Anyone who’s done much hawk watching knows that sometimes the birds get so high that you can’t see them, certainly not with the naked eye, and often not with binoculars, either. This happens most often when the sky is perfectly clear blue and rising air currents create lots of lift.

There are different ways to deal with the “high sky” situation, one of which is simply to go look at something other than hawks. But if you are determined to find high flying raptors, here’s a method that works, and one I used most recently during the Great Texas Birding Classic at Anzalduas County Park (just across the Rio Grande from Mexico).

We needed a few birds for the classic including, Broad-winged Hawk and Mississippi Kite. These two birds are master high soarers, and the conditions were ideal for that—light winds with the powerful Rio Grande Valley sunshine beating on the earth, heating it and creating thermals that we could actually see as floating dust and lint rose rapidly in the air.

I tried scanning the sky in a conventional way and finally came up with a few kites but, it was tough to find them and tough to get my teammates on them. So, I tried a different tactic. Wearing high quality polarized sunglasses; I extended my hand to cover the sun itself and then checked the bright halo around it for birds. This bright halo area even backlights light-bellied raptors, making them stand out markedly from the surrounding sky. And indeed, after a few minutes of watching, a few dozen Broad-wingeds and several hundred more Mississippi Kites appeared, relatively easy to detect. Bringing my binoculars to bear (and very carefully avoiding pointing them right at the sun) I checked the birds for something different, and sure enough gleaned the long-winged silhouette of a high-flying Peregrine Falcon for our list.

Use extreme caution and wear good sunglasses if give this tip a try. You will find raptors that no one else can.

Red Knots in breeding (foreground) and non-breeding (background) plumage.

Oh aren’t those writers so clever.

Anyway you might have despaired of seeing this celebrated long-distance migrant. If so, and if you live within a tank of gas of Cape May (and you have a $100 to fill it), then now is the time to head for the beaches of Delaware Bay and feast your eyes on a celebrity among shorebirds.

The scientific name, Calidris canutus, is descriptively apt. A Calidris is a type or genus of shorebird. The species name, canutus, comes from the name of an old English King (whose full name is: The Great Canute) who was, as all kings are, surrounded by sycophants and who was, as most kings tend to be, a bit vain about his lofty standing.

Or, in this case, sitting.

As the story goes one day one of the king’s boot lickers observed that the Ol’ Canute was so powerful even ocean’s tides did his bidding. To find out whether this theory would hold water the king had his throne set down below the tide line and ordered the incoming tide to halt.

What happened is just about what you might expect. What happened to the flattering lackey is not recorded.

Like the coin calling king, the knot, too, spends a portion of its life between the tide lines. In most places it forages on small bivalves that are exposed to its probing bill at low tide. On the shores of Delaware Bay, it is drawn to the horseshoe crab eggs that are deposited as the tide retreats.

Knots are gray backed and ruddy breasted. They are larger than the other sandpipers with which they normally associate with. They often associate with Ruddy Turnstones which are red, black and white.

Red Knots and Ruddy Turnstones on Delaware Bayshore.

To see knots, plot your life to be on a sandy beach, on Delaware Bay (north of Villas) at the onset of a falling tide. Can you see knots when the tide is full or low? Sometimes. But with numbers reduced, the peak foraging period coincides with a falling tide. Be there.

Yes, you will need binoculars. No, you don’t need a spotting scope. At some places (most notably Reed’s Beach) there are often interpreters on hand who will have a spotting scope and who will assist visitors in finding birds.

Two important considerations. Number one. Do not disturb the birds. They are trying to feed. You disturb them, not only do they stop eating, they waste energy avoiding you. Be responsible. Stay behind the signs warning you not to go farther.

Number two. The places where knots, and other shorebirds, concentrate are commonly where people have homes. Both of our species have a penchant for sandy beach.

In your enthusiasm for knots, do not do something that will cause a resident to become undone. Do not just stop in the road. Do not part and block a driveway. Do not, under any circumstances, trespass on private property.

There are designated parking places at known viewing areas. Please use them.

