This is my time of year for birdwatching rather than birding.
Naomi Lloyd
On June 26, 2019, at 3:10 PM, Andrew Baksh <birdingd...@gmail.com> wrote:
There is something quite serene and enjoyable during those slow periods in
getting to know your common birds. Robins are still cool birds for me;
especially those spotted ones ;-)
The reality is, we live in the age of instant gratification. We want our birds
now! Fast and lined up for us.
--------
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of
others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence." ~ Frederick
Douglass
風 Swift as the wind
林 Quiet as the forest
火 Conquer like the fire
山 Steady as the mountain
Sun Tzu The Art of War
(\__/)
(= '.'=)
(") _ (")
Sent from somewhere in the field using my mobile device!
Andrew Baksh
www.birdingdude.blogspot.com
On Jun 26, 2019, at 2:26 PM, ArieGilbert <ariegilb...@optonline.net> wrote:
Re doldrums: one cannot appreciate a great day of birding without bad days.
Yin/Yang
Also its important to have LOOB
( life outside of birding )
Arie Gilbert
No. Babylon NY
www.PowerBirder.Blogspot.com
www.QCBirdClub.org
Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
-------- Original message --------
From: Shaibal Mitra <shaibal.mi...@csi.cuny.edu>
Date: 6/26/19 11:11 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: "NYSBIRDS (NYSBIRDS-L@cornell.edu)" <NYSBIRDS-L@cornell.edu>
Subject: [nysbirds-l] Purposeful Birdwatching
Judging from many, many recent conversations with fellow birders, it seems that
people are having a tough time of it during these June doldrums. From
independent sources over the past week, I've heard: "crushing disappointment;"
"why is it so bad?;" "is it going to get better?" "something could show up,
right?;" "didn't birding used to be good?;" "this place used to be good, I
think" and more. And this has mostly been in the context of ordinary, local
birding, not directly related to the more ominous big-picture concerns
expressed by Chris recently.
My usual response, admittedly slightly sadistic, is that birding excitement has
always been relative. We modern observers can't begin to imagine how bad it was
before the legal protection of birds was implemented a century ago, and yet the
observers of that time still found birdwatching exciting--and were motivated
enough to achieve protective legislation in the face of forces as ruthless and
malevolent as those confronting us now. Imagine the excitement experienced by
Harry Hathaway, the father of Rhode Island ornithology, when in 1894 he saw his
first Great Blue Heron, after ten years of field work! It was Hathaway's
ongoing work that eventually revealed that a unique, seemingly outlying, 19th
Century winter record of White-throated Sparrow in RI was not an accident. He
documented two more winter records and lived long enough to see RI's plundered
and deforested landscape recover sufficiently to harbor the lisping flocks of
White-throats we now take for granted on the CBCs.
On Long Island, Ludlow Griscom scolded over-exuberant birders who tossed off
sight records of Ring-billed Gulls in winter and summer, citing a countable
number of such specimens as the gold standard of documentation for that species
in that context. Chafing at this discipline, Cruickshank and Peterson figured
out how to find and identify Ring-billed Gulls better then their
predecessors--proving again the eternal pleasure of purposeful birdwatching.
Yesterday I saw my first adult Ring-billed Gulls of the season at Robert Moses
SP, Suffolk County. I'm not sure of the date for my last spring adult, but I
did manage to record that none were present by 17 April:
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S55097294
And I am able to pull up the date of the late-June return of adults in at least
one other year:
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S17210602
[note to eBird: please enable sorting of checklists by Julian date!]
A little sleuthing subsequently revealed that two of my colleagues beat me to
it this year, documenting an adult Ring-bill at Cupsogue two days before my
exciting find (though it required some follow-up work to obtain their photos
and a definitive age):
https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S57623401
Hypothesis: Ring-billed Gulls whose breeding efforts fail after early June
abandon the colonies and disperse, some reaching the coast.
Shai Mitra
Bay Shore
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