Defining East Coast Pelagic Borders

I think most of us agree that if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.  And that goes for listing.  Listers, and in this case state listers on this East Coast of the United States, have to operate by a set of rules in order for two people's lists to mean anything in relation to each other: the bird must have been alive; it must have been wild; and, most importantly, it must have been seen in the state.

However, when it comes to pelagic borders, the rules aren't so clear.  Determining a state's offshore border is not nearly as easy as it is on land.  Yet, these pelagic birds count just as much for a state's list as any other.

A recent exchange on the ABA Birding News - Seabird News List about defining East Coast pelagic borders has inspired me to try to put the different theories in one place.  Quite frankly, it's amazing to me that there isn't a nationally-accepted set of offshore boundaries.  I suppose the explanations are simple enough, however: it's more difficult for the average birder to determine his or her position at sea (until recent advantages with smartphones, etc., that is), and, more importantly, the fact that states want as much pelagic space as they can get.

Either way, I want to try to collect some info on the different systems.  I am very thankful to those who posted on the Seabird News thread, from whom I am cribbing: Paul Guris, Brian Patteson, Alvaro Jaramillo, Angus Wilson, William Bourne, Marshall Iliff, Nate Dias, Tom Robben and Tom Brown. 

The Nearest Point Of Land System

The American Birding Association wraps up the pelagic boundary question with a tight little sentence: "Birds observed on or over an ocean are counted for the area having the nearest land, if within 200 miles."  It's as easy as that.  If you see a bird out on the ocean, figure out which state's land is closest to you, and that's what state the bird should count for.

It's a system with a basis in federal law.  The federal agency with management responsibility over our Exclusive Economic Zone - the area which extends beyond the 3-mile state waters boundary to a total of 200 miles out to sea - is the mouth-numbingly-named Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (it used to be named the Minerals Management Service, but they wanted a fresh start after some post-Deepwater controversies).  Anyway, BOEMRE is responsible in part for getting coastal states their share of energy leases occurring off their coastlines, and in order to figure out which states deserve the money, boundaries need to be made.  So, boundaries were made, and they were done using the "closest point of land" system.  Here's how that looks, from the BOEMRE website (click to enlarge):

Now, the distaste for this system for some states is obvious.  Look at Delaware.  Look at Virginia and Rhode Island and Georgia and New Hampshire and poor poor Connecticut.  Listers in those states (depending on how they've listed previously) may have a lot less water to find birds in.

Not surprisingly, then, other systems have sprung up so that birders states with less-than-ample coastlines can enjoy the open seas.

Read more »

Avian Etymologies

I like thinking about bird names.  I've written about them before from different angles: about ones that are named after people; about what names they should have; about how they should be written; and maybe others. 

What I've been thinking about recently is the words for birds themselves.  It seems to me that words for birds are particularly interesting - from the unusual words (Owl, Osprey) to silly ones (Tit, Booby, Goatsucker), to obvious ones (Woodpecker, Stilt) to mysterious ones (pretty much everything else). How did these words evolve?  Are there trends?  Stories?  I did some digging through the OED - Online Etymology Dictionary to see what I could find.

The major trend - one I probably should have seen coming - is that a lot of bird names are echoic, or onomatopoeic.  In other words, the birds were named after the sounds they made.  It makes a lot of sense: naming a bird is great for when when there is a bird with either a) a unique call or b) not really another obvious thing to name it.  Here are some of the birds whose names originated because of their call:

• Owl - The word "owl" derives from the Latin word ulula, which, sure, sounds like an attempt at a hoot.
• Jay - from Late Latin's gaius, which is likely imitative.
• Crow - from Old English's crawe.
• Heron and Egret - These are sorta related.  The origin of "heron" is uncertain, but it's likely derived from the Proto-Indo-European word qriqi, which is thought to be echoic.  When that word reached the Old Provincal language in southern France around 1500, it had become aigreta, from which "egret" derived. 
• Finch - from a couple old German words like vinke and Fink, all thought to be imitations of the birds' call note.
• Goose - not really a surprise here. 
• Killdeer - not surprising, either.
• Warblers - not echoic in the correct sense, of course, but named after the fact that they sing.
• Curlew -  may be imitative of its cry, or also from an Old French word corliu meaning "runner, messanger" because they're good runners (?)
• Auk - of Scandinavian origins.
• Shrike - Yup, and probably related to "shriek"
• Chickadee - Obvi, first recorded in 1838.
• Bobolink - first used in American English in 1774, when it was known as bob-o-Lincoln.  Odd.

Some other birds were named, interestingly, after names for people:

• Petrel and Parrot -  Seems both dervice from the name Peter.  Petrels, so the (unconfirmed) story goes, were named for their habit of flying with their feet on the surface (think Storm-petrels): "walking on water" like the apostle Peter did on the Sea of Galilee.  Parrot, on the other hand, likely stems from a perrot, a version of Pierre.  
• Magpie -  These chattering birds were simply called pie in the original Latin, and the "Mag" part was added because it was a shortening of the name Margaret, a c. 1600 English slang term for talkative women. 
• Robin - a relative of Robert.  The term dates back to at least the 1300s, when the legend of Robin Hood was born.

