Mothy Monday 3: Spring Cankerworm Moth

Take Two
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

I'm kind of surprised that I haven't yet seen a Green Cloverworm Moth this year (they are fairly hardy). But now it's March and, right on schedule, a Spring Cankerworm Moth showed up a few days ago. I also found a Phigalia sp. (possibly The Half-wing, or possibly not) over the weekend; again, Phigalias (Phigaliae?) tend to show up early in the season.

Spring Cankerworm Moths are unassuming gray Geometers that hold their wings more like Noctuids (i.e., not spread like a pinned specimen as many Geometers do but folded over the moth's back).

George Wenzelburger

Yesterday, Bob Dodelson reported the passing of George Wenzelburger to the JerseyBirds listserv. George had been ill for some time, so this news was not exactly a surprise, but it was still very sad news.

I did not know George well or long. I never had the opportunity to go birding with him. I made his acquaintance when I became involved with the NJ Bird Records Committee. During George's last term on the committee, spring meetings were customarily held at his house in Freehold, where he and his wife were the best of hosts. I wish I could say something more profound, but that will probably come from those who knew him best. I can only say I deeply regret his passing and my thoughts are with his family and friends.

If you have a stack of old issues of (Records of) New Jersey Birds, you might pull out volume 29, number 4 (the winter 2003-2004 issue), and read George's writeup on NJ's first (and so far only) Masked Booby.

Rest in peace.

Mothy Monday 2: Unidentified Noctuid

First Moth of 2009
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

On this snowy, blustery, not at all springy March day, it's probably appropriate to post the first moth of the season. It's a Noctuid, perhaps from the Eupsilia genus, but beyond that I dare not go. Moth identification makes Empidonax flycatchers look easy (because Emps sing and call, at least). The first moth of the season is still a sign of spring, though, just as much as the Red-winged Blackbirds setting up shop on the creek out back.

Barnegat Bird Names

Harlequin Ducks
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

A trip out the jetty at Barnegat last weekend provides an excuse to list some historic game bird names from Barnegat gunners (via Trumbull's Names and Portraits of Birds...

Big Yellow-leg - Greater Yellowlegs
Black-breast Plover - Black-bellied Plover
Blaten Duck - Gadwall
Brant-snipe - Dunlin
Broad-bill - Greater Scaup
Brown-back - Short-billed Dowitcher
Checkered-snipe - Ruddy Turnstone
Cock-robin - Hooded Merganser
Cock-robin Duck - Hooded Merganser
Crow-duck - American Coot
Cub-head - Common Goldeneye
Dowitch - Short-billed Dowitcher
Field Plover - Upland Sandpiper
Fresh-water Broad-bill - Lesser Scaup
Fresh-water Sheldrake - Common Merganser
Gray Plover - Black-belled Plover
Krieker - Pectoral Sandpiper
Large Yellow-leg - Greater Yellowlegs
Little Yellow-leg - Lesser Yellowlegs
Marlin - Marbled Godwit
Mud-hen - Clapper Rail
Ring-tailed Marlin - Hudsonian Godwit
Robin-snipe - Red Knot
Salt-water Sheldrake - Red-breasted Merganser
Sleepy Broad-bill - Ruddy Duck
Small Curlew - Whimbrel
Small Yellow-leg - Lesser Yellowlegs
Spoon-bill - Northern Shoveller
Sprig-tail - Northern Pintail
Telltale - Greater Yellowlegs, Lesser Yellowlegs

The birds that illustrate this post, Harlequin Ducks, are generally expected by birders visiting Barnegat today, but according to Trumbull in the day, did not get much south of Salem, Massachusetts. In their accepted range, they were usually known as "lord and lady."

Bridled Tern

On this day in 1951, Evelyn and Quintin Kramer found a carcass of a long-dead Bridled Tern at Island Beach State Park in Ocean County. Subsequent records of the species have been associated with hurricanes and tropical storms, when it is almost expected (if not quite as common as Sooty Tern in these circumstances).

