There are birding days you will never forget.
I recently had a few. Almost inadvertently met my Big Year goal, but am not quite there. I have about eight months to log ten more species. Seems doable. I can think of ten species I know I’ll see but haven’t logged yet.
Recent outings brought King and Clapper Rail, White Ibis, Swamp Sparrow. Western Cattle, Snowy, and Great Egrets.
Also a Sedge Wren, Barred Owl, Brown-headed Nuthatch. Pied-billed Grebe, Loggerhead Shrike, Sora, Hooded and Yellow-throated Warblers. Little Blue Heron, Red-eyed, White-eyed, and Blue-headed Vireos, Northern Parula.
Black-bellied Whistling and Wood Ducks, Blue-winged Teal, and a species of waterfowl that had me and Merlin thoroughly stumped for days. Lighter, large. Was totally flummoxed. I thought I liked ducks and knew them fairly well.
Khaki Campbell Duck. Common on small farms, I guess. No idea why one was where I was, but a nice encounter. Knelt in the mud and crept very close to it.
The standout bird, far and away, was the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Saw perhaps three. A special species of bird.
In the ‘70s, there were only about 10,000 remaining. Now they’re listed at 15,000, but still declining—per the American Bird Conservancy. The red cockade isn’t immediately visible. A cockade is an ornamental ribbon for a hat; these woodpeckers, the males, have a tiny red mark on the neck.
The Red-cockaded Woodpecker is a habitat specialist. It likes old growth longleaf pine, preferably trees a century old.
It’s one of the few woodpeckers to make cavities in live trees—which can take years. The reason for this is so the pitch drips and deters predators, mainly rat snakes. You can see dry sap around the holes.
I initially planned to have my Red-cockaded Woodpecker post be a re-emergence of my old “Species Saturday” form. Still might write another more in-depth essay specifically about them, longer than the old Species Saturdays, but I opted to use them as a vehicle to address other ideas for now. A touch sappier—fine since none of you is a rat snake.
If you’d like only to learn more about the birds, there are some great podcasts: an episode of Threatened, another of Bird Notes (not to be confused with BirdNote).
Humans, being humans, have encroached upon and/or eradicated much viable habitat for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker. Habitat specialists, they like what they like. Expanses of remaining habitat include Fort Benning and other military bases. Another is a National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana, a specific trail where I went.
Though going to said refuge is among your best bets if you want to see a Red-cockaded Woodpecker, it’s no guarantee. In preparation, I read articles by birders who’d been multiple times, specifically to see the bird, but had no sightings.
I’d traveled to Louisiana for my cousin’s wedding. My objectives were:
1. Be there for a wonderful day. Incorporate Gahu on the dance floor, “get low” when the song of that title requested I do so. Enjoy all the cousins being together for the first time in five years. Last time was for a funeral, a wedding was an improvement.
2. See a Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, and a Prothonotary Warbler. One rarer than the other two species, but you don’t get Black-bellied Whistling Ducks everywhere, and Prothonotary Warblers are important to me.
You might think only one of those items would be an emotional affair. A family wedding: emotional; birds: not so much. Both were. The woodpecker made me well up. Birds with good stories—not over, in the woodpecker’s case—do that to me.
I have a penchant for assigning meaning to birds. I’d assigned meaning to the woodpecker. Sometimes assigning meaning is an unfortunate penchant, but I try to assign positive ones.
A meaningful bird to me is the Prothonotary Warbler.
The last time I saw one, before I recently did, was in 2018 with my late grandparents. They were not birders, but I dragged them to bird with me when I’d gone to Florida to see them.
The next time I saw a Prothonotary Warbler was six years later in Jean Lafitte, Louisiana, with their son—my uncle. An impressive, fiercely intelligent guy. Hell of a dancer, as put into evidence at the wedding. I won’t recite his bonafides.
Being my grandfather’s son, elements of Papa are evident. When we saw that warbler, it felt like my grandfather was with us. I love and miss him, am glad I didn’t stop drinking until after he passed. Shared his beloved Manhattans for cherished moments.
