Every few years, I invite readers and colleagues to contribute guest columns in the series Technology and my Hobby/Passion. Over a hundred contributed in the last decade on their birding, charities, cooking, music, sports and every other passion, and how it keeps evolving with technology. Click here and scroll down to read them all.
This time it is Mary Keith, who is President of the Tampa Audubon Society. She has been birding most of her life. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania where most weekends were spent in the state parks and woods. She has lived and birded in Florida since 1992. Her degrees have nothing to do with birds (Chemistry and Food Science), but they have supported a life of work around the world where she managed to watch birds as well. She is retired from the University of Florida Extension Service and now has more time to lead bird walks for the Tampa Audubon Society, watch birds, monitor eagle nests and wading bird colonies, count Florida Scrub-Jays, help organize the Florida Birding and Nature Festival, and participate in Christmas Bird Counts:
For years I said that I was working as a dietitian to support my birding habit. Then I retired, and now most of my time is spent somehow related to birding. And I’m crazier busy than ever!
So, what about my birding? My parents were botanists and we were always out in the woods and parks. I lived in South America before there were any bird books or field guides available. So while I saw lots of birds I have no idea now what they were. I learned some names, in the local language and forgot them long ago. I remember seeing wrens in Machu Picchu, and screamers (yes, real birds!) in northern Argentina. My food science degrees gave me the opportunity to travel and work around the world, always looking for birds. But the first place I lived overseas where I had an actual bird book was in Kenya in 1990. Now I have 2 shelves full of field guides to other countries. At last count, I have been on birding trips in 35 countries. May be more.
Why not flowers? They’re colorful but stay in one place. Or butterflies? They’re colorful, and they move around. But birds? They are just endlessly fascinating! Yes, most of them are colorful, and they fly around. They also change their colors with the seasons. Many migrate, from country to country, continent to continent! Every year they fly thousands of miles to spend the winter someplace else. Then they fly back again, to the same country, same county, often same back yard that they left from! We still don't know how they do that. You might find them in forests in one country, and mangroves in another. Their songs during breeding season can be completely different from their chirps when they’re on their winter grounds. And for all the thousands of books now written about them, there is still so much we do not know. As I often say when asked about a bird's behavior “We haven’t taught them to read, English or anything else. So they haven’t read our books to find out what they’re supposed to do. They just keep on doing what they like, and it’s up to us figure them out.”
Sure a couple of you are wondering, Mary, how many bird species have you seen? At least a thousand, likely twice as many. And Mary, do you have a favorite? It is a Swallow-tailed Kite. First time I saw them, six were grabbing dragonflies from the air and gliding through a glitter-fall of sparkling dragonfly wings! I melted! (Vinnie: Jim Caldwell who wrote about his camerawork in this series here kindly shared a photo of one below)
As for the technology part, I’m trying to keep up with the rush of new developments. For years we just had binoculars. Heavy, many made for the military. Now they are light, fit your hand, with exacting optics. A few include a digital camera to take a photo of what you’re looking at. Augmented reality binoculars are coming next. Spotting ‘scopes are the same, smaller, lighter, and brighter. Some can clip on to your mobile phone. Optics envy leads to better views, and many purchases!
When Roger Tory Peterson published his first bird field guide in 1934, it became much easier for the casual onlooker to identify birds. Now we have apps! I bought an iPod and loaded it with BirdJam in 2004. It was one of the earliest versions of electronic bird song identification. Now our cell phones have apps like Merlin, Audubon and others. They have photos, not paintings, of the birds, with seasonal range maps showing when the bird is likely to be in an area. They have songs, not just one variety but those breeding, non-breeding, contact calls and more. Take a photo, upload it, and the app will help you ID what you’re looking at. This by the way is the photo I took of a Great Egret displaying its breeding plumage. The one on my head above is a Florida scrub-jay They only live in Florida, nowhere else in the world! Our own special bird.
Technology is also helping track annual migrations. Radar tracks clouds of migrating birds. Transmitters that attach to legs, wings, or feathers, by clip, backpack, glue or surgical implant, some weighing as little as half a gram, allow science to track birds around the world. A shorebird that nests in the high Arctic was tracked as it flew nonstop to islands south of New Zealand. Several months later it went back by way of Korea!
Science has attached magnets to birds’ heads, to learn that some use the Earth’s magnetic field to guide themselves. Tiny eyeglasses have shown that some use polarized light for direction, some hunt by UV light, and some use UV to differentiate between male and female. Who knew?!
I have stacks of little black books, lists of what I saw when and in which country. Now that’s digital too. And it’s not just for my record keeping. From Cornell U, eBird.org is probably the largest citizen science project in the world. With a cell phone app (see video below) I can track and upload what I see. Included on the page is a record of where I was and where I walked while reporting, by map, minutes and miles. I can report a bird on a nest or a juvenile 100 miles from its nest and upload photos as proof. Tens of thousands of eBirders are reporting around the world. Using eBird data, science is watching the falling numbers of birds, tracking their migrations day by day, seeing where they are for study, or finding out where they end up after being blown off course by a storm. I can watch moving maps as migrating birds fly north. If I travel to a new place I can use eBird to find the best local place to go, or find a bird that I’ve never seen. Some Subaru owners can now link their eBird and get immediate directions from the navigation system in the car to get there.
Recently it has been suggested that in the future eBird will be able to ask me for more information about a bird I reported. The apps will evolve into gaming and social media communities. I’ll be able, singly or in a team, to ‘compete’ with others to find new or the most birds.
Millions of birds die colliding with lighted skyscrapers or moving wind turbines. We’ll be able to recognize in advance when a migration is coming and turn off the lights, or slow the spin. AI and Wi-Fi connected bird feeders could be able to identify the birds at the feeders and report who, where, how many and how often they’re feeding. You would think drones would be good for birding. Today, they actually risk birds more than help capture better images. Another area for technologists to innovate.
The sky’s the limit!
Mary - I very much enjoyed your article, and the key take-aways vis-a-vis how technology has made birding that much easier and better, especially in the past 10 years. Dangers lurk around many corners, however, not only due to the continued deforestation occurring globally (resulting in massive natural habitat loss), but the impact of climate change, dramatically shifting northward (in our hemisphere) the migration paths of so many species. As I recall, Audubon put out some research a year ago highlighting the significant threat we face. Once again, thanks for a great piece. Bill
Posted by: Bill McNee | May 22, 2020 at 07:42 AM