The obituary of Quintin Kramer that appeared in Cassinia contains the following: "During World War II, Quintin and Evelyn did most of their birding by public transportation and shank's mare. They walked the Jersey beaches for miles and found numerous dead birds, including an occasional rare species" (Peniston 1976). Presumably, this tern was carried north with a tropical storm during the summer of 1950. Unisys shows 13 storms for that season; the likeliest candidates to drop a tropical tern in NJ would seem to be Able and Dog (but I'm open to contrary opinions from those who have studied the intersection of hurricanes and birds in more detail than I have). In any case, the Kramers came along after the fact, and the specimen in question now resides at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Peniston, Howell. 1976. Quintin Kramer 1908-1975. Cassinia 56: 6. PDF here

Bohemian Waxwing

On this day in 1962, a Bohemian Waxwing was found in Princeton, Mercer County. The bird stayed until the 9th and was seen by many; NJ's second and third records followed quickly, with another bird at Riverton in Burlington County on 17 March, and one at Flemington Junction in Hunterdon County 10-22 April.

As one might surmise from this cluster of records, the winter of 1961-1962 was a good one for Bohemian Waxwings. Like many winter irruptive species, the best cue to look out for them in NJ is their presence in nearby states. They sometimes appear in small numbers along the coast in a flight year (Sandy Hook and Island Beach are good places to check), but they can turn up anywhere.

A somewhat amusing footnote to the first state record is that the sighting was written up in the New York Times by an unnamed author. This brief note is worth seeking out if you want a lay person's view of birding in the early 1960s. The waxwing is referred to as "jaunty and resplendent," and the roll call of other winter irruptives reported in that season included, "Red-breasted nuthatches, redpolls, browncapped (or arboreal) chickadees and pine grosbeaks" (Anon. 1962). Even making allowances for the arboreal chickadees, it sounds like the winter of 1961-1962 was not a bad time to be a birder.

Anonymous. 1962. Bohemian Waxwing Is Spotted in Jersey in Rare Appearance. New York Times February 27, 1962, p. 35.

Mothy Monday 1: Large Tolype

Large Tolype
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

Go figure; I'm going to try to get myself back in the groove of posting to my birding blog by writing a moth post.

I first saw a Large Tolype at a rest stop not far from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. My cohorts and I were chasing (unsuccessfully) the Western Reef-Heron that was being reported from New Hampshire. I had just gotten my digital camera and had already had my interest piqued by moths, so I couldn't resist taking some photos of the moths on the side of a fast-food restaurant. It's a good thing that the manager (who came out to see what the heck we were up to) didn't call local law enforcement.

Then, a few days after I came home, I found a Tolype outside my door. That's the one you see here.

Tolypes are part of the Lasiocampidae, or Tent Caterpillar and Lappet Moths.

Black-throated Sparrow

On this day in 1961, a Black-throated Sparrow showed up at a feeder maintained by Mrs. H. MacKenzie near New Brunswick in Middlesex County. According to John Bull, who did the writeup in the Auk, "She reported that it fed on marigold seeds as well as a mixture of 'wild bird' feed," (in case you have any ideas about getting Black-throated Sparrows at your feeder this winter). The bird stayed until 23 April of the following year and was seen by "hundreds" (Bull, again) of birders. There have been two more accepted records of Black-throated Sparrows in the state since then, both starting in mid-December: one in 1974-1975 and another in 1992-1993.

The bottom line is that most birds that visit feeders are the expected ones, but way-out-of-range birds are in no position to shun feeders and a fair number of rarities over the years have turned up in this situation.

Bull, John L. 1963. Black-throated Sparrows in the eastern United States. Auk 80:379-380. PDF here

"We take you now to Grovers Mill, New Jersey"

Monolith
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

On this day in 1938, a Martian saucer landed in the bucolic setting of Grover's Mill, a mere stone's throw from where I currently reside. I have to say, given the remaining traces on the landscape, it's as if it never happened; all that's left is this monument and, of course, the typical local pride that comes along with something so momentous having happened in the immediate neighborhood. Why, even the old mill that gave Grover's Mill its name survives. The Yoyodyne Systems campus is difficult to locate, but that comes as no surprise given its checkered history, as well as the plentitude of corporate campuses (campii?) along this part of the Rt. 1 corridor.

