Ash-throated Flycatcher, Greenwood Cemetery (Brooklyn); 27 Nov 2020 by Deborah Allen
2 December 2020
Bird Notes: We've made a preemptive strike and cancelled this coming Saturday's bird walk (5 December): forecast is for rain all day. Sunday morning (6 Dec) is looking questionable as well - but we will be there at 7:30am/9:30am. On the other hand, the Barred Owl walk at Riverside Park will be fine! Sunday, 6 December meeting at Riverside Drive and 115th street at 4pm - details on the SCHEDULE page on this web site.
Welcome to December: the nerves and delicate psyches of many NYC birders are already frayed. Why? Owls of course! As we've seen every year about this time, birder emotions are running high with the arrival of owls to overwinter in some NYC parks. Condemnations of bad birders, unethical birders and Bob (aka SOB, sweet old bob) can be found on the web. You would think I was shooting owls on my night walks. I (me bob) have become the Lucifer of birdwatching: a good angel gone baaad...someone using his PhD and meager talents to lead others astray to birding hell. NYC Owls have always aroused controversy, and usually lead to some sort of social media war. We advise you to be like an owl in all of this: watch bemused from your perch, and hope that no one kills themselves in an attempt to take the moral high ground.
Northern Pygmy Owl in Washington State January 2019
Rather than try and defend what we do, we've called on several "professional" ornithologists to help. In this week's Historical Notes we provide articles and emails that make a strong case why bringing as many people as possible to see owls is a good thing, and why using sound to attract birds is not a problem (for birds). Here are some excerpts:
(a) in the 2018 NY Times article (The Delicate Politics of Chasing Owls), Noah Comet writes: "Perhaps when we find an owl that is not especially wary, outside of nesting season and in a publicly accessible place, we ought to freely share that information, especially with those uninitiated to birding;" (b) in a follow-up comment Kevin McGowan PhD of Cornell University states: "Owls are not particularly vulnerable to disturbance, and they are spectacular ambassadors to non-birders."
Regarding using sound to bring in birds, John Fitzpatrick, the head of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology writes (c): "I am in complete agreement that every step we can take to turn people on to birds and birding is a vital one, and I am in the camp with those who defend pishing and playbacks as doing more good than harm. Heck, after all, the bird always wins, right?" Similarly, John Confer PhD who worked for 30+ years with Golden-winged Warblers, a species of special concern says (d): " I DO NOT RECALL ANY BIRD THAT ABANDONED ITS NEST, LOST A MATE OF AN ESTABLISHED PAIR, OR DESERTED A TERRITORY OUT OF A THOUSAND ATTEMPTS TO CATCH AND BAND A BIRD USING AUDIO PLAYBACK [All Caps used by Confer in his original text.]; and finally (e) in a long post by Kenneth Rosenberg PhD, the head of the Conservation Science Department at Cornell: "Bottom line is that the scientific evidence (sparse as it is) does not support the often strongly negative views that some birders have towards the use of playback to lure birds into view or get them to pose for photographs. As with most ethical questions, then, this issue comes down to people's personal opinions and choices; and: "Certainly compared with virtually every other form of anthropogenic disturbance or threat to habitats that birds face everywhere and all the time, the use of playback by birders, from a conservation perspective, is simply a non-issue. If one's personal birding ethics do not include playback or pishing because of the perceived temporary stress to individual birds, that is fine, but please don't question the integrity of other birders."
I don't think any of the this information will change anyone's position on the matter of bringing people to see owls in NYC parks, or using calls to bring them to us at night. However, I thought it important to provide information from "experts" on the matter, so a more grounded and well-rounded discussion might take place. I doubt it, but one can always hope/dream. See you in Central Park for bird walks by day, and this coming Sunday night for the Owl Walk in Riverside Park
Short-eared Owl, Washington state, January 2019
[below] Red Crossbill, female (Type 10), 24 Nov 2020; Jones Beach (L.I.); Deborah Allen
[below] Northern Cardinal (female); Central Park (Ramble), 28 Nov 2020 by Deborah Allen
[below] Merlin (immature male) on 24 Nov at Jones Beach (Long Island) by Deborah Allen
Bird Walks for Early December
All Walks @ $10/person
1. Friday, 4 December at 8:30am - NO FRIDAY BIRD WALK this week! The Next Friday Bird Walk will be in March 2021.
2. Saturday, 5 December - NO Saturday Morning Bird Walk this week. RAIN is forecast for all of Saturday, so we are cancelling now.