How long will the knots run? Until about the 27th of May. After that, most of the birds head north for the Arctic to breed. They’ll return in July–but not in the numbers or concentrations we see in Spring.

Enjoy. It’s not like you don’t deserve a celebrated natural spectacle now and again.

P.S. Bring one or two young people with you.

Hint to aspiring writers: Art doesn’t pay the bills. Write for the market.

Back in the day… (from left to right) Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Bill Boyle, and Pete Bacinski.

And while I’ve been in 24 World Series of Birding events, I’ve only been on a winning team 4 times. By my math, this means I’ve lost 20 times.

Very few participants can claim to have lost this event 20 times (in fact, perhaps only one!). Therefore I am much, much better suited to expound upon losing this event than winning it.

In fact, I’m the reigning expert!

So how do you go about losing the World Series of Birding–the 24-hour contest to see who can find the most bird species in a single day all in New Jersey?

First, make sure your teammates agree on nothing. Routes, lunch menu, and whether the coffee in the thermos should be French Roast or Kenyan. Then make sure they are exhausted by a week of scouting. Then make sure none of them sleep prior to the midnight start. Then announce half an hour from the motel and five minutes to midnight:

“Uh, I think I left my binoculars in the room.”

This, plus discovering that you actually put your binoculars in your day pack after returning to the hotel, will put everyone in a winning (meaning surly) mood.

Second, outfit the entire team in fresh, new triple-ply Gortex jackets that will make every movement sound like a grip-challenged, 800 pound gorilla scraping for the last chips in the bag. Not only won’t you be able to hear birds you won’t be able to direct anyone to the sound in the unlikely event that you do hear a drumming grouse.

Third, add spontaneous stops to an already over-loaded route. If you had a Willow Flycatcher singing along some unscouted dirt road three years ago, do by all means invest ten minutes and check it out. Not only won’t the bird be there, but you might get really lucky and get your wheels stuck in a Hummer-swallowing pot hole.

Fourth, don’t keep your list up–i.e. don’t check species off as you find them. This way when you get to Tom’s River and discover that you haven’t tallied a Black-capped Chickadee you’re screwed.

You’re in Carolina Chickadee land now, pal. Ain’t nuthin’ you can do about it.

Fifth, when you get to Brigantine National Wildlife Refuge, make sure you study every peep. Never mind that you’ve already got Least, Semipalmated, and White-rumped Sandpiper. After all there could be a Western Sandpiper tucked in the tens of thousands of feeding birds. And someday somebody is going to find a Spring Baird’s Sandpiper.

Make “ok….just give me one more minnnnnnnn (…ute)” a mind set. Consider this: if you dawdle just one minute more for every stop and stop twenty times that’s twenty minutes!

The twenty minutes you are not going to have at the end of the day. The twenty minutes you planned to use marching down to the end of South Cape May to get Piping Plover.

Ever try to find a sand colored bird on the sand in the dark? Most losing teams do at some point in their losing careers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, when it becomes clear that the Fates (and your conjoined blunders) have conspired against you, give up. Stop trying. Blame your performance on “the weather” or “the early date” or “the absence of a fallout” and then start arguing about the bird heard sixteen hours ago–that might have been an American Bittern but was actually the growling stomach of a hungry team mate.

You’ll be so heated up that you’ll miss the turnoff to the Whip-poor-will site and not discover the error until you are too lost and it’s too late to get to the finish line in time.

And don’t forget, you lose one bird from your list for every five minutes you are late.

Stop en route for coffee. There’s got to be a WAWA around somewhere.

Learn all about the World Series of Birding on BirdCapeMay.org—the countdown clock is ticking down the days, hours, minutes…

After the 25th annual WSB on May 10th we’ll post the 2008 Winners along with details and photos from the big day.

Good Luck to all WSB participants!

Remember Tuesdays with Morrie?  Released in 2002, this bestselling book by sportswriter Mitch Albom chronicles a series of visits he made to an ailing mentor.  Kenn Kaufman’s new book, Flights Against the Sunset, is something of a Tuesdays with Morrie for birders—it’s even been published as a very small book, about 5 x 7 inches, as was Tuesdays with Morrie.  In each book an acclaimed writer weaves tales of life into a story about visiting a cherished person for whom death is imminent.  The idea, of course, is that experiencing the end of a loved one’s life adds poignancy to one’s own experiences. 

