#75 Just Birding Around
Bird-watching, like other outdoor pastimes that have a specific focus, provides another lens through which to see and understand a watershed. This week, the Rambler joins the Monticello Bird Club for a morning tour of sites in northern Albemarle County.
This show originally aired on January 31, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.
Recently, I have been thinking about the variety of ways one can get to know the watershed. You can take to the water, by canoe or kayak, by jon boat, or propelled by oars. If you don’t have a boat, you can observe from water’s edge, along public trails and at parks that snug the banks of rivers and streams. From bridges, you can see a whole lot, too – so by foot, by bike, by car, even, you can start to know the waterways and the vistas, a sense of the terrain. And there’s also the manner of seeing, focusing on habitat, or geology, or plants. Last week, I joined some folks from the Monticello Bird Club and exercised my vision in yet another way.
Now, I am not what you might think of as a birder. I do know my share of backyard birds and have special affection for many species that frequent our waterways: the kingfisher, the occasional bald eagle and osprey, green and blue herons on the Rivanna. I can identify some hawks. But recognizing and naming these few is relatively rudimentary, so I felt a tad shy joining experienced birders gathered on a Thursday morning. My 8×30 waterproofed binoculars meant for boating felt clunky hanging from my neck, and I knew that my eyes were not trained to identify birds on the wing, or far away, or small, or in the bush. But my new friends were generous with encouragement and eager to share their knowledge.
Guided by Stauffer Miller, who’d scouted the area the day before, piled into one car and headed for a walking trail at Forest Lakes that brought us close to a patch of unfrozen water. It was crowded with Canada geese, mallards, and a “hoodie,” short for the hooded merganser . Binoculars up, we scanned the shore near and far to make sure we’d counted every species. After five minutes, we turned and briskly headed back to the car for the next stop. Passing clumps of grass emerging from the shallows, I wanted to linger at these frozen wetlands that reminded me of similar places I’d explored as a child. But as a newcomer, I was also watching for signals that would help me learn the etiquette associated with this kind of nature observation, and so, I kept up.
Next stop: Chris Greene Lake. It was quiet and flat, a dull gray on a sunny day with high cumulus moving through the blue sky overhead. At the far shore, the birds: a grebe, black ducks, ring neck duck, mallards, hoodies. Over the rise of the earthen dam, bluebirds, juncos, and a mockingbird. An immature bald eagle, all scruffy brown and black, flies across the lake. I wonder if it is the same one I saw earlier in the winter on the South Fork Rivanna.
Then, on to the South Fork Reservoir above the dam. An icy footpath up the shore brings us to a lookout where, across the water, we find an American Coot and more mergansers. Atop a twenty foot snag, a great blue blends in. Again, I want to stop, to take in the colors of winter, the water, and ice, but we’re after birds, so we turn and head back.
Our last stop is off Polo Grounds Road. As we walk across the floodplain towards the river, birds that I cannot see twitter in the tangled shrubs. There are a few mallards upstream just below rocky ledge. We hear the throaty raucous comments of a raven headed purposefully above the fields to the far woods.
I think about how much of my life I have been content to enjoy the natural landscapes I’ve been lucky to live in and visit – and how only just recently, I’ve been attracted to naming species and understanding what their presence or absence can tell us about our natural world. Bird-watching is certainly an acquired skill – and for many, a passion that swoops one up to make lists, travel to far places, drop everything to catch the sight of a bird on the wing. And after today, I think it’s a great way to be outdoors and see the land through a different set of eyes. Where we saw birds today – these are the places that are providing the birds the water and food for wintering here. It is important for us to consider this, if we are to have more than just memories of the birds we saw today.