Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!paul.rutgers.edu!pratt From: pratt@paul.rutgers.edu (Lorien Y. Pratt) Newsgroups: rec.birds Subject: Re: Latin names (was: Birding Magazines) Keywords: macho birding nomenclature hunters Message-ID: Date: 14 Jan 90 02:19:43 GMT References: <2359@leah.Albany.Edu> <425@fsu.scri.fsu.edu> <428@fsu.scri.fsu.edu> <448@fsu.scri.fsu.edu> <1990Jan13.191853.19340@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 99 The recent discussion on different styles of birding and on nomenclature reminded me of the following article, which I've dug from my files and typed in because I thought you might be interested... ``A lark of a way to see the world'' by John Leo It is time for a personal confession. I am a birder. With three accomplices, I have spent the last 10 days chasing birds in the deserts and mountains of southeast Arizona. Along the way, I drove 2,140 miles, blew two tires (which the Hertz people were very nice about), got myself punctured by cactuses six or seven times and logged 1557 species of birds, including 17 ``lifers,'' ones that I had never seen before. My 600th North American life bird, the buff-breasted flycatcher, came in the Huachucas atop my favorite kind of mountain -- the kind you drive right to the peak of to see the bird, then jump back swiftly into air-conditioned comfort. There were, alas, one or two ``death marches,'' the semiofficial birding term for treks so long and arduous that the birder begins to imagine his own tombstone, reading ``He passed to a better world while looking for a five-striped sparrow,'' with the final life list of the recently departed respectfully engraved below. Every so often a birder is hauled out of some remote gulch on a stretcher, and the descent into Sycamore Canyon for the rare rufous-capped warebler a couple of years ago was such a horror that ``survivor'' T-shirts were printed for those who had lived to tell the tale. Birding at this level is, of course, an obsession. Imagine the plight of a nonbirder married to someone whose idea of fun is a half hour debate on the wing vermioulations of the Western Wood-pewee. Or perhaps a leisurely 2-hour family drive with bird calls playing on the tape deck. Vacations can be a problem, too, since the nonbirding spouse may not be automatically drawn to swamps, sewage ponds and garbage dumps at 5 o'clock in the morning. Like many birders, I have a detailed knowledge of American sewage-treatment facilities and landfills -- the splendid Toytown dump in St. Petersburg, for instance -- but only a hazy awareness of the cities and towns where they are located. ``Down to earth.'' Most driven birders are able to cloak their quirks and simulate normal life, which includes, among other things, not showing up for indoor dinner parties wearing binoculars, and looking people in the eye instead of scanning the sky behind them for hawks or eagles. Still, the addictive quality of birding, which may yet produce Birders Anonymous, keeps poking through. Some men, including professionals, have chucked careers to follow the birds, sometimes as tour guides, sometimes as just the birding equivalent of ski bums. At a breakfast in Texas a few years ago after a birding event, a brilliant young birder was talking about giving up his career as an English professor, and Roger Tory Peterson was trying to talk him out of it. Peterson said, you can't just give your whole life to birds. The birder said, ``Why not? You did,'' and Peterson replied, ``yes, but you have to be first''. This tendency seems to be primarily a male affliction. In general, the sexes take to birding in different ways. Women tend to focus on the beauty and grace of birds. Men feel that sense of awe, too, but they are much more likely to be driven by the need to hunt and collect (keep a list), making birding a close relative of bubble-gum-card collecting, chase games and the more financial kind of avarice that fills our newspapers these days. Though some of the best and most aggressive birders are female, about 90 percent of those who report life lists to the American Birding Association are male. This helps give modern birding a macho quality that is not to everyone's taste, and there are sometimes tensions between casual, or normal, birders and their aggressive brethren. In 1980, before the current boom in birding, the Fish and Wildlife Service reported that the United STates had a hard core of 2 million commmitted birders, able to identify a hundred or more birds on sight, an additional 5 million fairly committed people who recognize 40 or more species, plus 53 million casual birders, presumably including just about everyone who has ever glanced out th window oat a chickadee. Surprising as those numbers may seem, they are probably much higher today. With the spread of birding has come the spread of sophisticated identification and tracking skills. Many birders know the range, calls and behavior of most of the 850 or so species recorded on the continent. This is one reason why birders and hunters tend to get along well. When Tommy Glenn, owner of the Freeway Exxon station in Willcox, fixed our flat, we noticed that on one of his shelves, he had a stuffed pair of Montezuma quail (Mern's quail to hunters). Like Tom, I knew about the swerving flight of the quali and its curious tendency to pair off in May but not mate until July. But for me, this was book learning -- I had never seen the bird. Two days later, coming down out of the mountains on Memorial Day with every bird I wanted except the elusive quail, I stopped in at Freeway Exxon. AFter 10 minutes of chatting and joking, I told Tom I really wanted the bird. ``Have lunch; I'll go get my dogs,'', he said. We drove a long way, past Chochise's stronghold in the Dragoons, past Helen's Dome, a loaf-shaped rock that Helen Riggs jumped from rather than take her chances with the Apache. Two of Tom's friends joined us, and with six men and three dogs, the quail never had a chance. Life bird No. 605, filed under serendipity and the extraordinary kindness of strangers. We birders are very fussy about nomenclature, but in my notes, that quail will always be known as Mern's, not Montezuma, in honor of Tom the hunter. From the ON BEHAVIOR column, U.S. News and World Report, June 12, 1989 -- ------------------------------------------------------------------- L. Y. Pratt Computer Science Department pratt@paul.rutgers.edu Rutgers University Hill Center (201) 932-4634 New Brunswick, NJ 08901