BirdCapeMay.org

I first met Alan Brady aboard the Miss Barnegat Light on a tilefish trip out to the 100-fathom line at Hudson Canyon, in late May of 1977. Alan was well-known as a pioneer in organizing pelagic trips for the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club (DVOC) and the Urner Ornithological Club—excursions I could never seem to afford—but on this trip he and I were hitching a ride on the cheap with the fishermen.

The weather was fine, the birding phenomenal, and Alan was usually the first to point out new birds, or fire away with his telephoto. It seemed like we saw practically everything then-listed in the guides for the northwestern Atlantic—all three species of jaegers, four shearwaters, two phalaropes, two storm petrels, a skua, and a fulmar. I vividly remember a very close Manx Shearwater that he first shouted out as it sailed by the stern.

Alan was born in 1920, grew up in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, and started birding in the early 1930s, when he became a member of the DVOC. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, and worked as an aircraft mechanic before joining the navy during World War II. He and his wife, Liz, who died recently, met in New Hampshire and were married for sixty years; Alan refers to her as “the right gal at the right time.” For many years he and his family ran Camera Craft, in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

Late this March I drove down to Alan’s cottage on the corner of Alexander Avenue and Pearl Street in Cape May Point. He’d just opened up the place for the year, and Lulu—a small scarecrow that stands sentinel on his front porch when he’s home—was by the door.

When I spoke with him, he’d just returned from an Armas Hill trip to southern Brazil and the Pantanal, where they’d seen Ocelots, a rare Maned Three-toed Sloth, and three of the last remaining Brazilian Mergansers.

RR: How did you come to own a house in Cape May Point?
AB: I had always loved this area and would sometimes come down looking for a place. About forty-five years ago I came here in February, and there had been a big storm and everything was washing away—the local paper said, “Cape May Point Washing Away!”—and there were places for sale everywhere…There really was a depression here—and houses were nothing!

I saw a little sign on the window right here, a two-room cottage, and I went to the realtor around the corner and asked if I could see the place. The roof was leaking, the porch sagging, it was terrible, but I asked, “How much?” He said that the place came furnished, beds, chairs, tables, and that I could have it all for $3,200. He let me hold it for $20 until I got the money and then a clear title.

RR: Do you close up the house in winter?
AB: I just turned the water on last weekend, and I only had one leak. I called the plumber, Buzz, who I know very well, and he fixed it right away with no problem, all done and paid for.

RR: Do you have a yard list?
AB: Oh sure. I even used to have a list for sitting in the john, but that got lost. Crossbills on the pine trees right outside, and screech owls.…

RR: When you first came here, St. Mary’s convent, which used to be the Shoreham Hotel, was not waterfront was it?
AB: No. A lot has changed…You know they had to move the lighthouse back? And the bunker was at least hundred yards from the ocean; that was all land out there that washed away. In one big storm a big hotel washed away and the timbers were all over town crashing into buildings further up…Things have changed so much over there, but not so much around here. Mrs. Schaefer’s boarding house, right up the street, is still here, where Peterson stayed…and so did Richard Pough, who wrote the National Audubon bird guide, with the Don Eckleberry paintings.

RR: How did you get started as a birder?
AB: I can remember catching salamanders down at the creek with another kid, and then I got into the Boy Scouts, and I guess that turned me on to birds. And one of our assistant scoutmasters [Ed Weyl] was a member of the DVOC, the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club….

RR: So—birding and the Boy Scouts?
AB: There was another fellow, my patrol leader, he and I really got interested in birds about the same time…and Ed Weyl, and Phil Livingston, who used to have a little cottage around the corner from here, he was Livingston Publishing Company, and Ernie Choate, and Norman MacDonald—his house was at Sally Marshall’s Crossing, up the road here.

RR: And this was in the 1930s, the early 30s?
AB: And I guess because of Ed they all took me around to a lot of places
and I remember coming down here with a group of them, and they took me on a Christmas count…I think I was about fourteen then.

RR: So this was around 1934, and it was the Cape May Christmas Count?
AB: Yes. They did this area, and we covered Higbee Beach, but we didn’t call it Higbees back then. Over there by the horse farm…they called it the horse cemetery; there were a lot of dead horses buried around the place. And we had a phoebe there…that was the big bird on the count for our group. And later, I guess the men were somewhere else, but I saw a bird fly up into a little bush right in front of me, and it was a Merlin, what we used to call a pigeon hawk, and nobody else saw it.

RR: I just saw one at the Meadows an hour ago. That bird was a pretty big deal on a Christmas count back then.
AB: Yes it was…So after we were all done we went back to Cape May Court House to turn our list in, to a guy sitting in a booth, a little man with a twinkle in his eye. After we were all done I went up to him and said, “Oh, and I saw a pigeon hawk.”

And he looked at me and said, “Alan, we don’t see pigeon hawks on the Christmas count.” And that was the end of that….

