What’s the best way to spend a chilly Saturday morning? For about 30 people in raincoats, with pants tucked into boots, the answer was easy. On May 30, they gathered on Sky High Farm in Ancram, clutching binoculars and scanning the sky for bobolinks before they migrate to South America in the winter.
The group included bird enthusiasts of all ages and levels — Hudson Valley retirees aiming for a new hobby, a 10-year old whose parents drove her from their home in Manhattan. Leading the two-hour walk were experts from the Alan Devoe Bird Club, which holds excursions twice every month to explore birding hotspots throughout Columbia County.
Bobolinks flew in the distance making a digital “tzz-tzz-tzz” sound as the group walked slowly in single file through tall, wet grass, careful not to accidentally step on their nests. Unlike other North American birds, bobolinks sport a reverse tuxedo plumage — a white back and black underbody. The males have a yellow patch on their napes during breeding season, which lasts from late April through July.
The birds have decreased by 2% per year across North America since 1966, according to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. Contributing to the bobolinks’ decline is a shortage of unmowed fields during the spring and early summer — which is why Phil Haynes, director of farm operations at Sky High, has delayed mowing, even though it’s the most profitable time to sell the first cut of hay.
“That’ll be grazing ground for our future cattle operations,” said Haynes, who is trying to balance farming with bird and land conservation. “We planted a lot of native warm season grass that is gonna grow in July and August.”
Marian Sole, one of the bird walk leaders, explained that bobolinks feed on the bugs and flies that roam the field, helping to control the insect population. “But why does it need to contribute to the ecosystem to be protected?” she asked. “They are beautiful birds.”
Much to its amusement, the group also watched a turkey vulture being chased in the air by a much smaller bird. Turkey vultures have a peculiar defense mechanism when they sense fear — they vomit on their predator, Sole said.
Mayuko Fujino, a field coordinator for the club, said she stopped calling herself a bird-watcher a few years ago. A good birder, she said, is attentive beyond just spotting a bird with their eyes.
“It’s like a friend that you’ve seen many times and you hear their voice,” said Chris Franks, another club coordinator who has been birding in the Hudson Valley for decades. “After a while, you go, oh, I recognize that voice.”
When Fujino suddenly stopped mid-conversation, excitedly pointing skyward to a common merganser, Franks laughed. That’s a telltale sign of a birder, he noted — getting distracted and turning conversations into bird trivia. The common merganser, Fujino explained, is a kind of white-colored duck, and the rapidly flapping wings meant it wasn’t a goose.
The birding world is full of surprises, but it takes patience to get there. Once, Franks said, he was certain he’d spotted an American bittern and spent half an hour waiting for the bird to move before realizing he had been staring at a stick.
“We always have this wishful thinking,” he said. “We have something we want to see but it doesn’t always work out that way.”
When they couldn’t spot a bird, many turned to Merlin, an app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology that helps identify species by their birdsong. The group heard a house wren, which Franks said sounds like “a babbling brook.” At one point, a quiet buzzing stopped the group in its tracks. With no bees in sight, it had to be a blue warbler.
Birding, Franks said, is a little like winetasting — practitioners develop their own vocabulary for what they hear. To him, the Carolina Wren sings “tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle,” though to someone else it might sound like “cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.”
Fujino said that while Merlin is helpful, she learned a great deal from accompanying fellow birders on their quests. She now hosts a radio show on WGXC 90.5 FM called Beakuency (beak plus frequency) where she interviews local birders.
For beginners, the local transfer station is a good place to spot scavenger birds, said Sole. “You can almost always see some gulls there,” she said. “They’ll eat just about anything — mice, rodents, even McDonald’s fries.”
Sole got into birding 40 years ago when her 6-year-old daughter started pointing at birds in their backyard and asking questions she couldn’t answer. At Sky High, she wore a hat with small enamel pins of a Northern Lapwing, a puffin, and a green woodpecker — souvenirs from her visits to birding sites of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the United Kingdom, where she is originally from.
M.C. Stockl, an Ancram resident on just her second-ever bird walk, was already planning her next one.
“Every time you pick up a new hobby related to nature, you learn how little you know,” Stockl said. “There is just so much to learn.”
The Alan Devoe Bird Club has walks scheduled through June. The excursions are free and open to birders of all levels.