Bird of Passage: April 2024
First, a quick housekeeping note: If this month's email looks a bit different, it's because I've moved from Substack to another email platform called Buttondown. Welcome to my new subscribers who found me after to the move, and thank you to the rest of you for sticking with me!
The day this goes out I’ll be flying home from a quick family trip to San Francisco over my kid’s spring break. But as I write, it’s the last week of March, and I’m reflecting on a much closer-to-home family adventure that we had over the weekend—an outing in search of Sandhill Cranes. The nearest spot to my home where migrating cranes reliably congregate is about an hour away. Members of the local Audubon chapter make a pilgrimage to go see them every spring, and this year my husband, my five-year-old son, and I finally joined them.
I don’t take my son on many organized birding outings, but this one fit all of the criteria I look for in a kid-friendly birding expedition. (Long ago I occasionally used to take groups of kids birding for work—I have a master’s degree in environmental education, and I worked in that field for a number of years before shifting into science communication and science writing.)
First, similar to the Snow Geese I wrote about last month, it featured big, impressive birds that didn’t require binoculars to appreciate. My kid can sort of use binoculars, but a large gathering of cranes offer a high ratio of potential enjoyment to potential frustration with optical gear. To pique his interest, I showed him photos of Sandhill Cranes ahead of time and played some recordings of their bugling calls.
Second, there was a clear opportunity to pair it with something else my son would enjoy: I knew there was a crêpe restaurant not too far from where we’d be looking for cranes, and I promised to buy my kid a Nutella crêpe for brunch after we were done looking at birds. Yes, I am not above bribery to get him to participate cheerfully in outings like this! On a nicer day, a visit to a new-to-him playground probably would have done the trick as well.
Was it a perfect morning? No. My son inevitably complained a bit about the long drive. There were fewer cranes, farther from the road, than we’d hoped. It was also cold and windy, and my son ended up mostly sitting in the car and watching through the window as groups of them passed overhead. But we did see some cranes. And eat crêpes.
I don’t know if my son will be a birder as he gets older. Maybe! Or he might develop interests that are totally different from mine, and I’m fine with that. I think the most important thing to remember as a parent is that your kids are not extensions of you; they’re their own little people, with their own personalities and likes and dislikes.
But for now, I’m going to keep sharing the things I love with him, carefully choosing ways to do so that will hopefully entertain rather than bore a precocious kindergartener. Whether he specifically turns out to be a birder or not, I hope he becomes an adult who cares deeply about the natural world.
Words About Birds
Last month, Hakai Magazine asked me to cover some research suggesting that the annual arrival of White-tailed Tropicbirds to Bermuda, an important local sign of spring, has shifted dramatically earlier in the last 70 years. Never having been to Bermuda or seen a tropicbird, digging into this provided an interesting mental vacation from the dreariness of late winter in Washington. The analysis is based on records kept by birdwatchers, which makes it a bit tricky to interpret (there are more birders in Bermuda now than there used to be, for one thing!), but it's an intriguing indicator of possible changes in the local marine ecosystem.
I rolled my eyes really, really hard at this one: Apparently the Utah state legislature passed a bill mandating that the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources continues to use the official English bird names that were in effect on January 1, 2020. Yup, the debate over the plan to rename all the bird species named after people has broken out of the bird world and entered the broader political discourse. This is nonsensical, because English bird names change all the time as species are lumped, split, and otherwise reclassified; is the state of Utah really just not going to recognize future taxonomic updates???
A cool paper I wish someone would pay me to write about: A group of researchers put together a database of the materials used in more than 6,000 (!) individual bird nests built by species around the world, then looked for factors related to birds' use of "anthropogenic items" (human-created stuff like yarn, wire, and especially plastic). Unsurprisingly, birds that use artificial nest locations (like nesting on buildings) and that typically use a wide range of nest materials were more likely to use anthropogenic items in their nests, but there weren't any correlations with things like brain size or conservation status. Incorporating plastic into a nest can have negative effects on the birds living in it, so this sort of thing is important to understand.
Just for fun: I enjoyed this guide to birdwatching in the age of the dinosaurs. If you could take your binoculars, climb into a time machine, and travel back to the age of the (non-avian!) dinosaurs, what birds could you add to your life list? You've probably heard of Archaeopteryx, but this piece also provides a breezy overview of other ancient proto-birds such as Confuciusornis (a crow-sized bird with a modern-looking beak but large claws on its wings) and Hesperornis (an enormous flightless waterbird that looked something like a massive loon with teeth).
Finally (and admittedly straying a little from birds here), I'm proud to be acquainted with two of the authors of this important new paper on the need to support trans scientists. The authors present a brief overview of the history of discrimination against trans and nonbinary people, both in general and in the sciences, and then provide examples of concrete steps that individuals and organizations in STEM can take to promote the safety and inclusion of their trans colleagues.
Book Recommendation of the Month
Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald. Yes, I'm late to the party on this one (it came out in 2021), but I'm really enjoying it. Unlike Macdonald's previous bestseller, H is for Hawk, which was a memoir about her experience working with a goshawk as a falconer, this one is a wide-ranging collection of short to medium-length essays, and it's just indescribably thoughtful and delightful. I'm still reading it, but my favorite piece so far is "High-Rise," about the migration corridor over New York City and the concept of the sky as habitat.
Upcoming Events
April 18: Virtual book talk for the Four Harbors Audubon Society
April 18: Virtual book talk for Golden Gate Bird Alliance (yes, I have scheduled myself for two of these on one day, not sure why I thought that was wise...!)
April 21: *In-person* keynote at the Mass Audubon Birders Meeting in Worcester, MA
April 29: Virtual book talk for the Grand Rapids Audubon Club
May 3: *In-person* keynote at the Grays Harbor Shorebird Festival in Hoquiam, WA
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3 tropicbirds for me on July 28, 1996: https://ebird.org/checklist/S38099176. Also, you could talk me into almost anything for a Nutella crepe. ; >