Extreme Birder: One Woman's Big Year

Afterword

afterword Barber’s Companions A Lone Quest with Lots of Company When we read about people climbing Mt. Everest without oxygen or Yosemite ’s cliffs without a rope, we do not see ourselves in their place, but driving and flying around the country looking for birds—well, we could do that. Nonbirders , though, will quickly ask, “Who would want to?” Surprisingly, many people. A survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found some 46 million of us go birding, making it the country’s most popular outdoor recreation. Although few actually do a big year, many think or dream about it, and we all recognize the urge to fulfill a dream like the one that drove Barber. And while the big year depends on such features of modern life as inexpensive airline travel, sophisticated field and finding guides, and a community of enthusiasts united by the Internet, the idea goes back to the days when genteel ladies went out with opera glasses to look at birds in the park, as do Barber’s concerns about not disturbing birds and what could be counted and her reliance on friends and fellow birders. She followed a trail blazed by several generations of birders and maintained by a community. Women started the hobby of birding, then called bird-watching, in the late nineteenth century, largely as a way to encourage conservation. Women who were interested in their bird neighbors, the thought ran, would become interested in bird protection, and the best way to interest them was to get them out to look. Identifying and listing were both genteel and humane. Bird protection was a women’s issue in those days because many of the birds were being slaughtered for feathers to decorate dresses and hats. Federal and state laws soon ended the slaughter, but birding continued, supported by a national network of Audubon societies, and the hobby now has a century-long history of conservation achievements, and lists. Lists were the easiest way to measure knowledge and field craft and to organize competition and self-competition; besides, many people like making lists. Frank Chapman, founder and editor of the Audubon magazine Bird-Lore (now Audubon) said he did not believe “the making of a big list for the day or the season should be the one ambition of the field-glass student, yet an occasional effort of this kind, stimulated, perhaps , by friendly rivalry, may be a profitable as well as enjoyable pastime.” You can see where that led! He encouraged the practice by starting the Audubon 242 Afterword Christmas Bird Count (still an annual event) and printing personal lists and the results of competitions in the magazine. In 1908 Kate P. and E. W. Vietor found 93 species in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park during 135 visits; E. Fleischer made 169 visits, found all but 3 of the Vietors’ species, and brought the total up to 106. In 1913 Annie W. Cobb had the highest total in the Massachusetts Audubon Society, 197 species, followed by Anna Kingman Barry at 169. The next year Barry led with 186 species to Cobb’s 181. These seem like modest achievements, but remember, these women had opera glasses, field guides that did not even identify all the species, much less juveniles and variants, and they had no cars, planes, or rare bird hotlines and Web sites. Most were enthusiastic; there were only a few dissenters, people like Eugene Swope, manager of the Audubon nature reserve at Oyster Bay, who in the early 1920s grumbled that listers “were almost as great a nuisance on the sanctuary as cats, and he hoped that their pastime was a fad that would soon run its course.” No such luck. Besides year lists, the kind that drove Barber, there were day lists, another form she mentions. In 1913 Chapman reported a record count, “that of Prof Lynds Jones, who, with two assistants, recorded in Northern Ohio, on May 13, 1907, 144 species.” His own best effort, he said, stood at 95, but he thought it possible to see 100 inland species in the Atlantic states. With cars and better methods of identification, it was. On May 17, 1931, Ludlow Griscom, whom Roger Tory Peterson called the dean of the bird-watchers, set off with his friends at 3 a.m., had 104 species by 7:30 in the morning, and at the end of the day, as his ornithological journal triumphantly recorded, “a world record list of 163.” Two years...