I think there’s a little more going on with these books.  When a loved one dies, we all go through a series of emotional responses to the grief.  We all feel a need to honor the one we have lost and to face the inevitable guilt about things we might have done better in our relationship with that person.  In Flights Against the Sunset, Kaufman pays homage to his ailing mother and shares a few details, good and not so good, about his life as it pertains to his relationship with her. 

This story takes place over the course of a single day—a metaphorical day, I’m sure—during which Kaufmann, sitting at his mother’s bedside, tells stories to her about some of his birding adventures.  Many of the stories in Flights Against the Sunset are reprinted here, having first been published as Kaufman’s long-running column in Bird Watcher’s Digest.  “My lifelong passion for observing birds … provided me an intensity of experience beyond what most people have in their daily lives,” he writes in the first chapter, but in chatting with his mother, “This was no time for dry details of ornithology.” Instead, he chose to talk of, “That frontier where the world of birds intersects with the world of humans.”  Since that’s also where he directed his Bird Watcher’s Digest columns, this book does provide a successful framework for retelling those stories.  To better fit them into the narrative, at mid-book he writes, “I had been struggling to come up with more things to talk about, to keep my mother’s mind occupied so she wouldn’t focus on the discomfort she was feeling.  Those written columns would give me material … I could read to her.”

In some ways I wish that Kaufman had simply published an anthology of those columns.  Yet weaving those stories into this tale allows the narrative to include some revealing autobiographical material.  Of course, nothing reminds us of our own mortality as directly as the loss of a parent, and when looking ahead to the end our own days we all have a tendency to reminisce, and to find greater meaning some of our lifetime’s memorable events.  It’s difficult to make this meaningful to other readers, however, Kaufman is a gifted writer and he pulls it off quite well.  This is finely crafted, wonderful book, and Kaufman is a wonderful story-teller.

Still, I don’t like this kind of book very much.  I didn’t like Tuesdays with Morrie, nor did I enjoy reading Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams’ celebrated book in which she watches the coincidental demises of her mother and her favorite birding spot, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.  My initial thought was to review Flights Against the Sunset negatively.  But I gave it a bit more thought, and I realized that I just didn’t want to relive the passing of my own parents, to ponder my own mortality and shortcomings.  That’s no fault of Kaufman’s fine book.  With all the objectivity I can muster, I offer congratulations to the author for this moving tribute to his mother, and for the delightful set of stories at the center of the story.  The final image of real chickadees at a feeder and imaginary flamingoes and penguins flying into the sunset is powerful indeed.

Kaufman, Kenn.  Flights Against the Sunset: Stories That Reunited a Mother and Son.  Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.  225 pages, $24.00 hardcover.  ISBN-13: 978-0-618-94270-1; ISBN-10: 0-618-94270-X).

To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder’s Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.

This amuses me on several levels.

First, I am amused that there even is such a thing as a birding market. Back when I started birding, there were fewer birders than there are Democrats in Wyoming. There was, I believe, precisely one mail order binocular dealer. There was one bird watching publication. There was no reason to believe that those who fell in this narrow band of the human spectrum would one day constitute the second largest, fastest growing outdoor avocation in North America.

Yes, I’m talking about bird watchers. Pry yourself away from your Zenith black and white TV. Hop in your Studebaker. Drive down to the local park.

All those people walking around with binoculars around their necks and smiles on their faces? Those are bird watchers. Those people who are walking around mumbling to themselves? They’re on the telephone.

And you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But you can still watch I Love Lucy and What’s My Line? (providing that you trade in your rabbit ears for cable).

Second, I am amused because I am the very last person on earth who should be an acolyte, apostle, or spokesperson for birding. The reason I started birding was to get away from people. If I had any inkling it would one day become as popular as the latest diet and weight loss scheme coming out of Los Angeles I would have turned and run.

