Hang Over Cure- The Power Of The Pileated Woodpecker

Female Pileated Woodpecker

Recently, I spent three consecutive days on Hermit Island from six forty-five to ten AM. Hermit Island is on the end of the Phippsburg peninsula. Because it juts far out into the Atlantic ocean, it is a haven for migrating birds. They don't like crossing expanses of water any more than I like getting up early. So, they congregate building their numbers for the inevitable crossing. To catch the birds as they began to move with the rising sun's heat, I had to rise at 6, which makes me absolutely nauseous. I'm not crabby when I get up, but I am logy and have to fight back the spins. This is just how it is for me; I'm accustomed to plowing my way toward wakefulness. As soon as I start moving, I'm okay and I really do love the light in the morning and the soft silence.
     Hermit Island is privately owned. It's an undeveloped campground with 275 sites. Columbus Day weekend was the last hurrah. There were many die hard campers, none of whom were awake when I arrived. As I walked the two miles of dirt road to the end of the island, I could hear breathing and snoring from the tents. Picnic tables were littered with beer bottles and cans, debris from partying. A Red squirrel toppled a few to the ground, scaring itself, then scampering away. The only other sounds were rustling leaves, and the birds, thousands of them. Chirring, chipping and whirring mingled with the scratching sounds of tiny claws on bark. As I walked, no matter how carefully I placed each step, rocks skidded and gravel crunched. By comparison, my own foot steps were clunky, until I heard the Pileated woodpeckers.
     Pileateds are noisy. They bash, hammer and tear at trees and their call rips the air. I saw five in one day, four of them near one another. I'm sure they were the Pileated family group I had written about this past spring. It was a thrill to see them all grown up and out tearing up the forest. Their raucous screeching and drumming must have been a delight for hung-over campers' headaches. When I was a child, my father was often hung over. To roust him out and torment him, my mother would bang together pots and pans and tell him she was serving him a glass full of cold pork gravey. This formula usually worked, too. He would probably have preferred a Pileated cure.

Food Flop - Great Blue Herons Feeding

"Ya know, Randy - you embarrass the whole birding community when you do that."

 

"Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

Recently, I posted about Great Blue Herons getting really touchy with each other while feeding. These are the same herons, one of them actually committing a feeding. I say 'committing,' because this looks like a crime of ungainliness, a felony of spasticity for sure. I had guessed that they were juveniles. Besides their feathering, this behavior is one of the things that made me think they were young. The one on the right, Randy was standing, then suddenly lurched forward falling on his face. Give the guy credit, at least he didn't just fall from the sky. I have never seen herons do this. They usually stand poised to strike and will remain in that fixed position for quite a while before striking the water with a deft, spearing move. There was nothing smooth about Randy's technique, he looked ridiculous! I guess everybody has to start somewhere when they are learning to do something new. Few beasts nor men are born as prodigies. Most of us have to do a thing over and over before we can dependably execute the move.
     I also have written recently, and more than a few times, about some of the not so patient nor benevolent folks in the birding world. To be honest and fair, though, I have too also say that there are some really great people in birding, too. I have had the pleasure and good fortune to meet numerous of them. And, I met them by way of the Internet. The Internet is an entity which also gets a bad rap, as if it has a soul and a face and is somehow evil. Like the birding 'community,' the Internet is what you make it, good, bad or otherwise. Had it not been for birding, the Internet and birders who use the Internet, I would not have met these very cool people, nor learned nearly as much as I have. All of these people know more about birding than I'll ever be lucky enough to forget. They are experts with a capital 'E.' They have, in fact, walked out on mudflats and mountain tops with me, to see what we could see and to teach me. They treated me with courtesy, positive regard and made me feel that I had something to bring to birding. They have been very giving and patient. In short, they've watched me thrash around like a juvenile heron learning to catch my first fish without laughing or giving up on me. Now, if only I had legs as long as a heron and would stop falling down on the birds while I work on my identifications, the world would be a just and better place.

Thank you, Mike and Paul, Mark and John, Jo and every one who has held my hand and helped me up.

"Rickie, Go Home!" Great Blue Heron Battle

"Go home, Rickie!"

"I'm tellin' Mom you were hangin' out on the railroad tracks!"

     Birders use lots of abbreviations for bird names, especially when posting lists of birds to the Internet. It's just too much typing to spell them all out completely. Somewhere, there is a list of 'approved,' or acceptable abbreviations. Medicine has this, too. That way, even when those in the know are using slang, everyone will know what is being referred to. After all, when your state of affairs is being documented in a hospital record, you may one day want your lawyer to be able to interpret the content. And, if your nurse or physician came from some other state besides delirium,  apathy or the one you live in, it's good that all your health care providers are on the same page. Your life could depend on it.

     Some birders use obscure abbreviations when flaunting their egos. They like to use abbreviations and slang because it sets them apart from other, less experienced birders. It's a way of establishing and maintaining a pecking order, if you will. There can be quite a bit of snobbery and competitiveness in birding. Birding brings even some of the weakest egos bubbling to the surface of the identification soup. One would think in a scientific hobby as organic as watching birds that everybody would be nice and want to bring the new kids, the "Rickies," up and along. Sadly, not so. There are plenty of birders out there who seem to live to prove someone else wrong or even out to be a liar! Many of them would not be seen on a mudflat with the likes of me. I'm a real "Rickie."
     If you think you've seen something rare, you had better be prepared to back up your sighting with a few hundred photos and it wouldn't hurt to throw in some DNA evidence, either. Your integrity as a birder could depend on it. I know a birder who was basically called a liar for saying he saw a rare bird here. He's an extremely knowledgeable birder and very decent guy. I have no reason to question his integrity, either. Sadly, he no longer participates in Maine's list serve because of this event. It's pretty tawdry when a gang of tweed and bow tie wearing pedants with binoculars can't all get along. Thank you, Rodney King.
     In fairness though, more often than not birders use abbreviations and slang simply because it's easier. After all, most of us are old enough - geezers in fact, that we've got some palsy setting in. Our typing just ain't what it used to be. So, a Black-capped chickadee would be a BCchick, a Common golden-eye, a ComGoldey, an American robin, an Amrob, etc. Great Blue herons are GBHs. In the case of these photos though, that could mean "Go back home, Rickie!"
     I stopped by the Magnificent Acre at Winnegance. These GBHs were on the mud flats at low tide. I don't know enough to say whether they were juveniles or adults. I can say they were Great Blue herons, but that's about it. To me, they looked like squabbling brothers beginning a long migration to Florida. Several times while they were feeding, one would get too close to the other, then these semi-aerial battles broke out. The wing spans were magnificent, but there was a lot of gracelss floundering of those long legs. Sometimes they actually kicked up mud slop.  I could just imagine two boys, an older and younger brother, "Go home Rickie! I'm telling mom you've been hanging out on the railroad tracks again!" The big brother and the little brother are stuck with each other, each begrudging the company of the other. But survival of the species depends on them being together. They learn effective predation defences and better fishing techinques from one another's examples. If only they would learn to play nice, like the humans who are infatuated with watching them.

"Get outta here, Rickie! I'm gonna knock your block off!"