There is something quite serene and enjoyable during those slow periods in
getting to know your common birds. Robins are still cool birds for me;
especially those spotted ones ;-)
The reality is, we live in the age of instant gratification. We want our birds
now! Fast and lined up for us.
--------
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of
others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence." ~ Frederick
Douglass
風 Swift as the wind
林 Quiet as the forest
火 Conquer like the fire
山 Steady as the mountain
Sun Tzu The Art of War
> (\__/)
> (= '.'=)
> (") _ (")
> Sent from somewhere in the field using my mobile device!
Andrew Baksh
www.birdingdude.blogspot.com
> On Jun 26, 2019, at 2:26 PM, ArieGilbert <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Re doldrums: one cannot appreciate a great day of birding without bad days.
> Yin/Yang
>
> Also its important to have LOOB
>
> ( life outside of birding )
>
> Arie Gilbert
> No. Babylon NY
> www.PowerBirder.Blogspot.com
> www.QCBirdClub.org
>
> Sent from my T-Mobile 4G LTE Device
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Shaibal Mitra <[email protected]>
> Date: 6/26/19 11:11 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: "NYSBIRDS ([email protected])" <[email protected]>
> Subject: [nysbirds-l] Purposeful Birdwatching
>
> Judging from many, many recent conversations with fellow birders, it seems
> that people are having a tough time of it during these June doldrums. From
> independent sources over the past week, I've heard: "crushing
> disappointment;" "why is it so bad?;" "is it going to get better?" "something
> could show up, right?;" "didn't birding used to be good?;" "this place used
> to be good, I think" and more. And this has mostly been in the context of
> ordinary, local birding, not directly related to the more ominous big-picture
> concerns expressed by Chris recently.
>
> My usual response, admittedly slightly sadistic, is that birding excitement
> has always been relative. We modern observers can't begin to imagine how bad
> it was before the legal protection of birds was implemented a century ago,
> and yet the observers of that time still found birdwatching exciting--and
> were motivated enough to achieve protective legislation in the face of forces
> as ruthless and malevolent as those confronting us now. Imagine the
> excitement experienced by Harry Hathaway, the father of Rhode Island
> ornithology, when in 1894 he saw his first Great Blue Heron, after ten years
> of field work! It was Hathaway's ongoing work that eventually revealed that a
> unique, seemingly outlying, 19th Century winter record of White-throated
> Sparrow in RI was not an accident. He documented two more winter records and
> lived long enough to see RI's plundered and deforested landscape recover
> sufficiently to harbor the lisping flocks of White-throats we now take for
> granted on the CBCs.
>
> On Long Island, Ludlow Griscom scolded over-exuberant birders who tossed off
> sight records of Ring-billed Gulls in winter and summer, citing a countable
> number of such specimens as the gold standard of documentation for that
> species in that context. Chafing at this discipline, Cruickshank and Peterson
> figured out how to find and identify Ring-billed Gulls better then their
> predecessors--proving again the eternal pleasure of purposeful birdwatching.
>
> Yesterday I saw my first adult Ring-billed Gulls of the season at Robert
> Moses SP, Suffolk County. I'm not sure of the date for my last spring adult,
> but I did manage to record that none were present by 17 April:
>
> https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S55097294
>
> And I am able to pull up the date of the late-June return of adults in at
> least one other year:
>
> https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S17210602
>
> [note to eBird: please enable sorting of checklists by Julian date!]
>
> A little sleuthing subsequently revealed that two of my colleagues beat me to
> it this year, documenting an adult Ring-bill at Cupsogue two days before my
> exciting find (though it required some follow-up work to obtain their photos
> and a definitive age):
>
> https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S57623401
>
> Hypothesis: Ring-billed Gulls whose breeding efforts fail after early June
> abandon the colonies and disperse, some reaching the coast.
>
> Shai Mitra
> Bay Shore
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