It never fails: when I start writing a blog post and do some research to fill in the background, I come up with too many intriguing avenues for research, given the time constraints of posting a blog entry on the anniversary of a particular record. Either I need to start writing farther ahead, or I need to continually update past entries. Decisions, decisions...
The research for yesterday's post brought up the following issues, all well worth further investigation:
- the severity of the winter of 1917-1918. Even brief web searches indicate that this was a prodigious winter, not just in North America but in Europe as well (where those fighting World War I also had to contend with it). Wilson (1922) published a note in the Auk on bird changes in Kentucky following this winter, but I'd love to know what was going on in Jersey after that year. Then there is this photo, taken the same day the American Three-toed Woodpecker was seen in West Englewood, showing an Arctic landscape that was, in fact, Evansville, Indiana.
- J. M. Johnson. He may have been one of the first rangers (perhaps "nature educator" is a better term in this case) if this page refers to the same J. M. Johnson whose sister possibly saw the woodpecker. As for Ms. Johnson, puzzling out her identity really requires some serious digging through census records. Was she just a sibling with a bird-crazy brother, or was she a naturalist in her own right?
Finally, the combination of American Three-toed Woodpecker with Red-cockaded Woodpecker on the NJ state list puts the state into select company. Pennsylvania puts both on its hypothetical list only.
Wilson, Gordon. 1922. Bird Changes Caused by the Winter of 1917-1918. Auk 39:270. PDF here
Showing posts with label 1918. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1918. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
American Three-toed Woodpecker
On this day in 1918, Charles Johnston found an American Three-toed Woodpecker near West Englewood in Bergen County. The bird was a male and was carefully described by Johnston, who had previous experience with the species. A few days later, what was probably the same bird was seen by J. M. Johnson's sister; Johnson was a local birder but his sister remains nameless (at least, in the account of the record found in Griscom 1923).
Griscom noted that the winter of 1918 was "the severest winter on record" and gave plenty of bona fides for the observation and Johnston's abilities. However, he placed the woodpecker in the "Hypothetical" section of Birds of the New York City Region, saying, "...the writer feels that a specimen had better be obtained, before so unlikely a species is definitely recorded from New Jersey." This was a sign of the times; although Griscom was an early proponent of sight records, he believed that some birds were too unusual to let their documented occurrence rest only on a sighting.
Were Griscom alive today, he would still be waiting for that specimen. This 1918 observation is the only accepted record of American Three-toed Woodpecker for NJ, and there have only been a couple of other reports of the species in the state (Halliwell et al. 2000).
Griscom noted that the winter of 1918 was "the severest winter on record" and gave plenty of bona fides for the observation and Johnston's abilities. However, he placed the woodpecker in the "Hypothetical" section of Birds of the New York City Region, saying, "...the writer feels that a specimen had better be obtained, before so unlikely a species is definitely recorded from New Jersey." This was a sign of the times; although Griscom was an early proponent of sight records, he believed that some birds were too unusual to let their documented occurrence rest only on a sighting.
Were Griscom alive today, he would still be waiting for that specimen. This 1918 observation is the only accepted record of American Three-toed Woodpecker for NJ, and there have only been a couple of other reports of the species in the state (Halliwell et al. 2000).
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