3. Sunday, 6 December at 7:30am and again at 9:30am - Boathouse Cafe; 74th street/East Drive $10
3a. Sunday, 6 December at 4pm (Riverside Park) for BARRED OWL - Meet at 115th street and Riverside Drive. $10. See Schedule page for details on this OWL Walk.
4. Monday, 7 December at 8:30am - NO MONDAY BIRD WALK this week! The Next Monday Bird Walk at Strawberry Fields will be in March 2021.
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On Sundays, if you do the 7:30am walk you can do the second (9:30am walk) for free. You get two for one. Weekend walks will continue through August and into December. Monday walks at 8:30am begin on Labor Day, 7 September and will continue through middle November and then resume in March 2021. Friday morning walks start 25 September and end in early December...to resume in March 2012. What are you waiting for?
Call (718-828-8262) or Email us with questions: rdcny@earthlink.net
Great Horned Owl; Central Park (Ramble), 29 November 2020 by Deborah Allen
The fine print: Our walks on weekends meet at 7:30/9:30am at the Boathouse Restaurant (approx. 74th street and the East Drive). Please note: the Boathouse is not one of the buildings that surround the nearby Model Boat Pond - people make this mistake all the time! Fridays we meet at Conservatory Garden; Mondays at Strawberry Fields - check the "Meeting Points" page of this web site for exact meeting location.
Our home phone is 718-828-8262...and Deborah's cell is: 347-703-5554. Email is (rdcny@earthlink.net). If you are lost and trying to get to the bird walk, call Deborah's cell phone...but remember on weekends there will be 2-3 other people calling who are also lost - please be patient. If in doubt about whether a walk will take place or not the morning of the walk: check the main landing page of this web site as well as the "Schedule" page - if the walk is cancelled, information will be posted there by 6am the day of the walk, and usually by 11pm the night before. If still confused and as a last resort, call us at home - if no one answers it means we left for the bird walk. We end all our Central Park walks (except Fridays) near the Boathouse at about noon; you can get a cup of coffee and a muffin there (around $6 total) - though the Boathouse is closed right now and will re-open in April 2021 according to the owners. Walks last about 3 hrs (less if hot or rainy), and you can leave at anytime - we won't be offended. If you need directions/help to your next destination, just ask someone on the walk - we aim to please.
Tufted Titmouse in Central Park (The Ramble) on 29 November 2020 by Deborah Allen
Here is what we saw last week (brief highlights)
OWL WALK Saturday night (28 Nov) at Riverside Park (Manhattan): Much fun. Many of us gathered street side to watch the owl slowly "wake up" by stretching wings, swiveling head around to watch squirrels in the canopy, and doing some yawning. Once the Barred Owl took off it remained nearby for 15 minutes. We brought the group into the park and used the calls from my tape to induce it to follow us a bit, and at one point it flew in right over our heads. After we headed north, played the calls a bit more and finally, the owl flew into a great perch not too far away and Gary Bendas of Majestic Photo Inc. got the shot!:
Barred Owl in Riverside Park, Manhattan on 28 Nov 2020
Gary Bendas
Sunday, 29 November (Boathouse Restaurant at 7:30am and again at 9:30am): Please note: the bathrooms at the Boathouse are NOT open. However, we do pass two other sets of bathrooms on the walk. Saturday, 28 November: well we canceled this walk (posted on-line on our Schedule page as well as posted in last week's Newsletter), so we apologize if some folks showed up at 7:30am, and we didn't. On 29 November (Sunday) birding was slower...you have to remember this is late November so please come with reduced expectations. We had a film crew from AFP (Associated Press of France) making short videos of us feeding Tufted Titmice by hand, or the Red-bellied Woodpecker diving at my head. The Great Horned Owl and the Barred Owl were special highlights on this lovely late autumn day. Here is the article from the AFP folks.