That morning he was a flash of yellow as the sun started to rise. Birding commenced early that morning; it was the first bird we saw. Saw one again later on with some sun.
One of my cousins semi-jokingly suggested I introduce my uncle to birding. Truth in jest. He’s already a fan of the Merlin app, sound ID. His first two birding days yielded a rare woodpecker and a very close Barred Owl.
“This sets a pretty high bar. It doesn’t always go like this,” I joked. One morning, we discussed woodpeckers and binoculars. A pair of his own were a thank you.
It’s easy to think of birds as just, well, birds. Nothing more. They are, but they are also so much more—because they are nothing more. Them being more than birds is contingent upon them being only birds.
Whatever you have going on, there are birds. They’re there regardless. If you are sad, they don’t care. If your internal monologue has been harsh, they drown it out with birdsong. If you are happy, they also do not care. Looking for them can add to the happiness, or sometimes detract. Maybe you won’t see the species you hoped to see.
I can think of birds I saw at low points. Abyssopelagic, sometimes; other times amid smaller potatoes—really not that low. Still: Osprey, Palm Warbler, Ruddy Turnstones.
Other things were on my mind, too, before I saw that Red-cockaded Woodpecker, the Prothonotary Warblers and Barred Owl. Then they weren’t. Hard to think of anything else in their presence. A Swamp Sparrow also flitted about, offering the chance to share intimate morning space with it, focus solely on a gorgeous grey-faced sparrow.
Regardless of where your head is at, there are still birds, indifferent and beautiful. Sure, they’re just birds, but the fact that they are still just birds—a constant—can help you insert some remove between you and whatever is running riot in your head.
They provide common ground. Not everybody is a birder, but anybody can see or hear a bird. It isn’t infrequent to have somebody’s opening line to me be, “You like birds, right?” Or, “I hear you like birds.” I don’t hate being known for that.
Going to look for birds is also a good excuse to spend time with somebody you wish to spend time with. A welcome thing to do.
You can learn a lot about a person by birding with them. If they are truly averse to looking for birds, chances are they are not worth spending time with to begin with.
Walking miles in pursuit of birds lets you cross paths with flowers, trees, butterflies, ferns, deer, shrews—much, much more.
I was out looking for birds; another birder stopped me—psssst, psssst!!—to point out a Yellow-crowned Night Heron at close range, and show me pictures of a Black-crowned Night Heron she’d taken on her phone. I scrolled through some pictures on my camera display to show her. We also talked about bass fishing, were near where a seven pound largemouth had recently been caught.
Then she led me to a spot where she often sees a Great Horned Owl. No owl, but as we left the spot we saw butterflies. “Do you do butterflies?” she asked before explaining she liked to look for them but only knew a few species.
“I try. Harder to take pictures of a butterfly in the air than of birds,” I said. We stopped and watched various types of Swallowtails, I explained I’d seen a Monarch just before.
This was quite a circuitous and long-winded way to arrive at this destination, and I also just wanted to recount some outings, but birds are more than just birds.
It can be hard to explain this when I’m asked why I like them. They’re just birds but they are vessels for the meaning you assign to them. Make that meaning positive, the birds deserve nothing but good. If birds bring good to your life, give them a fitting connotation.
Great birding and a other creatures, James. I assign meaning to birds and other wildlife too. They have memories of the encounter, the outing I was on, who I was with how I felt, all attached to them.
Excellent essay, James. Really appreciate the sheer variety of species in the photos. I like your point about seeing a bird and they really don't care one way or the other. It's really up to us the observer to find meaning and emotion in the experience.
It's funny, I've been eagerly waiting the return of the Great Blue Herons and Black-crowned Night Herons here in Ottawa - they have yet to return and settle in my local conservation area. I could feel a little disappointed in not seeing them on my recent hikes, but again, they don't really care. Haha. They're on their own schedule and will arrive when they arrive.