What many people don't realize is that another Martian craft landed in the Great Swamp, an NWR that seems ignorant of its connection to this event. According to a news bulletin of the time from Basking Ridge, it was discovered by hunters, although the pinpointing of its location as "twenty miles south of Morristown" is wildly inaccurate. I guess that if the newscasters of the day had had access to modern-day bird-finding guides, they might have done a bit better. Or perhaps they were somewhat over-excited by the unprecedented events they were called upon to report.

As usual, seeking a birdy connection to this non-birding event, I came up short. The best I could do was the report of "black birds" that feasted upon the unlucky Martians' remains in Central Park; perhaps NJ corvids from the Newark and Secaucus marshes joined the mayhem, but that would require further digging into historical crow roost reports, some of which were notably vague due to concern over persecution.

War of the Worlds script
War of the Worlds website
Wired post on War of the Worlds

The Perfect Birding Librarian Storm

As a birding LIS student, I just couldn't resist blogging this.

When my mom asked about Bar-tailed Godwits the other night on the phone, I knew a bird celebrity had been born. Sure enough, today the Dewey Blog had an entry entitled "Migration of Bar-Tailed Godwits". If you had any reason to wonder what Dewey Decimal Number such a migration would get, wonder no longer.

All four species of godwits have been recorded in NJ. The first Bar-tail showed up at Absecon in 1937, and one bird visited Longport from 1972 to 1982. The last NJ record was from Nummy's Island in September 1985.

Ruff

On this day in 1932, Charles Urner found two Ruffs near Tuckerton, Ocean County. In that day, on the cusp between specimen and sight identification, Urner took no specimens but notes, then repaired to specimens to double-check his conclusions. This was not the first record of Ruff for NJ, since there was at least one previous specimen record cited in Chapman (1906).

In subsequent years, Ruffs became synonymous with Pedricktown in springtime, but that is not so much the case now. They seem to be easier to find in Delaware than Jersey these days, at least in spring.

Urner, Charles A. 1933. The Ruff in New Jersey. Auk 50:101. PDF here

Western Kingbird

On this day in 1894, A. H. Phillips found a Western Kingbird (in that day, an Arkansas Kingbird) in Princeton, Mercer County, and took it as a specimen. This was just the first recorded instance of what has become an expected fall vagrant in NJ: so expected, in fact, that it has never been a Review List species.

The Grail Bird Book

Note: There is no Ivory-billed Woodpecker content in this post. If you're looking for a grail bird, please move along, there's nothing to see here. This post is about bird books.

Some of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in used bookstores. There's nothing better than poring over titles and wandering between bookcases, down aisles almost too narrow to travel because of the need to make room for even more books (every bibliophile knows that you can never have too many bookcases). The thrill of the hunt extends equally to the prospect of scoring a great bargain and to scoring a book that you've always wanted (and perhaps have never even seen). Why, that book might be on the very next shelf you check!

Fast forward to Google Book Search.

Suddenly, a huge array of books are at your virtual fingertips. You can search, or even download the entire text of some public-domain books as PDF files. You can create your own virtual library, with no need to jam yet another set of bookcases into your already crowded living space (let's put it this way, when I have my annual fireplace inspection, even the chimney sweeps comment on all my books). It would seem like a wonderful thing...

As usual, wonderful things often aren't quite as simple as they appear at first blush. There's been a lot of controversy and even litigation over Google's Book Search; you can find all that on your own if you don't know about it already.

Getting back to the point, this blog's focus is NJ birding history. Early works concerning the birds of NJ (or, indeed, any state) are often difficult to find and command a certain price if you can find them. The sad fact is that old bird books are valuable both as objects to a book collector, and as sources of information to birders. That drives the prices up, and none of us have as much money as we would like to build our own reference libraries (even without the prospect of a total collapse of the financial system...I'll be the one towing a little red wagon with a stack of bird books as I stand in the bread line!).

William Turnbull's The Birds of East Pennsylvania and New Jersey was singled out by Witmer Stone in Bird Studies at Old Cape May as the first really reliable list of NJ birds. As a result, it was immediately added to my list of grail books. However, it's scarce, having only been printed in two editions totalling 200 copies in 1869. When I stumbled across its PDF version in Google Book Search (linked to in the sidebar), I was overjoyed. As a birder, I wanted the information more than the object. This seemed like a perfect solution for me to access the information in the book without having to shell out the big bucks for an actual copy, or find an institution holding a copy. Life was good.

