A Band of Birders
May, 12 2008
“That looked like a Savannah,” Scott Barnes said. “The Grasshopper is going to fly up like a helicopter.”
And so it did, bursting straight up then dropping down over a grassy meadow in Sandy Hook. But this was no insect. Barnes, senior naturalist for the New Jersey Audubon Society’s Sandy Hook Bird Observatory, was talking about two uncommon species of sparrow that the group he led was trying to identify during this weekend’s World Series of Birding.
“I never knew birds until about ten years ago, when I went on a bird watching trip in Sandy Hook,” said Georgia Dempster, a member of Barnes’ group. “It was cold, a February day, but we saw lots of ducks and they didn’t fly away.”
It was an inside joke for birders, who know it gets a lot harder than just sitting ducks. Like that Grasshopper Sparrow, most birds stay out of sight. Working your skills to identify the species, and the easy camaraderie of being outdoors with fellow lovers of feathered beings, is what makes birding fun.
Barnes’ group moved from the meadow to a salt marsh to a bay to a beach, visiting diverse habitats to see different species. Or hear them: identifying an unseen bird by sound counts too. Click here to watch Scott Barnes call out a Barred Owl.
At the World Series of Birding, the fun helps fund environmental non-profits. More than 1,000 birders from across the United States, Europe and Asia were in New Jersey for the event (the cardinal rule is that each bird must be sighted from the Garden State); they or their corporate sponsors pledged a donation for each bird a group identified over the 24-hour period starting midnight Friday. The WSB has raised $8 million for bird conservation since it was founded 25 years ago by noted author and birder Pete Dunne, director of the Cape May Bird Observatory.
This year’s winning group, Nikon Lagerhead Shrikes, totaled 229 species, seven more than the two runners-up but short of the record 231 set in 2003. Birders altogether spotted a cumulative 271 species, just one shy of the record from 2004.
Barnes’ group of about 30 people had an easygoing philosophy. They stayed within the confines of the Sandy Hook peninsula (serious competitors start in the forests of northern New Jersey and work their way down to Cape May) and birded “only” from dawn to dusk. Lunch was leisurely, too.
.But even then people picked up their binoculars in between bites of their sandwiches. The group ended up with 117 species including the Osprey in the photo. They had pledged a buck a bird. That’s about $3,500 for bird conservation. Not a bad haul for birders who spent a day out in the field, doing what they love to do.
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