THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE DAYS of hearty, and joyful howling on Sherwood brought to you by the Sherwood Howlers.
THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE DAYS.
CLOSING IN ON OUR ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY. TWENTY DAYS AND COUNTING.
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Tonight I am howling for Frank M. Chapman,
(June 12, 1864 – November 15, 1945) an American ornithologist and pioneering writer of field guides.
Mr. Chapman came up with the original idea for the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, which replaced a far more barbaric and senseless slaughter of bird and animals that took place around the holiday season in North America for a while, both detailed in today’s Sixty Second Natural History Note.
Mr. Chapman also wrote many ornithological books such as, Bird Life, Birds of Eastern North America, and Life in an Air Castle. He promoted the integration of photography into ornithology, especially in his book Bird Studies With a Camera, in which he discussed the practicability of the photographic blind. In 1901 he invented his own more portable version of a blind using an umbrella with a large ‘skirt’ to conceal the photographer. His blind could be bundled into a small pack for transport along with camera paraphernalia.
The skirt, handy as part of his bird photographic accoutrement, did double duty as a kilt, which he could remove from the umbrella, place around his waist, put on knee socks, cross belt, plaid and feathered bonnet, plaid brooch, add in a horse hair sporran, take a long pull on a flask of fine Irish whiskey, and parade around at Christmas Bird Counts, playing his bag pipes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpBw0oCO4C8
My kind of guy.
Join me tonight to howl for Frank M. Chapman, the man who saved the lives of countless feathered and furred wild friends.
HOWL TILL YOUR BAG PIPES BURST.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chapman_(ornithologist)
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SIXTY SECOND NATURAL HISTORY NOTE
The Audubon Christmas Bird Count
In the late 1800s, people in North America started a cruel holiday tradition. Each year on Christmas Day, armed participants, tanked up on their favorite whiskey, wandered around the countryside in competing teams, shooting every bird and small animal they saw. At the end of the day they carted their kills home to be tallied. Whoever brought in the biggest pile of feathered and furred animals won the sordid game. They called it the Christmas “Side Hunt” because they chose sides.
How cute and thoughty of them.
I call it murder. The whiskey probably added to the fun and mayhem.
This “festive slaughter” very likely hastened the extinction of bird species all over North America. Killing for the pure fun of it. If that is not barbarity I just don’t know anything.
It is most certain that these fine sporting gentlemen overharvested wildlife during these hunts. Participants would have had to process the meat quickly before it spoiled. There was likely a lot of waste. And many small birds “harvested” would not have been worth the effort to save. I am not sure a whole lot of science got done surrounding these hunts.
Along comes ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, just in the nick of time. In 1900 Mr. Chapman, an early officer in the then-nascent Audubon Society, proposed a new holiday tradition, a “Christmas Bird Census” that would count birds during the holidays, not kill but simply count.
On the very first Christmas Bird Count in 1900 Mr. Chapman and 27 other dedicated birders completed 25 Christmas Bird Counts. The locations ranged from Toronto, Ontario to Pacific Grove, California with most counts in or near the population centers of northeastern North America. Those original 27 Christmas Bird Counters tallied around 90 species on all the counts combined.
During last year’s 120th Christmas Bird Count in 2021, counters tallied 2566 species and nearly 44 million birds. While count efforts were at a record high level, the number of birds seen was approximately 6 million lower than the number counted in the previous year.
Mr. Chapman’s idea stuck and grew into the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC), sponsored by the National Audubon Society. It is an excellent example of citizen generated science. In fact, it is the first, the oldest and largest continuously running citizen science project ever undertaken, now in its one hundred and twenty-first year. Each year tens of thousands of volunteers take part, putting in 70,000+ person-days of effort, and count more than 64 million birds.
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Each November, birders can join the effort through the Audubon website. Volunteers sign up for as many “count days” as they wish conducted during the period from December 14 to January 5.
Each count takes place in an established 15-mile wide diameter circle. Volunteers follow specified routes through the target circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. It’s not just a species tally—all birds are counted all day, giving an indication of the total number of birds in the circle that day. Count organizers pair beginning or moderately experienced birders with more experienced folks. Over time, organizers have created specific protocols for collecting and aggregating the data. With the advent of super computers, the internet, and sophisticated databases this job has become easier.
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The data collected by observers over the past century allow Audubon researchers, conservation biologists, wildlife agencies and other interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. When combined with other surveys such as the Breeding Bird Survey, these data supply a picture of how the continent’s bird populations have changed in time and space over the past hundred years.
The picture emerging isn’t pretty.
In recent years, the Cornell University Ornithology Lab, in conjunction with a team of scientists from seven research institutions in the United States and Canada, conducted a comprehensive review of decades of bird population data, including the CBC data, breeding bird surveys, weather radar data, and a whole slew of other metrics to document the disappearance of 2.9 billion birds since 1970.