As I paged through the PDF, I started finding problems. The first tip-off should've been that the PDF was 105 pages long, whereas the last numbered page was 65; even allowing for the front matter, there was bound to be a discrepancy. Then there were all the blank pages, or worse, the pages with a random chunk of text and lots of white space. This was not a document you could read through easily. As I looked at it, I got more and more perplexed.

Last weekend found me in the New Jersey Room of Rutgers University's Special Collections (to be found in the basement of Alexander Library on the New Brunswick College Avenue campus). I was there sussing out the collection for classwork, but also for personal research interests such as genealogy and birds. They had two different copies of Turnbull's book on the shelf, one with its own special handmade archival case. I looked at the copy that did not have to be disinterred from the case, and discovered that the blank places in the PDF often corresponded to illustrations in the original. I also found that the illustrations (as was typical for books of that era) were covered by pages of tissue. Now the PDF made more sense, if the illustrations were omitted and the tissue pages were scanned like pages with type on them (or if they sometimes obscured pages with type during the scanning process).

I was lucky to find a real copy of Turnbull's book to "ground-truth" Google's PDF. I'm also lucky to have access to a good academic library as a current grad student (though any Rutgers alum can also have such privileges, plus the Special Collections are available to outside researchers). Many people would not have these advantages.

Bottom line: Google Book Search can be a good thing to improve access to old, scarce books (and I'll certainly be using it myself), but in the end, you may still be better off with the actual book.

American White Pelican

On this day in 1943, Fletcher Street found an American White Pelican in Beverly, Burlington County. To quote the report in Cassinia, "The bird was in perfect health and able to fly. The Philadelphia Zoo was called and stated that no birds had escaped" (Ross 1944).

The statement in Cassinia that it was the first record of the species in eighty years leads to an interesting paper chase. The statement appears to refer to a report from C. C. Abbott of three pelicans that he saw at Sandy Hook in February 1864. Stone (1965) mentions the report without other comment under the species, while in the bibliography he says, "...Dr. Abbott has recorded many species as breeders in the state which occur only as migrants. In later publications...he endeavors to substantiate some of these statements but presents no satisfactory data while he corrects or contradicts other statements." Griscom (1923) didn't mince words, stating, "Dr. C. C. Abbott claimed to have seen three of these birds flying off Sandy Hook in February 1864, but his observations are known to have been so unreliable that this cannot be accepted as a definite record. The date renders the suspicion unavoidable that the birds were Gannets." Fables (1955) concluded, "Old records [of the species] seem worthless."

Luckily for present-day birders, American White Pelican has since established a less checkered history in the state. Late summer has become the typical time of year to check for the (now expected) pelican at Brigantine NWR, though the last time I was there turned out to be a lesson in how inconspicuous a big white bird can be as it loafs in the impoundments.

An interesting side note to the original record is this passage on life (or rather, birding) during wartime: "War conditions naturally have continued to restrict the activities of the Club. The absence of some thirty younger members who are serving in the armed forces, the exclusion of observers from some coastal and other areas, and restrictions on the use of binoculars have been factors which cut deeply into the number of records reported" (Ross 1944).

Ross, C. Chandler, ed. 1944. Field notes for the 1942-1943 season: October 1, 1942 to September 30, 1943. Cassinia 33:31-34.

Metaphysicality

So, what exactly counts as physical evidence when reporting a bird sighting? The dead bird itself (aka, a specimen) is an obvious choice, but does any other form of what we often call "physical evidence" have a similar degree of "reality"? That is the question that Rick Wright takes up in a recent post from Aimophila Adventures. I've got to say that an apprentice librarian such as myself ought to be able to come up with some trenchant arguments on this question, but unfortunately it usually takes me a while to come up with my trenchant arguments. So, in the meantime, I'll refer you to the original post.

