We all know why we go birding, and frankly when times are hugely stressful and scary like this, there’s all the more reason to seek that beauty and peace, and leave the troubles of humans behind for a bit.
In this time of plague, our scope for birding is curtailed — a critical necessity to try to “flatten the curve“ and save lives. For me personally, I had to cancel my annual April trip to the Caribbean, which is primarily for diving but is also my only opportunity to see birds of a warm climate, like Black-necked Stilts, Tricolored Herons, Bananaquits and Magnificent Frigatebirds. Possibly you’ve had to cancel long-distance trips too. But as disappointing as this is, I’d be far more devastated to lose a loved one to pneumonia, and crushed if my actions did anything to exacerbate this unprecedented epidemic.
Even short-distance trips aren’t necessarily safe, and in states like mine — Washington — we have a shelter-in-place directive and closures of recreational destinations like State Parks, WDNR and WDFW recreational areas and water access sites. That includes the DFW Wildlife Reserves on the Skagit River Delta where I go to watch snow geese, swans, dunlin, ducks, raptors etc — although no way am I going off island for the foreseeable future anyway, risking infection exposure. National Parks have been closed also, like Olympic NP. Our governor had no choice but to take this action because many Washingtonians chose to interpret the school and work closures as a vacation and swarmed into public recreational sites. You’ve probably seen recent photos of crowds of people in parking lots, parks and on trails and beaches, flagrantly flouting the 6-foot social-distance requirement already out there. The Quileute and Makah tribes have also closed their reservations to the general public, including access to beaches across their lands (Second Beach and Shi Shi Beach, respectively).
My own county has laid out policies a few days ago closing our county campgrounds and playgrounds and — thankfully! — vacation rentals. We are a tourist destination and lately have been getting swarms of people from the city flooding the islands (and behaving stupidly: buying up our limited groceries, crowding into our few businesses still open, generally ignoring the 6-foot rule, not to mention spreading their virus load to our local population, 40% of whom are over 65). Thursday our first case was confirmed on my little island (pop. 2200).
All these directives are good and necessary as a way to get control of this epidemic as a society. I’m relieved to see these actions taken and hope there’ll be enough respect for the rule of law that people will comply.
So, what can birders do to continue watching and learning about birds in this time of plague? Plenty!
Washington’s shelter-in-place directive is not a total lockdown quarantine. We can shop for groceries and go outside for exercise using sensible precautions like social distancing. That means I can still go out for my daily walkies around the neighborhood or bicycle down to the water. These short excursions are about an hour. I have a general route I take “around the block”, maybe a mile total distance, but I stop anywhere I’m likely to see birds. Get out my camera tucked in a fanny pack (to take the weight of the strap off my neck), zoom it out and check for movement on the water, in the trees, out on the fields, up in the air. I listen for birdsong and calls. My route is on back roads with little car traffic and a few walkers. We can keep our distance from each other easily, and do. Good rule of thumb: keep a vulture’s wingspan distance apart.
These are some birds I’ve seen in the past week out on my walkies: Canada Geese, Gadwall, Mallards, Surf Scoter, Buffleheads, Harlequin Ducks, Common Goldeneye, Hooded Mergansers, Red breasted Mergansers, Common Mergansers, Horned Grebe, Anna’s Hummingbird, Black Oystercatcher, Killdeer, Mew Gulls, Glaucous winged Gulls, Common Loon, Double crested Cormorant, Great Blue Heron, Turkey Vultures, Bald Eagles, Pileated Woodpecker, Flickers, Northwestern Crows, Common Ravens, Violet-green Swallows, White crowned Sparrows, Redtail Hawk, Wild Turkeys.
Even closer to home, there are innumerable birds in my backyard. Many are attracted to my feeders: black-oil-sunflower seed, suet, and a hummingbird feeder. Other birds are in the trees and bushes in and around my yard, or flying overhead. This past week I’ve seen all these birds from my house: Anna’s hummers, Rufous hummingbirds, Turkey Vultures, Bald Eagles, Down Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, Common Ravens, Chestnut backed Chickadees, Red breasted Nuthatch, American Robin, House Finch, Red Crossbill, Pine Siskins, Dark eyed Juncos, Song Sparrow, Spotted Towhee, Red winged Blackbirds, and the Golden Pheasant.
Who have you been seeing during this time from your house or out on walks nearby?
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One surreal aspect of this Covid-10 pandemic is that even though our world has been massively disrupted — rampant disease, crashing economy, lifestyle upheaval — we still have our basic infrastructure operational, which includes the Internet. Among its many other benefits, the internet allows us to see birds farther afield: birdwatching at a distance. There are birding groups on social media (nature is my biggest interest on Facebook, where I see reports in the groups Pacific Northwest Birders, Western Washington Birders, North American Gulls among others).
Bird cams are an endlessly fascinating source of drama that will keep you glued to your screen (but not reading endlessly about the epidemic!). True, it’s not the same thing as seeing birds in person, but on the other hand many of the wildlife cams show us activity we’d never have a chance to see otherwise. Some of my bookmarked bird cams are:
- Allen’s hummingbird nest (explore.org/..., first egg hatched a week ago)
- Decorah eagles (www.raptorresource.org/…, first egg should hatch in about a week)
- San Francisco ospreys (sfbayospreys.org/…, no eggs yet, some drama as the female was late arriving for the season)
- Seal Island Puffins (explore.org/…, have not arrived yet for nesting this year)
- Snowy owls (explore.org/…, ditto, archived highlights to see for now)
- Tsawwassen eagles on the Fraser River Delta, not far from where I live (hancockwildlife.org/…, 3 eggs this year!)
- New Zealand albatrosses (www.allaboutbirds.org/…, fluffy nestling)
What are your favorite bird cams?
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Another way to spend our time stuck safe at home is to learn about birds, either online or (gasp) reading books. My state birdserv group Tweeters has been particularly active lately, with conflicting opinions about birding excursions, and also with suggestions for what we can do inside at home. Here are a couple of partial examples:
“I too am frustrated with people traveling far and wide rather than staying home. We now have three cases of COVID-19, with at least two cases confirmed to have been contracted from outside the county. Stay home, please. Be grateful for some quiet time. I'm planning and mapping bird outings to share with my grandchildren once it's safe to travel again.”
“I'm using the time at home to work on gaining some much needed identification skills. I've got two books I've been pouring over lately. The first is Gulls Simplified: A Comparative Approach to Identification by Pete Dunne and Kevin T. Karlson. It has amazing photos and lots of great material to help sort out what kind of gull you are looking at.”
How are you using this stay-at-home time to learn new things about birds and birding?
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We don’t have to go far to see birds, even staying safe from the virus at home. Whether it’s looking outside our windows in the yard, at our feeders, around our neighborhood, or remotely, the birds are still there regardless of the mess we humans have made for ourselves. Birdwatching provides valuable perspective on the world as well as joy and appreciation for the beauty of birds. And using some “downtime” to immerse ourselves in learning about birds and nature is never time wasted.
I’d be interested to hear how you other birders are waiting out the plague. What are your ways of enjoying nature during this time? Please share your experience in the comments.