I’m still getting back in the swing of things.

Based on a colored engraving by Jacques Barraband from F. Levaillant’s Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets. Vol 2, Paris, 1801-5.

Wikipedia says: The Mascarene Islands (or Mascarenhas Archipelago) is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar comprising Mauritius, Réunion, Rodrigues, Agaléga, Cargados Carajos shoals, plus the former islands of the Saya de Malha, Nazareth and Soudan banks.

Errol Fuller says: “In all probability, the very last living Mascarene Parrot was kept, far from its natural home, in the Zoological Gardens of the King of Bavaria in Munich.”

This makes him a fitting bird for today, the day when I leave for a well-deserved vacation in Germany. I’ll send postcards.

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is probably extinct. Then again, maybe it isn’t.

It was, or is, one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, at roughly 20 inches in length and 30 inches in wingspan. It was native to the virgin forests of the southeastern United States. Logging in the nineteenth century cause enough of a loss of habitat for the bird that by the 1920’s it was thought to be almost extinct. When a pair surprisingly turned up in Florida, they were shot for specimens. By 1938, an estimated 20 individuals remained in the wild. A handful of them called a portion of old-growth forest in Louisiana home, until the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company clear-cut the forest, despite pleas from the governor and the National Audubon Society.

Luckily, the next time an ivory-billed woodpecker turned up unexpectedly, no one shot at it.

After sporadic reports of sightings of a male woodpecker in 2004, video emerged from a vast Arkansas swamp forest the following year. The tape confirmed the sighting of a live ivory-billed woodpecker. It was hailed as the birding equivalent of finding Elvis alive.

Since then there has been a handful of sightings in Arkansas and Florida, but no conclusive proof of their existence. Some ornithologists say that the birds are being confused with the Pileated Woodpecker, who is strikingly similar to the Ivory-Billed, and, notably, not extinct.

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is sometimes referred to as the Grail Bird, the Lord God Bird, or the Good God Bird, all based on the exclamations of awed onlookers. Other nicknames for the bird are King of the Woodpeckers, and Elvis in Feathers.

In December 2008, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology announced a reward of $50,000 to the person who can lead a project biologist to a living Ivory-billed Woodpecker. The reward is still unclaimed.

He was from Madagascar.

Probably the best-known extinct American bird is the Passenger Pigeon:

Estimates of the total number of passenger pigeons at the turn of the nineteenth century are around 3 billion, 25 to 40% of all the breeding birds in America.

Pigeon migration was a spectacle, as described by John James Audubon:

I dismounted, seated myself on an eminence, and began to mark with my pencil, making a dot for every flock that passed. In a short time finding the task which I had, undertaken impracticable, as the birds poured in countless multitudes, I rose, and counting the dots then put down, found that 163 had been made in twenty-one minutes. I traveled on, and still met more the farther I proceeded. The air was literally filled with Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow; and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose… Before sunset I reached Louisville, distance from Hardensburgh fifty-five miles. The Pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers, and continued to do so for three days in succession.

Audubon mentioned them many times in his writings. Here is a description of a portion of one flock returning to their nests:

“The Pigeons, arriving by thousands alighted everywhere, one above another, until solid masses as large as hogheads were formed on the branches all round. Here and there the perches gave way under the weight with a rush, and falling to the ground, destroyed hundreds of the birds beneath, forcing down the dense groups with which every stick was loaded. It was a scene of uproar and confusion.”

The species went from being one of the most abundant birds in the world during the 19th century to extinction early in the 20th century.

Their habitat was reduced by new settlements in the West, but the tipping point came as a result of hunting. Pigeon meat became a popular source of cheap food for the poor and for slaves in the south, leading to large-scale commercial hunting. In Louisville,  Audubon wrote that “multitudes were thus destroyed. For a week or more, the population fed on no other flesh than that of pigeons, and talked of nothing but pigeons.” Even the air smelled of them. At the time, Passenger Pigeons had one of the largest groups or flocks of any animal, giving hunters the impression that the supply of pigeons would never run out. In 1805, a pair of pigeons sold for two cents in New York City. Boxcars full of the birds were shipped back east.

The passenger pigeon was a very social bird; it lived in huge colonies stretching over hundreds of square miles, and practiced communal breeding with up to a hundred nests in a single tree. This kind of bird relies on sheer numbers to ensure its survival. There was safety in large flocks; the number of predators was so small compared to the total number of birds, little damage could be inflicted on the flock as a whole. But once their number were reduced beyond a certain point, a slow reduction in numbers quickly transitioned to a catastrophic decline, which is what happened to the bird between 1870 and 1890. As the flocks dwindled, the number of pigeons decreased below the threshold necessary to continue the species. Conservationists who tried to halt the hunting of the passenger pigeon at this point were too late; beyond  a certain point, the pigeon had no hope of coming back. Smaller groups of pigeons could not breed successfully, and the surviving numbers proved too few to re-establish the species.

On September 1, 1914, Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, died in the Cincinnati Zoo. Her body was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian Institution, where it was skinned, dissected, photographed and mounted. A memorial statue of Martha stands on the grounds of the Zoo.

