The local Audobon Christmas bird count is going on today. My neighbor and his counting partner just stopped to scope the hollow snag where a screech owl often shelters. If they had been through ealier, they would have seen 37 honks and Mr. and Mrs. Woodeagle drift by, heading into the light breeze. Now there are mountain dees and black-jacks, white-breasted and red-breasted hatchets, a female chitterabob, and about 3 dozen featherbrains, plus any number of Harrisburgs, redbobs, tree-flutes and redhammers.
Translation? Obviously honks = Canada geese (high-honks are snow geese). Woodward and Wilhelmina Woodeagle are the bald eagle pair who have made their families for 5 years at the woods/pasture interface. Black-jacks are chickadees, hatchets are nuthatches, the chitterabob is a kingfisher, featherbrains are red-headed merganzers, Harrisburgs are Harris's sparrows, redbobs are hoary redpolls; tree-flutes = tree sparrows and redhammers = common flickers. These are the nicknames I and, when they were still alive, my folks made up to call the visitors to the feeders and other flying denizens of the place. The old feeder set-up was numbered so that, if a favorite bird had come in to eat, someone would say, "hairy (woodpecker) on 4!" "Cocoapuffs on 1!" Cocoapuffs were the rosy-crowned finches that came in droves and were so tame that Dad could put food on his head and they would land there to eat.
Jimmy Cracks were the red-headed woodpeckers that hollowed out a home over the deck one spring. They liked cracked corn. Goofy-esque laughter was all that was needed to describe mourning doves, as we had decided that they were the silliest birds ever. I’d say, “Look Mom, ahhuckayuck!” and she knew I was pointing at doves. House wrens were Beeps because their burbling songs often end in single “beep” notes.
Dad had a group of town worthies—bankers, insurance men, doctors and corporate lawyers--with whom he would lunch at one of the old downtown hotels. When he would describe their whining, greedy Republicanism, he called them Goo-goos; but mostly he called them the Jolly Boys because they really were able to get along and laugh at most political situations. In their honor we nicknamed a giant flock of pinyon jays the Jolly Boys due to their raucous, laughing calls as they bullied their way into the feeders. Mom also called them “ha-has.”
Herons were dinosaurs, goldeneye ducks were singing wings, cormorants were black honkers, and all owls were hoots. Introduced Asian collared doves have become lunkers and wood-loons are the colorful but maniacal wood ducks who nest in old woodpecker holes, neither of whom Mom and Dad got to know.
Indeed things have changed in the years since they handed the caretaking of the place to me. There haven’t been any cocoapuffs for 15 years, no Jolly Boys for 8, and not a single evening grosbeak in at least 20. The summer mourning dove population has dwindled from around 20 nesting pairs to 3, and the very active heron rookery failed in 1991 and never bounced back. The day-stations once occupied by common nighthawks in the cottonwoods are now empty each summer. The daubed clay nests of the barn swallow colonies under the bridge are destroyed each year by rock-throwing idiots, which has caused a collapse in the population. This spring was the first time there was less than 5 pairs of western meadowlarks nesting in the 2 pastures I monitor. There were 3 pairs. There were no lark buntings this year, and no mountain bluebirds at all. Western wood peewees, western and eastern kingbirds, green and common towhees, brown thrashers--populations of these once-common birds have plumetted.
In 1978, a friend of my brother’s placed microphones along the river and in the woods to record birdsongs. He compiled a recording that is one of my treasures. During an hour’s-worth of cassette tape, there is not a second that is not filled with burbling, twittering, chortling, liquid song. Mourning dove calls follow each other like echoes. Wrens let loose little waterfalls of dozens of phrases. The high see-see of yellow warblers, lazy psshINK of nighthawks, robins’ territorial challenges from all directions, even the heavy, blundering buzz of a bumblebee are all there, describing in their notes a typical early summer day along the North Platte River.
There are success stories of course, most notably the bald eagles and the 2 chicks they fledge every summer. Ospreys have nested on a platform built for them on the river bank. The wood ducks return spring after spring and from that it is to be hoped thet they have had a successful nesting the previous summer. Black buzzards return with the same punctuality as their Findlay Ohio counterparts. And last summer I did hear, just once on a hot July afternoon, a black-billed cuckoo. But recent years have been more quiet. Minutes may pass on a warm June day without a note of birdsong. Fewer and fewer swallows of any species make an appearance each year. The nighthawks may appear by the end of June, and then only in small numbers. If I see a bumblebee in a month I feel lucky.
We all know and have discussed the reasons we are losing our populations of birds. Loss of winter habitat, collisions with high-rises, pesticide/insecticide use, feral and domestic cats, emerging diseases, climate change—all of these have a near equal hand in the wholesale destruction of the decendants of the dinosaurs. Please think about what you can do, any little thing, to slow this destruction. Garden and eat organically. Make your yard a pesticide-free haven for birds and beneficial insects. Reduce meat consumption—less meat consumed means less rain forest (winter habitat) destroyed for soybeans and other crops for livestock. Don’t clean the outsides of your windows very often. Clean windows look like more sky to birds. Keep your cats inside where they will be safe from predation by coyotes and owls, for whom cats are a nutritious and readily-available prey animal, and where they will be less likely to be injured in fights or killed by cars. Even if you never see your pootie kill a bird, never make the assumption that she or he doesn’t. Woozles will kill birds too, so make it difficult or impossible for them to do that by feeding birds away from dog areas. Drink organic, shade-grown coffee. My House For Coffee is owned by a Kossack (whose username escapes me at the moment so please let readers know in the comments) and the site features organic and shade-grown coffee at fair-trade prices.
I think I am correct to say that collapsing bird populations are caused almost exclusively by human activity. Extinct is forever, and extinction is silence. I think my Mom would be sad if she were still around and unable to hear the warbling of a beep in the little grove. And my Dad would be disappointed when, as he sat down with his iced coffee under a deeping sky absent of nighthawks, there were no cries of “psshINK!” I am saddened and disappointed for them, and for the loss of the fellow Earthlings whose nicknames and behaviors brought us so much joy.