RR: And who was the little man?
AB: That was Witmer Stone. Later on I met him…I used to go with another kid to the meetings of the DVOC at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. And all the big men would sit in the front row, including Stone, Julian Potter, and Fletcher Street, who was big in those days, and all these other big guns.

RR: Do you have any other birding memories from the early 1930s?
AB: Tibby Stevenson was my good buddy, and he lived about a block away from me. I would get up early in the morning, and he would sleep in a lot, but I would go over to his house and he would have a string with a stick on it hanging out his second floor window, and the string was attached to his toe. I’d pull it and wake him up and he’d yell, “I’ll be right down!”

RR: So it was a literal—a real digital alarm!
AB: Right. And one day we found a birch tree full of redpolls…We didn’t know what they were and had to look them up. I then went down to the DVOC meeting and announced that we had found redpolls down in Cresheim Valley. And I remember Fletcher Street—big man—turned around and glowered at me…they didn’t believe us. But then someone went down and found them.

RR: Confirmation is often a fortunate thing.
AB: And that put me in tight there, and I was a member for years. But it later got quite cliquey, and now I’m active with the Bucks County Birders, in Peace Valley.

AB: I graduated from high school in 1938, went to Penn for a little bit, and my first real job was a Pan American Airways, because I figured I’d be cannon fodder when we got into this war if I didn’t learn something. I worked on the Clipper in New York City.

RR: That was that trans-Atlantic boat-plane wasn’t it?
AB: Seaplane, and they only had two…Once a week they flew to Lisbon, Portugal, and when they came back you had to practically overhaul the whole plane…I had an A&E (aircraft and engine mechanic’s) license… you had to have that to work on airplanes in airports.

Then I was sent up to Hanover, New Hampshire, to help open a new airport…and from there I was drafted with a bunch of other guys…who were later all killed in landing craft in the Normandy invasion. I was lucky.

I was sent to Patuxent River, Maryland. Because of my Pan Am training I was put on the crew of a PBM, a big two-engined flying boat, very slow—took off at 120, cruised at 120, dove straight down at 120, landed at 120…

RR: So you were stationed at Patuxent for the whole war?
AB: I was on an experimental plane; we flew every day for two-and-a-half years.

I remember that once a German ME-262, the first jet fighter, was brought to our hangar and nobody was allowed in there…and one day Charles Lindberg came one day to look at it. And then somebody flew it and, my goodness, it was twice as fast as anything we had! We were lucky in that war.

RR: Did you continue birding during the war?
AB: No…hardly…I saw a few birds…some loons.

RR: An old friend of mine, Irv Black, used to talk about birding on the coast during the war, and how difficult it was, with sometimes humorous outcomes, with all the fears of submarines and spies around at the time. Did you know Irv?
AB: I knew Irv very, very well…I learned a lot from him…how to be a modest birder…And I knew that other fellow….

RR: That would be Harry Wallum. Harry was a Harvard Law graduate, a brilliant guy, a wonderful raconteur, and very funny. Did you know both Irv and Harry died last year? They’d both been past presidents of New Jersey Audubon, great friends to a lot of us, and I miss them.
AB: Let me tell you about Harry. We used to go up to Atlantic Highlands, and there was a boat up there called the Super Cat. Harry and—do you remember P. William Smith?—and a variety of people would take the boat and go on pelagic trips, out past Sandy Hook to Hudson Canyon.

RR: This would be about the early-1970s?
AB: I guess…and I suggested to Harry that we start running joint trips, the Urner Club and the DVOC, on the Miss Barnegat Light; out of Long Beach Island…it was a lot shorter out to the canyon. And we did that for a while.

And when I first went to Attu, Harry and Bob Lewis and a bunch of Urner guys went the same year, and it was great fun.

We also used to do winter trips, and see alcids, and fulmars, and skuas, back when the Russian fishing fleet was still offshore.

RR: What did you do after the war?
AB: We went back to Manchester, New Hampshire, after the war and we had a little one-room apartment for a while, Liz and I. She became a pretty good birder…she was a great artist; she’d go out and paint while I went birding. I worked in a photography shop…and we bought a little piece of land there on a lake and built a cabin, which is still there…We later gave it to our three kids…

RR: When did you move back to the Philadelphia area?
AB: After two years, when my job went bust…And we had a little daughter by then. Liz’s family had a farm, where we stayed there for about six months, and I worked in a little camera shop around New Hope, and then moved down to Newtown and opened another shop there, and that’s about it, we got bigger and bigger…I had a wonderful time, and I never really worked a day in my life…

RR: Did you know Ernie Choate pretty well?
AB: Oh sure. When I was a kid I used to stay at Livingston’s house around the corner, and he and Ernie were very competitive, and I also got to know Ernie at the DVOC.