TWO BILLION, NINE HUNDRED MILLION BIRDS LOST IN FORTY YEARS.
That is nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada that have vanished in a relatively short forty year span, an overwhelming loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.
This first-ever assessment of net bird population changes in the U.S. and Canada reveals across-the-board declines that scientists call “staggering.” All told, the North American bird population is down by 2.9 billion breeding adults, with devastating losses among birds in every biome. Forests alone have lost 1 billion birds. Grassland bird populations collectively have declined by 53%, or another 720 million birds.
Common birds—the species that many people see every day—have suffered the greatest losses, according to the study. More than 90% of the losses (more than 2.5 billion birds) come from just 12 families including the sparrows, blackbirds, warblers, and finches.
The losses include favorite species seen at bird feeders, such as Dark-eyed Juncos (or “snowbirds,” down by 168 million) and sweet-singing White-throated Sparrows (down by 93 million). Eastern and Western Meadowlarks are down by a combined 139 million individuals. Even the beloved Red-winged Blackbird—a common sight in virtually every marsh and wet roadside across the continent—has declined by 92 million birds.
Birds are indicator species, serving as acutely sensitive barometers of environmental health, and their mass declines signal that the earth’s biological systems are in trouble. Unfortunately, this study is just the latest in a long line of such mounting evidence.
We cannot allow this trend to continue. We are better than this.
Nest time. Hope for the future. Solutions and action.
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AMERICAN TRAVELS
Sunday, May 18, 2015
We left Campbell Creek after the usual caffeine fix and SAILED north with light S winds, out into the Pamlico River, turned right into Pamlico Sound, a body of water roughly the size of the Chesapeake Bay. Pamlico Sound serves as an alternative route back to Virginia from the Great Dismal Swamp Canal we took on our way south last November, and an opportunity to stop in Ocracoke, NC, an all-time favorite place for us.
In the Sound we deployed the jib and make for Swan Quarter Bay, where big ferry boats go from there to Ocracoke and back daily. We anchored in Oyster Creek, Swam Quarter Bay. Strong SSW winds blew hard all night.
We are on an adventure now for sure.
Simple dinner of egg noodles and white sauce. Early to bed.
Monday, May 19, 2015
Up early and on the way by 0730. Ocracoke is a mere twenty-five miles across Pamlico Sound, a relatively shallow water body with areas of shoaling to be avoided. We leave our unprotected anchorage after a blustery night. Not much sleep. Worried about anchor dragging. Lee wind pushing us toward land.
Winds calm to 10-15 knots and turned east. We sail under jib and mizzen on a starboard reach out and set our course for Ocracoke. In the middle of the Sound we are out of sight of land for a while. Two other sailboats appear, one flying a spinnaker, a large kite like sail deployed at the bow, used for downwind sailing in light air (light winds).
We glide past Middle Ground Shoal to port, cross Blue Shoal and enter the Big Foot Slough Channel that leads into Ocracoke. Ocracoke Inlet to the Atlantic Ocean lies to starboard. Not much traffic other than the Swan Quarter – Ocracoke – Cedar Island ferries.
Big Foot Channel, narrow and shallow in spots. Rule #1 – don’t enter channel when ferry boats are coming or going. Rule #2 – don’t enter channel when ferry boats are coming or going. Rule #3 – know the ferry schedule so you can implement rules #s 1 and 2.
We follow the rules, motoring down Big Foot to intersection with the Nine Foot Shoal Channel, further down Big Foot to intersect with Teaches Hole Channel, named after Edward, aka Captain Blackbeard. A hard right takes us into Silver Lake, the ever so charming Ocracoke Harbor. A few other sailboats and powerboats anchored. WE arrive in Ocracoke at 1430. Moderate south winds. Anchored in ten feet of water.
Life is good today. Hunkering down for a few days.
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Speaking of Edward Teach, Captain Blackbeard, a few weeks ago staff with the Underwater Archeology Branch of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources recovered the very anchor carried by Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge. They hoisted the three thousand pound anchor from the bottom where in lay in twenty feet of water off Beaufort, NC for the past 297 years.
The actual ship was discovered in 1998 and they are just getting around to a concerted recovery effort. The site of the ship’s sinking has already yielded more than 250,000 artifacts, including cannons, gold, platters, glass, beads, shackles, rope, and Blackbeard’s complete collection of Grateful Dead original recordings, according to the state.
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COVID 19 IN VIRGINIA, STAUNTON, AND AUGUSTA COUNTY
No covid report today.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Biodiversity can’t be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters, or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.”
– Donella Meadows