Third, and finally, I am most amused because business leaders in what is commonly (and mistakenly) regarded as the economic end of the earth would be interested enough in this subject to fly in a carpet bagger from the North. I am amused because there are still a whole lot of business people right here in Cape May (center of the Birding Universe), New Jersey who continue to be oblivious to birders and their potential.

Attention restaurant owners. Birders have the same metabolism as normal people. They need to eat. Sometimes three times a day.

Attention B&B owners. Birders keep odd hours but they need 7-8 a night just like the rest of us.

Attention café and bar owners. At the end of a hard birding day (around or precisely at 5:00 p.m.) birders like to hoist a few while doing their checklist. In many world renowned birding hotspots, there is a tap room that is recognized as the birder’s hangout. On the Sicily Isles, it’s the Porch Cressa pub. In Winnie, Texas, birders hang out at Al T’s.

There is no alcoholic epicenter for birders in Cape May. There is no favorite breakfast spot. There is no famous birders B&B.

There used to be. Back in the 50s and 60s everyone who was anyone stayed at Ma Shaffer’s in Cape May Point. And that was when birders were a numeric minority.

Did you know that the seminal work on birding economics was done right here in Cape May?

Do you realize that? Literally, tens of thousands of people come here every year with no other purpose than watching birds? Then they eat, drink, and sleep.

It certainly is odd that more people aren’t targeting their potential. For example, that there is no B&B (to my knowledge) that is promoting a 5:00 a.m. birder’s breakfast. Small wonder that the most popular place at 5:00 a.m. during May in Cape May, is the WAWA.

And some of you might be thinking: “Well, those economically strapped folks down in Mississippi certainly need the income. I mean, who goes to Mississippi?”

It just so happens, that Casino Gambling is the economic engine in that region. They’ve got plenty of visitors; plenty of market.

But they are interested in the birding market, anyway.

Imagine that.

We are a visual species. The entrance to our hearts and minds is through our eyes. Through my photography, writing, and presentations, I work to share the beauty and value I see in nature. Photography is one of my tools for teaching about nature and ecology and inspiring an interest in protecting our environment.

About Doug

In addition to being a photographer, Doug Wechsler is a naturalist, ornithologist, and author. He is Director of VIREO (Visual Resources for Ornithology), a part of The Academy of Natural Sciences and the world’s most comprehensive collection of bird photographs. VIREO now has 60,000 bird photographs online, including the work of several “Photographers of the Month” and other world-renowned bird photographers. Doug’s work takes him to tropical forests in Borneo, Ecuador, Cameroon and elsewhere around the world.

Doug has written 22 books for children, entirely or partly illustrated with his photographs. His most recent book, Frog Heaven: The Ecology of a Vernal Pool, was a finalist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru/SBF award and received the Green Earth Book Honor. His other books include Bizarre Bugs, Bizarre Birds, and The Really Wild Life series of books on birds of prey, snakes and frogs.

For his next book, Marvels in the Muck: Life in the Salt Marshes, Doug paddled into numerous tidal marshes with his wife, Debbie, and his camera, photographing diamondback terrapins, clapper rails, and hoards of fiddler crabs. The book will be published in November 2008. He is also developing the web site www.SaltMarshLife.com.

Doug’s photography can be seen in Audubon, National Wildlife, Natural History, in numerous other publications ranging from National Geographic to The National Enquirer, and in hundreds of books, exhibits, web sites, and calendars around the world. More of Doug’s work can be seen here. He also frequently gives presentations on a variety of natural history subjects to schools, birding clubs, and other venues.

View this month’s POTM Gallery

View the POTM Archives

It happens to all birders, I’m quite sure.  Our non-birding relatives find some book or other item (remember the singing bird clocks?) that they proudly present as a gift at some holiday or birthday.  We act pleased, but inside we think, “I don’t really want this.”

That was my initial reaction when I was given a copy of Richard Rhodes’ biography of Audubon a couple of years ago.  Yes, I’ve done a lot of work for Audubon Societies over the years, and yes, I spend a lot of time with birds, but I’m not much of a history buff and, frankly, I thought I knew everything I wanted to know about Monsieur Audubon.  The book sat on the shelf for many months before I finally picked it up and gave the first chapter a chance.

