Mar 20, 2008
Bird Notes 3/20/08
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Finding Your Wings
This is the time of year when activity in the bird world moves into high gear. Males are singing their mating and territorial songs, plumage colors are brightening, and immigrants are arriving from warmer climes.
It’s a perfect time to learn more about what we are seeing and hearing.
Nature centers traditionally have birding courses in the spring, but most of us can’t fit classes into our busy schedules. An alternative is Professor Burton Guttman’s new book,
Finding Your Wings.
It’s surprising no one (to my knowledge) has done this before. Like an old-fashioned classroom workbook,
Finding Your Wings offers lessons and exercises — you read about a topic and then, pen in hand, answer questions — even draw pictures. And you do it when you feel like it!
The aim is to increase your ability to identify birds, and to understand more about what you are seeing.
The workbook is labeled as part of the
Peterson Field Guide series, but it is not a field guide, in either content or appearance. Like many workbooks, it’s spiral bound, but the pages are high quality paper, with color images, so that it’s a workbook you will not only use for your “bird-watching course,” but also as a reference. Professor Guttman apparently understood this, for he included an extensive index — a good index makes any non-fiction book much more useful and of more lasting value.
Finding Your Wings provides nearly 200 pages of discourses on such subjects as the different kinds of bills birds have and why, how wings differ and are constructed, how to select and effectively use binoculars, how to identify a bird by its shape, techniques for watching birds in the field, and the best places for birding. There’s even a chapter of “games” designed to improve your identification skills.
It starts out with easy topics such as how to “how to see,” and moves onward to more complicated subjects, such as “problematic groups” of birds like hawks. There’s even a chapter on identifying sparrows, which many people ignore as LBJ’s — “little brown jobs” — but which Professor Guttman notes, “sport beautiful patterns of rust, black, white, gray, and orange, and more than one artist has been moved by their beauty to study the sparrows and paint them all.”
And yes, there is an appendix of answers to all the questions in the exercises.
The book is clearly and entertainingly written by Dr. Guttman, a professor of biology at Evergreen State University in Washington, who has taught many birding courses over the years.
Finding Your Wings, published this month by Houghton Mifflin, costs only $14.95 — a bargain considering the wealth of information it contains and the quality of the printing.
Sightings
We’ve had a half dozen reports of hawk sightings — most accompanied by excellent photos. We will try to include pictures with coming columns.
Gary Trask of Cross River, N.Y. reports: “Once again while on my delivery route, and again no camera, I spotted a large white bird on a tree limb on Woodway Road in South Salem. As I got closer it let me stop and look a while. Almost all white with dark streaks on its breast and near the wings. As it flew away there was no mistaking its rusty tail. Are there ‘Albino’ Red Tail Hawks or is this a stage I’ve never seen before or do they get old and change?” While albino and leucistic Red-tailed Hawks are uncommon, several have been reported in our area in the past 15 years. There used to be a resident “albino” at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation for many years. They are truly ghostly birds to see.
Jim Mullen of Ridgefield writes, “I have a new visitor at the suet lately. It is a Brown Creeper and he seems to like the real suet, which I have just started using instead of the packaged kind. The reason I’ve noticed him was by the way he climbs up the tree, sort of like a nuthatch. I don’t recall ever seeing one before.”
Coming Up
Bird Conservation, with Patrick Comins, director of bird conservation for Audubon Connecticut, Thursday, March 20, 7 p.m., Western Connecticut Bird Club, Southbury Library, 203-426-3901
Beginning Birding, class, all ages, Saturday, March 22, 9:30 to noon, free, Audubon Greenwich, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, register 203-869-5272 x221, greenwich.audubon.org
Birdhouse Auction, a wide array of creative designs, benefiting Project Return, Friday, March 28, 7 to 10:30, $125, Inn at Longshore, Westport, projectreturnct.org, 203-291-6402.
Bird Walk, Saturday, April 5, April 12, 7 to 8:45 a.m., Audubon Greenwich, meeting in parking lot, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, 203-869-5272 x221,
greenwich.audubon.org
Early Spring Migrations, birding class, Saturday, April 5, 9:30 to noon, $15/$12, Audubon Greenwich, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, 203-869-5272 x221,
greenwich.audubon.org
Osprey Cruise on Connecticut River, Saturday, April 12, 10 to 11:30 a.m, $35, Connecticut Audubon, 860-767-0660, pwood@ctaudubon.org
All About Woodpeckers, bird class, Saturday, April 12, 9:30 to noon, $15/$12, Audubon Greenwich, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, 203-869-5272 x221,
greenwich.audubon.org
Eastern Bluebirds, with John Rogers, co-founder of New York State Bluebird Society, Saturday, April 12, 3:30 to 5, Quaker Ridge Bird Club, at Audubon Greenwich, 613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, 203-869-5272,
greenwich.audubon.org
Bird walks with Luke Tiller, mostly Saturdays at 8 a.m.: Sunday, March 30, Sherwood Island; April 15, Compo to Sasco Beach Tour; April 19, Wilton Birding; May 3, Poverty Hollow; May 10, Saugatuck Falls; $10 each; to register, www.sunrisebirding.com/walks.htm; 203-981-9924, luke.tiller@gmail.com.
First Sundays, birding at Greenwich Point with Meredith Sampson of Wild Wings, and other guides, April 6, May 4, 9 a.m., meet at the second concession stand, 203-637-9822.
Bird walks, first Saturday at 7:30 a.m., free, meet at Wild Bird Center of Norwalk, 335 Westport Avenue (Route 1), www.wildbird.com/Norwalk, 203-846-BIRD.
Copyright (c) 2008 by Jack Sanders. Send sightings or comments to: jackfsanders@yahoo.com
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or to Bird Notes, Box 1019, Ridgefield, CT 06877; or call 203-438-1183,
extension BIRD (2473), and leave a message with your report, spelling
your first and last names and telling us your town. If you need help
identifying a bird, try your local nature center. If you find an
injured bird, call wildlife rehabilitator Darlene Wimbrow of Redding,
203-438-0618, Wildlife in Crisis of Weston, 203-544-9913, or Wild Wings
of Greenwich, 203-637-9822. The columnist’s website is www.sandersbooks.com
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© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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