The Great Hurricane of 1938

Hurricane 1938
Originally uploaded by UncoveringWestport

On this day in 1938, an unnamed storm blasted through the northeast without warning. In retrospect, it became known as the Great Hurricane of 1938, or the Long Island Express. Over 600 people died because of the storm, and it caused massive damage. It's become routine in this area (i.e., the NJ-tristate-midAtlantic area) to say, "We're overdue for a big storm," but if you read Everett S. Allen's A Wind to Shake the World, and look at the wake of recent hurricanes such as Ike (never mind Katrina), you'll probably wind up begging providence not to send one up this way. At least, I do. On one hand, we have much better advance warning systems in place today. On the other hand, I'm sure many more people live in the places ravaged by the 1938 hurricane today than did then.

When I realized that we were going to see the 70th anniversary of the 1938 storm this year, I started poking around in search of NJ bird records that might be related to it. I didn't have much luck; there were fewer observers then and the storm didn't ramp up to full intensity until it got north of NJ. What storm-related records there were tended to come from other states. The Auk had a good roundup of them (Allen et al. 1939).

But, as is often the case, NJ had a special wrinkle to add to the story. Well after the hurricane had passed and was wreaking havoc on New England, a series of huge waves came ashore in coastal NJ. Although it would seem that these waves were likely associated with the hurricane, it has also been hypothesized that the waves were actually tsunamis. Check out NOAA's page on Tidal Waves and Other Extreme Waves for more information.

The photo that illustrates this post comes from the Westport Historical Society in Westport, Massachusetts, which has posted a collection of hurricane photos on Flickr. An evocative post about the storm and its memory long after the fact comes from Churbuck.com.

Allen, Glover M. 1939. Hurricane aftermath. Auk 176-179. PDF here

In the Mailbox: New Jersey Birds Summer 2008

Yesterday I got the latest issue of New Jersey Birds in the mail. This issue features an article on the first state record of Lesser Nighthawk by Michael O'Brien, as well as a couple of notes by yours truly (Barnacle Goose added to the full State List, Cave Swallow dropped from the Review List).

I'm not writing this post to toot my own horn, though. If you belong to NJ Audubon, you can receive New Jersey Birds as part of your membership at no extra charge. You have to ask for it, though, and it's easy to overlook on your membership renewal form. I'm not sure that there is any organized way to sign up for NJB when becoming a new member, though I would be more than happy to be corrected and hear otherwise. Please comment, if so.

The articles in NJB usually deal with significant avian events such as first state records, or in another example, NJ's first Royal Tern nesting colony (that article was in the spring issue). NJBRC business is also published in the journal; the fall issue always contains the NJBRC Annual Report, along with color photos of some of the rarities that were voted on during the circulation year.

The real meat of NJB (or RNJB to us old-timers, since the journal's name used to be Records of New Jersey Birds) is the sighting reports. NJ is divided into five regions (which are also used in Boyle's A Guide to Bird Finding in New Jersey), each of which has a regional compiler (here's the current list of compilers). You can also look at NJB issues back to fall 2006 as PDFs on this page, though there are many years of previous issues that have not been digitized (hint: snap them up if you stumble across them).

Although we are in a transitional time when it comes to the technology of sharing bird sightings (eBird, anyone?), the framework of regional compilers found in NJ and other states (and upon which North American Birds is also built) is the traditional means for reporting sightings of interest. Looking at past issues of NJB can give you an idea of what observations are particularly interesting in terms of the state's historical record (and no, Review List species are not the only birds of interest). It's certainly easy to send an e-mail to JerseyBirds or post your photos on Flickr, but you'll make compilers' jobs a little easier if you send your observations directly to them as well.

Jersey Game Bird Names 1

In 1888, Gurdon Trumbull wrote a book called Names and Portraits of Birds Which Interest Gunners with Descriptions in Language Understanded of the People. Harper and Brothers published it, and I found a copy of it in a Maine used bookstore years ago for $25, but now you can find it on Google Books. How times change. The photo that illustrates this post is the gilt American Woodcock that adorns the cover of my copy.

According to French (1878), Trumbull was, "The finest fish-painter of America..." This was intended as a compliment, I should add. French went on to lament, "Unfortunately for the art, Mr. Trumbull's circumstances have been such that he has never been urged beyond the dictates of his fancy to follow a profession. Few of his pictures have come before the public: indeed, he has painted but very little."