I was hooked.  Audubon’s life was more interesting than I had remembered, and Richard Rhodes is a celebrated writer whose lively prose makes this biography a fun book to read.  Audubon’s story is a good one, but this biography also manages to describe what the young United States of America was like in the early 19th century.  From severe economic downturns to the tragic leveling of the eastern forest, Rhodes made me yearn to slip back in time and watch what was happening.

Audubon failed in business rather spectacularly several times, and Rhodes argues that without these failings Audubon might never have followed his passions of birds, nature, and painting.  It’s great fun to follow along on some of Audubon’s long journeys through the lower Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys whose forests were loaded with Passenger Pigeons and whose wetlands were filled with huge flocks of migratory waterfowl.

One thread that is woven throughout the narrative is Audubon’s devotion toward his wife, Lucy, whom he met early in life and whose love he treasured throughout his life.  The two suffered long separations; in the early years as Audubon ventured out on collecting and exploring expeditions, and later he traveled to Europe to sell subscriptions to his works.  Perhaps we know of this couple’s devotion because of the separations, as many letters between the two have survived and are available to contemporary biographers.  Through these and other documents we also learn that other family members were not equally beloved.  The tale never descends into soap opera, yet the realities of relationships, especially during times of hardship, are important elements of the biography and, indeed, of Audubon’s life.

There is some examination of Audubon’s artistry, and while Rhodes is no art critic, these passages are important in telling Audubon’s story and establishing his place in American history.  The text is accompanied by a number of illustrations, including individual portraits and some of Audubon’s key paintings, ones that illustrate the development of his style and technique.

In short, I’m left thanking my family for a gift that originally disappointed me.  If you’ve got the slightest interest in learning about John James Audubon, you’ll certainly enjoy this biography.

Rhodes, Richard.  John James Audubon: The Making of an American.  New York, Borzoi Books, 2006.  514 pages, $16.00 paper (also available in hardcover).  ISBN-13: 978-0-375-71393-4; ISBN-10: 0-375-71393-X).

To order a copy of a title reviewed on the Birder’s Bookshelf, please call CMBO’s Northwood Center (609)884-2736 or the Center for Research & Education (609)861-0700.

You hear a lot of stories about chiggers that are absolutely untrue—for example, that they will burrow under your skin and eat their way around in there for a while until they come out again. Unfortunately, the truth isn’t much better than the stories.  Chiggers are a type of mite whose larvae feed parasitically on a variety of critters, including humans.   The larvae insert their mouthparts into a skin pore or hair follicle and inject digestive enzymes which break down tissue. Their bites produce small, reddish welts on the skin accompanied by intense itching.  Since the things are so small they can’t be seen without a magnifying glass, you don’t know you’ve gotten into them until the bites appear (see photo).

A chigger bite.

Chiggers inhabit grassy or brushy areas, often near water or wetlands, and not necessarily tall grass either—they are occasionally picked up on mowed paths.  In the United States, they are most abundant in the southeast, the south, and the midwest. Great birding areas are often rife with chiggers; Cape May County, NJ; Florida; and the Texas Coast are three areas that come to mind as chigger havens. I have not encountered chiggers in northern or western mountainous areas, and they do not inhabit deserts.

If you’ve never encountered a chigger take my word for it, you don’t want to.  In the northern portion of their range chigger larvae are most abundant in June, but farther south they are multi-brooded and so can be present throughout the year. 

Here are some precautions that must be taken to avoid chiggers:

1.  Avoid tall grass and brushy areas; stay on gravel, dirt, paved, or short-mowed grass.

2.  Tuck your pants into your socks or, even better, into knee-high rubber boots.

3.  Spray your shoes, socks, and pant legs with insect repellant —paying special attention to any clothing openings such as the waist and cuffs.  Use products containing either DEET or Permethrin.  DEET is somewhat effective, while Permethrin is extremely effective but must ONLY be used on clothing, not skin.  Permethrin will also last through several clothes washings.