Deborah's List of Birds for Sunday, 29 November: https://tinyurl.com/y4uhx9hb
Black-capped Chickadee, at Jones Beach, Long Island on 29 Nov 2020 by Deborah Allen
HISTORICAL NOTEs
The Delicate Politics of Chasing Owls [January 2018]
New York Times
Noah Comet
Owls tend to be secretive. While there are a few American species that enjoy the daylight hours, most are nocturnal and spend their days behind thick greenery or uncannily blending into the bark of the trees they nestle against. Once they’ve found a secure place to snooze, they are likely to return to that spot daily, but even if you find evidence of their presence — scat and regurgitated pellets — good luck seeing the clandestine culprits.
I’m a seasoned birder with a particular interest in owls, and on my ventures to find them, even when I have specific information on where they’ve been seen just minutes before, I’ve failed to find them more often than not. Such elusiveness makes “owling” one of the great birding challenges. Being the first to find a particular owl is regarded by some as a badge of distinction, and those who find them regularly are viewed with awe-struck reverence.
While birders prize owls, the ethical ones also abet the species’ secretive natures with their own code of silence, an owl “omertà.” Many people will not share the specifics of an owl’s location or will do so only in whispers. A typical owl dislikes disruption and will find a new roost if too many people kick up a racket near its daybed. This forces the bird to expend valuable energy — and of course throws off its sleep pattern.
But I worry that in our effort to protect these elusive and private birds, we birders are falling short of another responsibility: to promote the cause of wildlife conservation by letting others in on our secrets so they, too, can see these magnificent predators and celebrate them.
On listservs and bird reporting sites, users often note an owl location only well after the fact or provide a general location (Springfield Park) rather than a detailed one (halfway up the sycamore east of the bike trail near the footbridge). Even birders you know might get testy if you ask for details. When you request such information, you do so sheepishly, acknowledging your impropriety while promising discretion. Being protective of owl sightings has caused more than one heated argument; ask too many times and you may be shunned.
Some Facebook birding groups are known for brutal takedowns and highhanded admonitions. A thread in 2013 culminated in an impassioned plea from a respected naturalist who urged her readers to “seriously limit” their time at an owl spot that had been irresponsibly shared and to “consider not returning.”
That many birders are tight-lipped is a good thing, of course, because the cost of incaution can be disappointment or tragedy. When I lived in Ohio there was a hot spot nearby that was reliable for wintering long-eared owls, a species that many birders might travel across state lines to see. Over time the location, details and all, became widely known; sure enough, the owls stopped coming.
There are stories about other owls being loved to death — fleeing spotting scopes and telephoto lenses only to be hit by cars — or of landowners, once tolerant of owlers on their properties, who revoked access for all because of an unprincipled few.
Fortunately, every region seems to have an ambassador owl or two — an individual that seems indifferent to human attentions. I remember one that chose a nesting site right next to a busy playground and would snooze the day away in the open with no regard for the screaming toddlers, slamming car doors or barking dogs below. These birds are often their viewers’ first owls and are for many the sightings that get them hooked on birding.
And that’s arguably a downside to birders’ protective secrecy: Owls might be rivaled only by bald eagles as ornithological recruiting agents, inspiring young and old to take an interest, to care about wildlife and to want to share with others. It’s no accident that many nature centers have live birds of prey, including owls, on display for visitors and that many birding organizations sponsor evening “owl prowls.” But as awesome as it is to see an owl up close in captivity or hear one hooting in the distant dark, there’s nothing like seeing one in the wild on its own terms.
It’s snowy owl season in the upper reaches of the United States. Though not entirely dependable, this species is a not-uncommon winter visitor from the Arctic, and during years of sudden upsurges in migration, these owls can show up in significant numbers, on piers and coastal dunes, in stubble fields — even at urban parks and airports.
