Birding Western Mass: Sandpipers, Amy Tan, Jabish Brook
Thoughts on Birding from the Quabbin to the Berkshires
Study Up
Sandpipers return from their northern breeding sojourn in July.
Full disclosure: I haven’t done much to take advantage of this rhythm here. I went to eBird for data more than I used my own experience. Data interests me. Observation is almost as fun. But this has always been an interesting month, in terms of plans and the garden and the job what pays me, so it’s sometimes hard to get things sorted out enough to go looking. Maybe that’s true for some of you, too, especially if the cadence of the school year affects your availability.
We’re sedentary creatures. We move more than we did a few hundred years ago, and then we were moving a lot less than we did a few thousand years before that, but for most of us, where one lives is quite clear. One owns or leases; one originated from a place and one may remain there or one may have moved somewhere new, but with the sorrowful fact that many humans are unhomed set aside, most people who bird have a place they live.
Sandpipers are different. The nature of their existence is peripatetic. When we see them at the beach, we see that they are motion embodied. They follow waves of abundance in water (and less often, but also, in grass and gravelly seas as well). Whole excellent books are written about them. And documentaries are produced about them.
The sandpipers passing through this month and next are the smaller ones, mostly, in wet places along the Connecticut. They are often seen in the East Meadows, sometimes seen on Aqua Vitae, often seen at airports. They turn up at Arcadia (everything turns up at Arcadia, because of its mix of habitats and its mix of observers).
If you know a place where water comes and goes — where it’s shallow, large, and open so that the sandpipers can see predators at a distance — try that place. The Holyoke Dam is a longer shot with possibilities. Try October Mountain, especially the marsh. There’s Bartholomew’s Cobble. Places you likely already go with good possibilities include the Longmeadow Flats and maybe the sandbar down there. (I’ll offer better directions to it in a future letter; if you need them urgently, do a search in the FB birding group on “sandbar” and you can find posts where people give directions.
I hope in a week to get out looking. It’s a busy summer; after that, maybe I will get out in August.
Focus
What’s missing in your landscapes?
This week, “our” pine warbler stopped singing. I don’t blame any big change — this is not global warming’s impact, or the bugpocalypse, or the dastardly house cats that comb my neighborhood for precious life. (I don’t hate cats; I grieve the effects of their freedom.)
Some things are additive. The swifts crisscross my urban sky. The house finches bring their babies to our thistle feeder. The crows dunk their bread in the birdbath. (Also, the animals they kill, which they often leave behind in the water. Thanks, crows, for bringing me to my own horror movie.)
When the winter residents leave, we notice. For most of us, the juncos depart in spring (they stay in the Berkshires in places). The warblers pass through.
But now is when the first powerful absences begin. Birds that experienced the high drama of minute-to-minute survival battles aren’t all still doing so. Their brood is raised and their territory is spent. This proportion of birds grows through the next few months; many birds are still getting started on the necessity to wager on new life, such as fruit-dependent waxwings, but it is the other side of the wheel that’s turning.
Note the absences. Some songs are winking into silence for the same reasons they have since time immemorial; they’ll be back next year, and with grace, so will we to hear them. But the better I notice their disappearance today the more keenly I welcome their return.
Birdscape
I had an errand to run near Jabish Brook. (A kayak I can no longer hoist to the roof easily — if I ever could — needed a new home.) I stopped and did the one-mile trail loop. Here’s my report. Summer woods are thick with insects, dotted with spiders, lousy with ticks, and rich with song. It was a strong Merlin day for me. I slip up on scarlet tanagers (they are not vireos) and I like the digital confirmation for thrushes. This is a fast walk. It’s a little slippery in places. In summer it’s always damp in there, but that also means it’s always alive with insects and birds and the chuckle of moving water.
If you go, pull your car in slowly. The ditch where you cross from the highway to the dirt road is exceptionally deep and damaging.
Bird Books and Whistles
I read The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan. Tan’s fiction isn’t my thing, but this work is a generous and frank account of a new birder’s journey. Tan also draws birds, and presents her work in a disarming manner, from her earliest and comparatively clumsy efforts to later, elegant, polished work deserving of real attention.
She characterizes herself as “obsessed.” Her mealworm bill does not disagree. But with that comes a self-description and intellectual memoir of affecting curiosity. I had a teacher in college who referred to his calls with “Eudora” (Welty) as if they were old friends, because they were old friends. Tan gets to call Bernd Heinrich.
People magazine had a famous formula: Its stories were about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and extraordinary people doing ordinary things. In this case, Tan is he latter case. Many of the questions she asks, you have asked. Many of the feeder riddles she solves, you have solved. She has more money and different kinds of time, but she also has great talent and portrays herself sympathetically but honestly.
If you get the book, get the paper copy, not the e-reader copy. That’s probably obvious, but the pictures are lovely, and it’s worth doing. If you’d rather have the audio, fair! But the pictures are lovely.