4.  Keep moving when you are in chigger habitat—the worst cases occur when you linger where many chiggers are present.

5.  If you’ve been in chigger country, transfer your clothing directly to the washing machine and wash with hot, soapy water.  Chiggers will survive cold water washing.  Alternately, they will abandon clothing hung in hot sunshine for several hours.

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!

Alan’s cottage on Cape May Point.
Photo by Rick Radis.

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.

PBM Seaplane—the kind that Alan worked on in WWII.

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.

Famous DC-3 with dragon painted on its side that took 15 DVOC members to Churchill, Alaska, and Guatemala in the 60s. Photo by Alan Brady.

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.

Greater Shearwater Hudson Canyon by Alan Brady.
“Love those seabirds.”

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.

Black-browed Albatross Falklands by Alan Brady.
“Most splendid of all seabirds.”

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….

As the month of May comes to the shores of Delaware Bay, birders, marine biologists, and all naturalists think of the same thing: Horseshoe Crabs.  The Horseshoe Crab breeding season typically begins this month, and huge flocks of northbound shorebirds rely on Horseshoe Crab eggs to fuel their migratory flights. The populations of both have declined precipitously in recent years and the conservation of Horseshoe Crab populations has become a major issue for NJ Audubon and other conservation organizations.  More horseshoe crabs breed along the shores of Delaware Bay than anywhere else in the world.

So the time seems right for revisiting a book that was released in early 2004.  The American Horseshoe Crab, edited by Carl. N. Shuster, Jr., Robert B. Barlow, and H. Jane Brockmann, is the encyclopedia of all things horseshoe crab, and there’s no denying that this animal, Limulus polyphemus, is a fascinating creature.  Its biology and natural history are of interest to an unusually wide variety of people.  The lineage of this arthropod is ancient, with close relatives dating back at least 450 million years.  Ecologically it is a keystone species, with shorebirds and many other species dependant on Horseshoe Crabs at one life stage or another.  Extensive basic research into this animal has had wide-reaching implications, especially the study of vision; for their studies of the visual systems of Horseshoe Crabs, H. Keffer Hartline and George Wald received a share of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1967.  Horseshoe Crabs have been harvested for fertilizer and bait, and blood extracted from these creatures is the basis for Limulus amebocyte lysate, an extremely valuable agent for testing pharmaceuticals for contamination.

Unregulated harvest of Horseshoe Crabs was permitted until just a few years ago.  There is much controversy as to the efficacy of harvest limits that are now in place.  “Horseshoe crabs are the most researched of all marine arthropods,” state the authors in the preface to this book.  “Writing a treatise on Limulus was clearly a worthwhile goal; but everyone agreed that an even more useful pursuit, though perhaps a greater challenge, would be to write a book that would introduce horseshoe crabs to a wide audience.”  While the ensuing book is more the former than the latter, it is an impressively detailed look into many aspects of Horseshoe Crab biology and a summary of much important research that has been conducted about its ecology, physiology, anatomy, evolutionary history, and the past and present uses of the species by humans.

For those with some science background, especially those with an interest in marine biology, this book is filled with treasures.  There can’t be much about the lives of Horseshoe Crabs that isn’t included, from embryonic development to responses to pathogens.  Two particular lines of research about Horseshoe Crabs have led to discoveries with value far beyond the realm of marine biology: the study of vision and the development of Limulus amebocyte lysate as a tool for monitoring endotoxin contamination.  The authors document the long trail of research studies that led to these major discoveries; in both cases it’s a fascinating read.  A final chapter on Horseshoe Crab conservation sounds a persuasive alarm for the need to reduce harvests and protect habitats if Limulus polyphemus is to continue in its role as an organism of great ecological significance through much of its range.  The American Horseshoe Crab is a serious book about a serious topic.  It’s seriously good. 

Shuster, Jr., Carl N., Robert B. Barlow, and H. Jane Brockmann, Eds.  The American Horseshoe Crab.  Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, Harvard University Press, 2004.  427 pages hardcover, $102.00.  ISBN-13: 978-0-674-01159-5; ISBN-10: 0-674-011569-7.