the next couple of years I ran around the USA and parts of Canada trying and largely succeeding in filling those gaps. Trips were made to Florida, Texas, Arizona, Minnesota, New England, the North Carolina coast and elsewhere to pick up species that I had not seen. There remained one big gap, however: Alaska, which was a gap for Ted as well.
As fate would have it, it was also a listing gap for Roy Poucher. Roy phoned me in early 1998 and asked whether Ted and I might be interested in a trip he was planning to Alaska. Ted and I enthusiastically joined Roy and Jim Abernathy, also from Southern California, in a grand tour of our 49th state, which supported many birds which rarely if ever made it to the 48 states. It was a fabulous journey. We started in Anchorage, flew to Nome, to Saint Lawrence Island south of the Bering Straights, to the Pribiloff Islands remotely in the southern Bering Sea, back to Anchorage up to Denali National Park across the Denali Highway and back to Anchorage. I saw 24 new species.
I also saw Russia! I was standing alone on the beach at Gambel, an eskimo village on Saint Lawrence Island, one foggy morning and saw two things none of my companions did: A bowhead whale swam by just off-shore, apparently a rare occurrence. Then the fog lifted briefly and I could see the glowing coastal cliffs of Siberia in the morning sun. So, yes indeed, I did see Russia from Alaska but doubt if Sarah Palin ever did….
My North American list was becoming impressive but new birds were becoming much more expensive: “Where to next, Ted?” Reply: “The AOU (American Ornithology Union) list: North America, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and Hawaii”. New worlds to conquer!
With a few exceptions, at that time I had done all of my bird chasing with friends or by myself. I had taken a few trips with professional guides: to Michigan for the Kirkland’s Warbler, the Dry Tortuga Islands off Key West and West Texas and found that the investment paid off with the leader’s knowledge of birds and habitats. I decided I would use such professionally-led tours in the future whenever traveling outside the USA. This decision has paid off.
Over the next several years I traveled to dozens of countries. Since I knew I knew Trish’s tolerance for my travel was limited, as were my finances, I followed Ted’s lead again in determining to see all of the world’s bird families, numbering just over 200 in the early 2000s. My world birding is the subject of another story.
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