With unusual Stetson stylin’, the 108th annual National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count (CBC) got underway in New Haven.
Bird enthusiasts such as Mark Aronson gathered on frigid Saturday morning in Edgewood Park and sites throughout the city. Aronson was part of a four-member team assigned to Area N, which covers a good part of the city — roughly from Union Station to Forest Road and, on the north-south axis, Route One to Beaver Pond.
Their mission: to note every species they can find and make a census of each. Hundreds of other birders in 14 other Greater New Haven area teams fanned out in bird-rich areas such as East Rock, Lighthouse Point, and the Branford shoreline. Their goal was to collect data that, accumulated and compared over years, provides the best available numbers on increases and decreases in bird populations.
As they assembled in front of the ranger station at Edgewood Avenue, Aronson’s team — with captain, in the sunglasses, Larry Bausher, a retired chemist, Hopkins School senior Arjun Potter, and Yale cardiologist Bill Batsford — had another, darker motive apart from making their contribution to conservation, science, and what Audubon describes as the longest-running wildlife census in the world:
Last year the New Haven Circle (all the teams in the Greater New Haven area) logged 131 different species, making them the second-highest in New England. Would the guys from Area N and the other teams see enough Waxwings, Brown Creepers, and Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers, or perhaps the much anticipated Winter Finches to earn the bronze again, or, better yet, the ornithological gold?
They would find out at day’s end, when all the birders unfreeze at a festive dinner, this year held at the Connecticut Agricultural Station. There, as 400-plus species known in Connecticut are called out, each team responds aloud if it has seen it, and shouts out the estimated numbers.
But that would be many hours and many Mallards in the future. Crunching snow on the paths of beautiful early morning Edgewood Park, within the first 40 minutes or so these keen-eyed fellows, carrying binoculars, cameras, and bird guides, were already tallying a dozen Blue jays, Starlings, Great Blue Herons many Canada Geese, Carolina Wrens, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, and Juncos.
When a reporter looked up into the sky and cried, “There’s a gull,” Aronson turned, lowered his binoculars and, with just the smallest pause of disdain, said: “During the Christmas Bird Count, there is no such thing as ‘any old gull.’ That happens to be a Great Black-back. And over there is a Herring Gull.”
Bausher quickly made notes.
You get the idea. Aronson has been fascinated by birds since a science teacher inspired him in grade school. Bausher got started only ten years ago when birds destroyed a feeder in his back yard and his curiosity was piqued to find out who the creatures were that did this. Bill Batsford said he loves ornithology because it gets him out of doors and he likes learning things and there is always more to learn about birds. Seventeen-year-old Arjun Potter is an ornithological disciple of Aronson. (Full disclosure: Aronson, a paintings conservator at the Yale Center for British Art, is also the Independent’s highly paid bird consultant.)
Potter has on his “life list” even more birds than Aronson, some 600 (perhaps due to Arjun’s world traveling; he has an Indian mother). Aronson, decades older, has on his life list 503.
Aronson, however, outdoes Potter in birds on his Connecticut list, some 283 to Potter’s in the lower 200s. But birding is not about competition … not at all!
Still, the number of species was adding up, and Area N was making its contribution.
“Yellow Bellied Sapsucker,” Aronson called out, “up there,” and he pointed in the distance to the bare limbs of an oak, “hammering away.” Everyone stopped crunching snow, raised their glasses, the park fell silent of human sounds, and we listened.
In a few seconds, however, Aronson changed his mind based on the birdsong — an acceptable means of ID provided the bird’s not too rare and one or two others agree. There it was, then, a bird Aronson identified not as the YBS but as a Brown Creeper.
“A creeper, by the way,” young Potter explained to a reporter, “creeps only up the tree. A nuthatch goes mainly down.”
Birds, like birders, appear to be very organized.
When you’re with people who really see ornithologically, the bushes bordering an Edgewood soccer field in winter become not desolate tangles but display areas ornamented by Goldfinches, Juncos with their lively calls, and American Tree Sparrows. The skies too are suddenly full of “sharpies,” that is Sharp-shinned Hawks.
As we stood in the middle of a field of snow one Sharpie was having a dog fight, or perhaps it was a bird fight with a crow right above our heads. The large brown raptor seemed to swoop and play with the far smaller crow. Yet the crow, triumphing for the moment, drove the hawk out of its territory.
By 9 o’clock, the species count was up to about 25. As we passed the Coogan Pavillion near Whalley Avenue, Bausher, who is active with the New Haven Bird Club, relived a moment from last year’s ornithological glory. “We saw two Red-headed Woodpeckers right around here last year,” he said. “One was immature, but the other was just right, and it stayed around and stayed around. I was in touch with the rare bird alert people, and scores of birders came out and identified it for their lists. Very exciting.”
As the Area N team walked on to the Edgewood Avenue Bridge, Aronson explained that he might also go out on Sunday with teams from the Westport area, storm permitting. With the participation of local bird clubs and state organizations, the CBC is a national census that will be taking place on the three weekends proximate to Christmas, between Dec. 14 and January 5. “Actually,” said Aronson, “it’s not American, but North American.”
As he tried to climb a tree to check out a potential hole made by an owl, he groused a bit (pun intended) that he was not perhaps in other areas. “On a day like today, with so much ice here, there will be more birds, ducks, and species like that near the water.”
Nevertheless, while turning a curve in the path, Batsford saw a flock of ducks, likely Mergansers, on some running water in the distance of an otherwise frozen pond. Bausher approached and thought he saw a Gadwall; he ran to his car to get a tripod to make the identification.
It was about 10 o’clock, and at least 35 species were by now tallied, including the relatively uncommon yellow sapsucker and that brown creeper. An abundant number of Black-capped Chickadees were also singing about their breakfasts, and it was time for a reporter to go home to add dozens of these birds to his list, if he could find his list. The intrepids from the Area N team, however, would be continuing on for the remainder of the day’s light.
“Maybe we’ll go down to where the West River comes out near Route One, “ said Aronson. “Or we’ll go over to the golf course. Who knows. Wherever the captain sends us. The idea is not, you see, to run over to a parking lot where we know there are a lot of Canada Geese, let’s say a hundred of them. It’s not numbers we’re after but species.”
“The numbers,” added Potter, “you see, have meaning then only over the years. Today’s count favors rarer species — that’s what we really want to find — and the more common ones that sort of announce themselves. So the picture it gives us is only a kind of ‘relative abundance.’”
Roll the ornithological clock some eight hours forward. Aronson phoned in fthis report rom the post-count dinner, where “the room was full of animated birders, all thawing out.”
The unofficial total for the New Haven Area count was 132 species, breaking the record, if official!
Or did Aronson cook the bird books?
Aronson also reported new birds for the area included Northern Roughwinged Swallow, Broadwinged Hawk, and Parasitic Jaeger. As he suspected, the shoreline teams had the best luck. While Team N tallied an impressive 51 species, the Area H team, the Branford Shoreline team, reported an amazing 106 species in one day in New Haven in mid December.
For fuller details, two good sites ar: newhavenbirdclub.org and audubon.org/bird/cbc
Join our Birdwatcher Watcher's Association meeting this weekend. We will travel to the spots listed above to locate and photograph as many birdwatchers as possible. The Wintry Cowboy-Hatted Caucasian, seen in the topmost picture, is quite rare in these parts.