Leaving aside the question of whether Gurdon Trumbull is America's great neglected fish-painter, I instead turn to his book of game bird names. Trumbull chronicled these names up and down the eastern seaboard, down to specific towns in many cases. He also cited nomenclature in places further afield, such as the British Isles (can you beat the name of "coal-and-candlelight" for Long-tailed Duck, formerly Oldsquaw? I assume this was was another example of onomatopoeia as given in the more commonly seen rendition of these ducks' calls as "owl omelet.") Trumbull worked in an era when regional names for animals were very much the norm. Think about that the next time you look at your AOU Check-list or your ABA list. In any case, Trumbull's book of game bird names is a precious linguistic legacy.

Future posts in this series will deal with specific NJ towns. Even in such a small state, where the towns in question might not be so far distant from each other, there were frequently striking differences in nomenclature. In the meantime, here are the names that Trumbull gave for the state as a whole, and of the "Jersey coast" as a smaller subset of it:

New Jersey
Black Sea-duck - Surf Scoter
Butter-box - Bufflehead
Horse-foot Snipe - Ruddy Turnstone
Pond Broad-bill - Lesser Scaup
Pond Saw-bill - Hooded Merganser
Rail-bird - Sora
Red-back - Dunlin
Widgeon - American Wigeon

Jersey coast
Fresh-water Mud-hen - Virginia Rail
Old Wife - Long-tailed Duck
Red Goose - Snow Goose

French, Harry Willard. 1878. Art and Artists in Connecticut. Lee & Shepard, Boston, MA. Google Books link
Trumbull, Gurdon. 1888. Names and Portraits of Birds Which Interest Gunners with Descriptions in Language Understanded of the People. Harper & Brothers, New York, NY. Google Books link

Baird's Sandpiper

Baird's Sandpiper
Originally uploaded by ammodramus88

On this day in 1898, David McCadden collected a Baird's Sandpiper at Stone Harbor in Cape May County (Stone 1908).

It might indicate the relative rarity of this fall migrant through NJ that, when Stone compiled his list of NJ birds ten years after that first Baird's was collected, it was still the only state record. If there had been a Review List then, Baird's Sandpiper probably would've been on it. The state maxima was ten birds at Brigantine NWR on 8 September 1992 (Walsh et al. 1999).

The bird illustrating this post was on the Cumberland County end of Johnson Sod Farm on 1 September 2007.

Weather: Hanna

Over the weekend, Tropical Storm (currently) Hanna will be tracking through our area. Though the exact track is yet to be seen, Hanna has the potential to be a "bird storm" here in NJ. There are currently discussions about Hanna's birding potential on JerseyBirds and MDOsprey, at least; I'm sure others are happening on other states' lists as well. Just to make things more interesting, Hanna is being followed by Hurricane Ike (already Category 4, yikes!) and Tropical Storm Josephine.

NJ bird storms tend to track to the west of the Delaware River (but not always). Here are tracks of some past NJ bird storms courtesy of the UNISYS historical hurricane data site:

Connie (1955)
Donna (1960)
David (1979)
Bertha (1996)
Floyd (1999)
Isabel (2003)
Ernesto (2006)

Mention "hurricane" and "birds" in the same breath, and one probably thinks of tropical species like Sooty and Bridled terns. But the (blurry) photo that accompanies this post is of a Short-billed Dowitcher I found in a local farm field the day after Ernesto passed in 2006 (not long after I'd gotten my brand-new Canon A620 digital camera, not coincidentally). That puddle also hosted Semipalmated Sandpiper, Wilson's Snipe and Solitary Sandpiper. I probably would've found something really special if I'd checked that puddle during the height of the storm the day before. But, the point I'm trying to make is that while the rarities brought by a passing hurricane may be nice, the grounded migrants may provide equally good birding.

When I was chatting with my hurricane guru Rob Hilton last night, he mentioned Weather Underground's section on tropical weather. This site has such wonderful toys as a display of multiple models for a storm, and historic storm tracks that are (in the case of this one for Hanna) "1851-2006 tracks of all September tropical storms passing within 200 miles of Tropical Storm Hanna." Plus much more. It's a great resource for birders intrigued by weather (which is probably every birder who has a hurricane with the potential to dump good birds on them).

Good birding all, and let's be careful out there.