Because they often rest on the ground and hunt by day (after all, it never gets dark for much of their time up north), they can be conspicuous, much to the delight of birders and amateur photographers. For the same reason, they seem to enjoy a less protected status from birders than their nocturnal kin. With a snowy owl, full location details are even likely to end up in a feel-good segment on the local newscast. (We may have Harry Potter to thank for that.)
All of this points to a basic wildlife watcher’s conundrum: When you know the location of a charismatic but sensitive species, do you keep that information to yourself (or to a small network of trusted peers), or do you broadcast it far and wide? The first option reeks of a kind of proprietary elitism, but it is of immediate benefit to the animal. The second option seems recklessly harmful to the animal, but if it promotes the hobby and raises awareness, then it might lead to far greater long-term benefits to conservation.
Though there are usually those easy-to-see ambassador owls around, many birders insist on keeping mum about those locations, too; perhaps, for the greater good, they shouldn’t. And here’s a more controversial thing to say: Perhaps when we find an owl that is not especially wary, outside of nesting season and in a publicly accessible place, we ought to freely share that information, especially with those uninitiated to birding. If you have the time, set up a scope and invite passers-by to take a look, and if you have school-age children, see whether a field trip is possible.
Some of my birding friends will balk at this suggestion, and there was a time when I would have been skeptical, too. But in an era of deregulation, of species being removed from the Endangered Species Act and of stripped-away land protections, conservationists may need to try harder than ever to get fellow citizens to care about wildlife. It’s awfully hard to care about what you can’t see.
Noah Comet is an assistant professor of English at the United States Naval Academy.
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Comment on The Delicate Politics of Chasing Owls
Kevin J. McGowan
20 January 2018
I agree with the logic of this article, and have made the same argument for years. Owls are not particularly vulnerable to disturbance, and they are spectacular ambassadors to non-birders. Do you know how many Northern Saw-whet and Boreal owls exist in the world, and how few ever encounter people (other than, perhaps, over-exuberant banders;^))? One in a publicly-available spot can generate so much goodwill that, as an educator, I would argue to disturb its sleep a few times so that people can experience it.
It boils down to the old saw: people only protect what they love, and they don't love anything they don't know. And, I would add that the best way to learn to love owls is to actually see one face-to-face in the wild.
But, from my experience on this issue, people seem to have become almost as religious in their views as the cats-as-predators one. I am happy to see a logical, not emotional public piece about it, nonetheless.
That's my humble opinion, and I don't expect everyone to agree. Just saying...
Kevin
Northern Saw-whet Owl, Pelham Bay Park (the Bronx) in Jan. 1988
From: "John W. Fitzpatrick"
Cc: "rdcny@earthlink.net" <rdcny@earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Missing birds
Date: 4 October 2019
Hello Robert
I greatly appreciate your email. I am in complete agreement that every step we can take to turn people on to birds and birding is a vital one, and I am in the camp with those who defend pishing and playbacks as doing more good than harm. Heck, after all the bird always wins, right? I'll forward your message to my friends at the ABA.
Finally, thank you very much for your generous support of the Lab. We're doing all we can to wake up the masses and add voices to the choir.
Cheers,
John
John W. Fitzpatrick
Director, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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From: John Confer
Sent: Monday, May 12, 2014
To: CAYUGABIRDS-L
Subject: Re: [cayugabirds-l] playback tapes
"I did 34 years of field study of Golden-winged Warblers, more than half of it requiring the capture and banding of birds with individual markers, without which the research data could not have been obtained. I have probably had more hours of field experience, probably hundreds of hours, using playing audio calls to attract birds into nets than anyone in this community. I intensively played audios back to catch some individual males. I was willing to accept some bird fatality to obtain the data that can be used for the conservation of the entire species. That seemed a fair trade. I do recall 3 or 4 nests where nest checking caused mortality. I do recall banding that caused perhaps two fatalities. I DO NOT RECALL ANY BIRD THAT ABANDONED ITS NEST, LOST A MATE OF AN ESTABLISHED PAIR, OR DESERTED A TERRITORY OUT OF A THOUSAND ATTEMPTS TO CATCH AND BAND A BIRD USING AUDIO PLAYBACK. My work involved relating nesting success to environmental factors and I did everything reasonable to reduce the chances that my activities would harm the birds..."