RR: Did he live here all year round?
AB: He did finally, when he moved from Jenkintown. He had lots of birders there, and was like the mayor of the Point. He had earlier bought his house cheaply like I did, at an auction, for something like $550. Liz and I used to stay with him before we had this place. We’d play poker at night on weekends and it was a great time.

RR: So once you bought your place were you actively birding down here and with the DVOC?
AB: Oh yes. And in the late 50s, 60s, I fell in with a fellow who had a DC-3, and I talked with him about taking birders around, and a group of us eventually went in that plane to Alaska, to Tikal in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize, Churchill, Big Bend, and out to see the prairie chickens. He put in big windows in the side of the plane so you could see, and it was all painted up like a dragon. When it flew into airports, everyone would come out to see it.

RR: What do you think about the birding community down here? Do you get along with everybody?
AB: Oh yeah, I love ‘em all. I guess when Pete first came here in the 70s, a lot of the local birders resented him. But I like him so much now, he’s got a good sense of humor, and he’s the best writer, wonderful writer.

Pete just sent something out the other day, about the Birdathon, the World Series of Birding. The DVOC did this kind of thing all the time, and a lot earlier. I can remember copying some old records and bird lists from 1932, 1933, when they began keeping some kinds of records of the May Day, or Big Day, May Run…They had a lot of birds, and this was without the north/south highway, the Parkway, and the Brigantine refuge wasn’t there…If you wanted to see those kind of birds you had to go somewhere else, to Holgate and walk all the way out to the end. They had a 190 species one time, without any trouble.

RR: The Urner Club also did those kind of Big Days in the 1930s.
AB: I know. Charlie Urner, whom I never met, he was good friends with the DVOC, and they did those kinds of things together. I wrote up an article for Cassinia about Big Days.

When they did it in those days they made up charts like wallpaper, and hung them up so everybody could look at them, and ask questions. These old charts were left all rolled up, and Norman MacDonald, he was the caretaker of old stuff like that, he was going to throw them all out one day. But he let me take some pictures of them before he did, and the pictures are now all in the Academy of Natural Sciences, in Philadelphia.

RR: You know that the DVOC used to help out on Charles Urner’s old Christmas Count at Barnegat?—it was founded sometime in the 19-teens I think—but in recent years the club has abandoned us. They used to do all of Long Beach Island, and we’ve never had enough personnel since to do it properly.
AB: I remember an Urner fellow I used to do that count with, he used to go down to Bermuda and work with the Cahow, invented some kind of baffle to protect the Cahow’s burrow from the tropicbirds.

RR: That would be Dick Thorsell.
AB: Dick Thorsell! That’s right! He was such a good birder, and funny.

RR: Dick’s a character, a great storyteller and old-style Urner, politically incorrect and still smoking and drinking. He moved to North Carolina in the 90s, to Brevard. He was a protégé of Lee Edwards when he was young, and has a lot of tales of adventures he had with Lee.
AB: I remember Lee Edwards! I used to go up to Princeton to see Charlie Rodgers—do you know him? Lee would come, and Judge Drinkwater, and other guys long gone, I guess, now. We’d go to hear Charlie talk and we were supposed to be the New Jersey Field Ornithologists’ Club, but no ornithology was ever discussed there, or very little…Charlie had such a terrific collection of birds, representatives from every family.

RR: Do you have a favorite group of birds you like to go after?
AB: That would be pelagic birds. Yesterday I just got the corrected proofs back from a journal and photos I took over the years doing pelagic trips. I’ll look for a publisher for it one of these days.

RR: Pelagic birds off New Jersey?
AB: Mostly off New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Hudson Canyon, Baltimore Canyon. I’ve been out to Hudson Canyon about 350 times, and most of the time I kept a journal of the trips, and took pictures.

RR: Are there any birds you’ve missed out there?
AB: Not any…I hope not. A long time ago in Cape May a fellow from the DVOC, Dave Cutler, asked me if I’d like to go out and look at pelagics, telling me that that was the weekend that the albatross was supposed to be there—they had had a Yellow-nosed Albatross on a Linnaean Society trip out of Jones Beach, Long Island, about the same time the previous year.

RR: I think that Linnaean trip was in late May,1960, so you’re talking about May or June, 1961.
AB: And we went out, in two boats. D’Arcy Northwood was on one and I was on the other, and we didn’t have any communication between the boats, no radio. And about three miles out this bird comes along, and I said, “Oh, there’s the albatross.” As if it was supposed to be there. There was no albatross in the field guide, but it was a Yellow-nosed Albatross.

RR: What do you think of Cape May today?
AB: Oh, I love it. At first when they put this big house in across the street I thought, oh, the whole place is going to the dogs, but you know, the guy who built it loves it here, and I like him, he’s a very nice guy…They’re knocking a lot of houses down at this end and putting up bigger places, but the new people are all very nice. You’ve got to live with change or blow your brains out, because things are always going to change; everything changes….