Discovering beauty while counting our birds

This Eastern Bluebird at Tuck Park made the Great Backyard Bird Count

Naturally Wonderful, by Rich Haag – Feb. 28, 2012

I’ve never looked closely at birds before last week to try and figure out what they are. Thanks to the Great Backyard Bird Count, I have, and I’ve gained a new appreciation for our local birds’ beauty and diversity.

As you may recall, I wrote recently how people should participate because their data will help bird researchers and could be fun and all that good stuff. OK, I thought, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

I took my count last Monday, the final day of the 2012 event. More than 60,000 people across America and Canada had counted 10 million birds by then, according to the website's running tally. I had a fleeting thought that my effort would add nothing more than a hummingbird’s whisker to the statistics already collected. I’m glad I didn’t chicken out.

Cedar Waxwings at Belmont Abbey College

Belmont Abbey Mystery

I began my count at Belmont Abbey College. Nikon camera around my neck and pad in hand, I barely got to the campus road when a row of ancient cedars near St. Leo’s Hall began to quiver. The I-85 traffic din not withstanding, dozens of shrill tweets filled the campus air. Birds began to emerge among the shaking branches – a few at first and then dozens. Then one by two by three by more they burst out of the cover and darted across the open lawn to other trees near the monastery.

I started snapping photos of anything with a beak. I’m not a pro, but I do have a honking-big telephoto lens. Shoot first, analyze later, I thought as I scoured the cedar branches for my next optical target.

I repeated this exercise along upper Lake Wylie at Mount Holly’s Tuck Park. A child riding a bike with training wheels yelled to his mother, “Look, I see a bluebird!” Well, maybe he did. I couldn’t tell, but I shot photos of it anyway.

A wonderful surprise

My big surprise came that evening when I plugged the camera into my laptop and blew up the images several times larger than even the telephoto lens had captured.

I found this Red-Bellied Woodpecker, too

Hey, that thing under the cedar branches looks like a woodpecker when you pull out the shadows with magic software, I thought. But what kind of woodpecker? And what is that small brownish bird with hints of blue that I photographed at Tuck Park? What species has a tanish-gray body, yellow underbelly, tufted head and a line of red-tipped yellow at the end of its tail feathers? My wife's and my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Harding, took us on bird walks to see robins, cardinals, sparrows and bluebirds. I don’t recall seeing anything like the birds in these photographs! What the heck are they?

AllAboutBirds.org is a treasure

This is when I discovered the amazing Internet resources now available to birdwatchers. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one of the Backyard Bird Count’s main sponsors along with the Audubon Society, maintains a great website called AllAboutBirds.org. Like many bird websites (shouldn't we call them nests?), you can look up any bird and get information from what it looks and sounds like to where it likes to hang out each summer and winter. Here’s the really good part for novices like me: You can figure out what bird you saw just by entering basic information like color, size, beak shape and special markings. I quickly went from 350 choices down to nine as I refined my description of that yellow-bellied bird in the cedar tree. And it's name? Without a doubt, the Cedar Waxwing.

A Tuck Park Tufted Titmouse

Mystery of red tips is solved

The website told me that these anti-snowbirds summer from Alaska to Newfoundland but winter here, where our abundant cedars offer shelter and berries. Still, one thing did not match up. None of the website photos showed red on the tips of the tail feathers. Why did mine? I found the answer under a section with interesting facts about Cedar Waxwings.

I discovered that these birds developed a fondness for honeysuckle after man brought the prickly vine here from Europe. Some Cedar Waxwings eat so much honeysuckle that their tail feathers turn red!

Miss Harding would be pleased to know that she taught me all about our area’s two most observed birds: Robins (2,032 counted) and Northern Cardinals (1,970 spotted).

Now that the bird count is over, I’m surprised that I keep looking and listening for birds when I walk through my neighborhood. Perhaps that’s because my enlarged photos helped me “see” what my eyes could not – that wonderful, beautiful and maybe even rare winged treasures often wait just below the ripple of a nearby branch.

Want to know more?

Visit the Great Backyard Bird Count at www.birdsource.org/gbbc. As of 3:50 p.m. Feb. 28, 98,081 people had submitted reports on 16,702,301 individual birds and 615 species. At the site you can see records by locale, look at photos taken during the count and get lots of facts about birds.

Want to identify a bird?

Visit www.AllAboutBirds.org, operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. While you’re there, download the bird songs of this year’s top five most counted birds for free and learn about plants that will bring more birds to your own backyard. 

About Rich Haag -  Rich gained his love for the outdoors while roaming the woods and river gorge near his upstate NY home. He has spent many vacations – one lasting eight weeks -  camping with his wife, Karen, and their sons. Rich still roams the woods nearly every day, either walking with Karen at Reedy Creek Nature Preserve or cycling on the Mallard Creek Greenway.