[Note: the use of ALL CAPS is in the original exactly as the author of this email, John Confer, wrote it.]
Long-eared Owl, at the NY Botanical Garden (the Bronx) in
February 2011 by Deborah Allen
This posting below is from the Director of Conservation Science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, founder of Partners in Flight and the Eisenmann medalist a few years ago. From: Kenneth Victor Rosenberg Cc: CAYUGABIRDS-L <CAYUGABIRDS-L@list.cornell.edu> Sent: Monday, April 9, 2012
Subject: (playback) Have birding ethics changed?
Hi all,
Although this discussion has gone on for awhile and is in danger of getting too heated for this List, I feel compelled to jump in. I want to thank those who brought scientific experience and reasoning to the debate, and especially to Lee Ann for the links to deeper discussion and actual studies on this topic. Bottom line is that the scientific evidence (sparse as it is) does not support the often strongly negative views that some birders have towards the use of playback to lure birds into view or get them to pose for photographs. As with most ethical questions, then, this issue comes down to people's personal opinions and choices. So here is my (hopefully somewhat professional and reasoned) personal opinion:
I have been a professional ornithologist for 35 years and have spent much of the past 15 years trying to help conserve threatened and declining bird populations; I am also a lifelong birder, bird-tour leader and teacher. I have used playback in a wide variety of situations ranging from scientific protocols to purely recreational -- I frequently use an owl-mobbing playback during birding, in order to get a more thorough count of the species in a given area.
I am not aware of any situation in which a population of birds was adversely affected by use of playback by birders or researchers. Even in the most famous and hotly debated cases (Arizona trogons) no effects on nesting success could be shown, and after 40+ years of using playback and imitating calls (the same thing really) in many Arizona canyons, none of the highly sought species have disappeared from those areas -- in fact most have expanded their distribution and populations in the general region. I know of many, many cases where bird tour leaders at tropical locations return year after year to the same "rare" bird territories, using playback successfully to show these amazing birds to successive groups of people. The primary negative effect of "excessive" use of playback (certainly a subjective term) is that the birds quickly habituate to the sound and stop responding -- very often a bird continues to sing on its territory but simply does not respond to the playback (guides use the expression "taped out" to describe such birds). Even around here I have found that chickadees will not respond to the owl-mobbing playback if I go to the same area within a short time frame. In my experience the adverse effects of excessive playback is mostly on the birders and not on the birds. In certain locations, such as the tropical lodge discussed in the posts at Lee Ann's link, or South Fork of Cave Creek Canyon, guidelines for regulating use of playback (but not banning) might be necessary -- but again, mostly to preserve the experiences of other birders.
I think the ABA Code of Birder Ethics has this issue well covered, and Sibley's guidelines are very sensible and even offer tips for improving the effectiveness of playback while birding. And John Confer -- among the most cautious and respectful bird people I have known -- summarized well the biological perspective that even regular (daily) use of playback, even during the breeding season (not to mention the subsequent capture, handling, and blood-sampling of individual birds), had minimal if any effect on breeding success or population status. Certainly compared with virtually every other form of anthropogenic disturbance or threat to habitats that birds face everywhere and all the time, the use of playback by birders, from a conservation perspective, is simply a non-issue.
If one's personal birding ethics do not include playback or pishing because of the perceived temporary stress to individual birds, that is fine, but please don't question the integrity of other birders or SFO [School for Field Ornithology] leaders that choose to use these tools to enhance the birding experience.
KEN
Ken Rosenberg
Conservation Science Program
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
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Deborah Allen and Robert DeCandido PhD
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Snowy Owl (male), in Massachusetts in January 2015
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