Not Just For The Birds!
By Rock Termini

It’s early, just after dawn. The meadow air carries lingering traces of a mist born as night rushed into day. A chorus of singing birds in the tree line greets me, though I realize they are not singing to me. They sing to each other to attract mates, announce food, or claim territory.

I am just lucky to be here to hear their songs. I listen and pick out the ones that I recognize the “what-cheer-cheer-cheer” of a Northern Cardinal perched atop a nearby oak; the “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” of several chickadees; and the “ti-dee¯-di-di” of a Goldfinch, flinging his song behind as he flits away to the safety of taller grass.

I am surprised, and gratified, I can identify different species. After all, I didn’t start birding until I was fifty. Many like me have found birding to be a wonderful, relaxing way to exercise. It gets me outdoors where I can breathe fresh air and have some quiet time alone, or enjoy an afternoon with friends. And it takes me away from the traffic and noise of the city (though birds and wildlife can be rather raucous at times).

Birding offers something for almost any age. Young families looking for a reasonable cost activity find birding is both fun and an easy way to introduce children to the wonders of nature. Birding lets them self-discover an environmental ethic that will guide them in later life.

Becoming An Aficionado

Birding is among the easiest things to learn. Many birds have distinctive plumage which makes their identification easier. Others have unforgettable calls that most can learn easily in a single lesson: think of the waffling yodel of the Common Loon.
Finding someone to teach you is easy. Many of New York’s public and private sanctuaries offer education programs for all levels of experience.

Conservation groups offer beginning birder tours geared specifically to meet the needs of the novice.

Often these groups provide binoculars, either free or for a nominal rental charge. Contact any of New York’s 32 chapters of the National Audubon Society, or a birding club associated with the New York Federation of Bird Clubs, or a volunteer organization from a science museum or a zoo. Most lead public tours in their area. Some have gift shops where you can buy books on birding, and tapes or CDs with bird calls. All have experts. The NY State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation holds natural history classes at some park facilities. Partnerships with Audubon help make this happen.

There are several good field guides that can help you pick up birding essentials at your own pace. The National Audubon Society publishes a complete series, and the Roger Tory Petersen Institute, located at the southwest end of the Seaway Trail in Jamestown, has a series equal in scope and depth to the Audubon books.

But the truth is you really don’t need to know the names of birds to enjoy their songs and antics. Bird watching lets you decide how much you need to know and how fast you want to learn it. With easy requirements like that, it’s no wonder that birding is the fastest growing recreational activity in the United States.

Some 70 million Americans enjoy bird watching on a regular basis and every year spend more on their sport than the total gate figures for the top three professional sports in the US combined!

Finding Your Way

We are lucky in New York to have at our doorstep some of the best birding places in the East. New York’s rich diversity of landscapes and habitats translate into an immense variety of birds and wildlife to observe. There are shorelines and river banks, grassy meadows and forests. There are swamps, open water wetlands and bogs. There is even alpine and sub-alpine terrain. Decide what landscape you want to visit—lakeshore, mountain, forest—and the birds that favor that habitat will be there.

There will be some overlap, but always a generous supply of species specific to a place. There are “resident” species, here year round; plus migrants like warblers or orioles that come to breed here; and some species that pass through to breed further north.

There are always birds to see, but during spring, summer and fall the choices increase dramatically. Even winter, with the thousands of gulls that migrate through the Niagara River Gorge in late November and December, has something dramatic to offer.

Important Bird Areas

An international program to protect birds has found the rich diversity of New York’s landscape a perfect match for its aims. The Important Bird Area (IBA) program, which originated in Europe in the mid 1980s, uses scientific criteria to inventory key sites or habitats that are critical to the survival of bird species.

The first effort, Important Bird Areas in Europe (1989), became a blueprint for habitat protection, encompassing more than 16 million acres in Europe by the mid 1990s. Then, the National Audubon Society and the American Bird Conservancy adopted the IBA example for the United States, launching a pilot program in Pennsylvania in 1995. The next year, National Audubon began its program in New York under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Wells.

The essence of the IBA program is the identification of areas that support significant abundance and diversity of birds. Today, New York has identified 127 IBA sites, and more are being considered. Twenty-nine are within easy reach of the Seaway Trail.

With birding, timing can be as important as place. There are no bad times, but some times are better than others. Migrations do not occur at the same time each year, and it is the migrating species which often attract the bird watcher.

The migrants that excite Jamestown in early spring will appear later and later further and further north on the Trail. This offers the possibility of matching your schedule to where the birds are. The best sources of information on changing conditions are local birders.

Terrain features can be a factor. Most raptors soar on land-based thermal updrafts. Hawks migrating north through the Genesee Valley “turn right” at Lake Ontario and fly over Braddock Bay because there are no thermals over the Lake. The result is one of the world's largest spring hawk flights with over 100,000 birds annually.

Many people plan their vacations around birding places, a fact more and more tourist associations are discovering. The Trail, peppered with country inns and bed and breakfasts, has many local birding spots well known by area experts. There is the exceptional diversity at Presque Isle State Park in Pennsylvania, the thousands of Bonaparte’s Gulls in the Niagara River Gorge, the hawks at Braddock Bay, the waterfowl at Montezuma, the world’s largest Ring-billed Gull colony on Little Galoo Island, the world class Bank Swallow colony at Sparrowhawk Point near Ogdensburg, and almost all of New York’s breeding Palm Warblers at Massawepee Mire near Piercefield.

Nature organizations and groups like Elderhostels are working on packages that integrate birding tours with overnight stops at top-notch inns, coupled with visits to museums, galleries and shopping outlets. Every season in New York has a wide choice of community birding events that coincide with the expected appearance of desired species. These events bring together birders from novice to expert to share experiences and information. They combine the flavor of a country fair with opportunities to meet others at your skill level to share the excitement, as well as local experts who know the best spots.

A quick check beforehand will alert you to what community festivals are scheduled for the areas you are visiting. Regardless of when you visit New York, with a little travel between sites, you can hike an assortment of landscapes and see a diversity of birds that will live in your memories forever.

Rock Termini is Secretary of the Audubon Council of New York State, an association of 32 chapters of the National Audubon Society. Founded in 1905 and supported by 550,000 members nationwide, the National Audubon Society conserves and restores natural ecosystems, focusing on birds and other wildlife for the benefit of humanity and the Earth’s biological diversity.