Quiet whistled peeping notes. A soft thup-thup. A high, froglike drip. Harsh, high-pitched cackle. Lower kak-kak-kak. Seldom heard, a yelping bark. Series of sharp, annoyed whistles. Near nest, a frenzied cheereek! Low-pitched, harsh raaaah! Series of loud whistles. Nasal, drawn-out keeeeeah. High-pitched squeal. Tawit!  hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. A rolling trill. High, thin, mouselike jeet,  like two flint pebbles scraping. Low, reedy chart or trrip, trrip. Single whu.  Clear peet or peet-weet!. Sharp tik. Mellow, whistled kip-ip-ip-ip, often heard at night. A weird windy whistle. Whoooleeeeee, wheeloooooooooo. Fluty dududududu  or sharp piping twita-wit-wit-wit. Sanderling-like tit. Up-slurred whistle, too-wheet? or tu-whip? A dry tree, often repeated in cricketlike trill. Purring prrp. A throaty, rasping za-za-za. Sharp, repeated kit. A harsh, squealing zree-eek. Also a rapid kitti-kitti-kitti. Three-syllable whistle. Variety of chatters, croaks, and bill rattles. Nasal wide-a-wake or wacky-wack. Soft, short, barking notes. A liquid peet. A dry chif-chif. An emphatic TEACHer, TEACHer, TEACHer. Shrill chatter. Chip, chip, chip, weedle, weedle, che, che, che, che. Wheezy or hissing peee, very high-pitched. A low, growling ow  or arr. A repeated rick. Deep whoo-hoo-hoo. Also deep single whose. Mellow hoot.  A slurred, rich chip.  Rapid, high-pitched whi-whi-whi-whi-whi-whi or chewk-chewk-chewk-chewk,  often becoming higher and more yipping or puppylike, and chattering in the middle. Series of ticking notes. A sharp popping sound when diving. Zree. Wurp. Churrr. A distinctive sharp tsup.  Cheedle cheedle che che che che. Zray zray z-z-z-zeee.

These were some of my favorites in the latest edition of Peterson’s Guide. The sounds that birds make are obviously easier to render in a digital environment. But I have to admit I’m in love with the language that they’re using to try to bridge that gap between print and sound.

Bird guides are also full of certain kinds of unique visual shorthand to get you to see what makes one bird different from another, like silhouettes:

Silhouettes are often included in the front part of the field guide, so that if you’re a beginning birder you can see more clearly how different kinds of birds have different bill shapes, head shapes, wing shapes, etc.

Field guides also commonly describe habits, flight patterns, wing qualities, nesting habitats, and other generalizations for each species. This is an accumulation of different descriptions of behavior:

A somewhat undulating flight. A seed-cracking bill. Wing-flicking behavior. Gregarious. They walk briskly instead of hopping, and most wag their tail. Excellent songsters. They do not sing because they are happy. Often seen on lawns , with an erect stance, giving short runs then pauses. Dippers dive and swim underwater, where they walk on bottom. Tail often cocked. Nuthatches habitually go down trees headfirst. Sexes similar, or mostly so. Probes bark of trees. Acrobatic when feeding. Most often heard before they are seen. Graceful flight. Eat almost anything edible. Perch watchfully on bush tops, treetops, wires. Often impale prey on thorns, barbed wire. They can recognize relatives they haven’t seen in years. Some parents recruit nannies. Perching above water, or hovering and plunging headlong. Will offer their partner a sunflower seed as a token of affection.  Flight is brief and reluctant, with legs dangling. Often oval, giving loud squeaks, grunts, and peeps. Walk is sedate. Solitary. Flight very rapid, “twinkling”, sailing between spurts. Erect when perched. May remain motionless for long periods. Flutter when plucking berries. Pugnacious. They can fly backward.

Hopefully some of this kind of language will make the digital leap.

I am very very busy right now, but am nowhere near as busy as your average migrating bird is right about now. Birds cut across the Arctic, cross oceans, hemispheres, start off in Canada, end up in Brazil, fly thousands and thousands of miles all under their own power. Tiny birds that have to lay in layers of fat to make it across large bodies of water, assuming that a storm doesn’t delay them for longer than they can afford. Large birds that take advantage of thermal updrafts because they’re big and heavy and flapping is hard.  Some of them are traveling for the first time in their lives, and don’t have the faintest idea where they are going.

Imagine you want to visit a friend. You might follow landmarks, consult a map, or a series of maps, follow some road signs, ask a passerby. You still might get lost. Now imagine traveling by your own physical labor, without a map, instructions, or advice, across several countries and two continents. Now imagine doing that flawlessly, year in and year out.

Migrating birds plot their course by a complicated combination of landmarks, tracking the sun, the moon, the stars, sensing weak magnetic fields, faint odors, polarized light, barometric pressure, a whole range of things that combine with a genetically programmed urge to head in a certain direction at a certain time of the year. They can follow a range of clues to cross continents, oceans and hemispheres. We still don’t know exactly where some kinds of birds end up for portions of the year, and we still aren’t quite sure how they manage it.

That’s what I have to say about birds for today. Above is more drawings for the new book; below is a Green Heron by William Bartram. He wandered around the Southeast for five years starting in 1773, and wrote a book about it, Bartram’s Travels. The kind of Green Heron that he painted can be found from southeastern Canada to northern South America, depending on the time of the year.