Some other random interesting ones:

• Cormorant - results from the joining of corvus marinus, or Sea Raven.
• Mallard - likely came from the Latin masculus (which became mallardus in Middle Latin), which referred to any drake duck.
• Plover - from the Latin pluvia meaning "rain," because their spring arrival coincided with the start of the rainy season. 
• Vireo - The word is used by Pliny in Latin to describe some kind of green bird (from the root virere), and apparently was just later used to describe the North American birds by accident.
• Wren - from something Germanic, but no one's really sure what.
• Flamingo - from the Greek phoinikopteros meaning "red-colored."
• Bunting - the word bountyng was used to describe the bird in the 1300s, but no one's really sure why.  According to this valid internet source, if might from from the Welsh bontinog, which means "big-assed."!

Cool stuff, huh?  But what about the word "bird" itself?  Well, it's not really clear how we English-speaking folks came to use "bird" to describe all these winged creatures.  Typically, Old English speakers used fugol to talk about birds, and used bridd to talk about "young birds or nestlings."  Bridd somehow became bird, but no one really knows where bridd came from, as it has "no cognates in any other Germanic language."  Fine with me, I'll keep the mystery.   

Teddy Roosevelt: Our Birdingist President

I'm reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt called The Wilderness Warrior by Douglas Brinkley and I'm delighted to learn that our 26th president was a list-making, skywatching bona fide birdwatcher.   He caught the bug at a young age but was completely taken: in a passage that rings familiar to many young birders, Brinkley talks about Roosevelt's first summer after a year at Harvard, where he shunned the "normal" collegiate pursuits for birds:

"Because Edith [Roosevelt's girlfriend] had been excited about spending time with Theodore at Oyster Bay, the news that birds came first may have bruised her feelings.  As the historian Edmund Morris joked in The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edith 'could compete with the belles of Boston, but what were her charms compared to those of the Orange-throated Warbler, the Red-bellied Nuthatch, and the Hairy Woodpecker?'"

More than just a hobbyist, Roosevelt was a passionate collector and author.  In the days before field guides, Roosevelt was a serious contributor to American ornithological knowledge, publishing a booklet based on his personal observations called The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in Franklin County, N.Y. in 1878 (when he was 20!).  The booklet was a great success, earning a glowing review from one of the eminent ornithologists of the day, C. Hart Merriam, in the Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club.

A copy of The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks can be found here.  It isn't tremendously exciting to our modern eyes (except for the challenge of playing "what's that bird called now?" and the sad passage about Wild (Passenger) Pigeons being "undoubtedly found here at times"), but it was a useful tool back then.

Bully, Theodore Roosevelt!  You are a role model for young birders everywhere!

Birders: The Central Park Effect

I was finally able to watch the new HBO documentary about birding, Birders: The Central Park Effect, and I just want to say that it was lovely.  It's honest about birding and birders, it's environmental without being preachy, it's celebratory and it's fun.  It's basically the opposite of The Big Year, and, unlike that movie, it made me want to get outside and find some birds.

I've been engaging in some debate in the comment section of 10,000 Birds regarding an article about the movie written by Laura Helmuth that appeared on Slate.  I wrote most of those comments before even seeing the movie (not usually a good idea), but after watching it I feel even more strongly that Helmuth's piece was petty, unnecessary and sensationalist.  You can read my comments on there if you're interested, but my overall point is that Franzen echoes sentiments expressed by several others in the film, and if you leave Birders: The Central Park Effect thinking about anything other than how much you wish it were May 15, you've really missed out.

Birds At Large: The New York Times

The most shamefully-satisfying quirk of birders is pointing out bird-related mistakes in popular culture or media.  We take a perverse pride in our mock-outrage when - for example - we see movie's shot of a bald eagle accompanied by the screaming call of a red-tailed hawk.  It's a phenomenon I like to point out from time to time in these Birds At Large posts.

While the targets of these posts are frequently hurried advertisers or unconcerned sound-effects men, no one is immune.  Not even the New York Times, that pillar of "respectable journalism."  Reprinted below is a screencap from a July 13, 2012 story the Times did on a new HBO movie called Birders: The Central Park Effect.  Notice anything amiss (click to enlarge)?

Yup, the bird in the lower left isn't the Northern mockingbird as identified in the caption, but a gray catbird. 

I don't know what lesson to take from this: I could bemoan the quality of journalism in the world today; I could offer an electronic clap-on-the-back to beleagured ad-men out there and tell them they're not alone in their bird-identification-related challenges; or I could just offer-up a high five to the blogosphere (likely half-swung and mistimed, because we're uncoordinated nerds) for pointing out an error in the great and mighty Times. 

Or I could just get back work.

UPDATE: The caption has been corrected.  I should also point out that the documentary has been getting great reviews, so go check it out.

Birding Is Like Real-Life Pokemon - And We Could Market It To Kids That Way

I often get asked what drew me to birding.  Other outdoor pursuits like hunting or fishing or snowmobiling don't seem to require an explanation for participation, but people are perplexed by birding.  You just go and look at them?  Have you always wanted to fly?  Are you some sort of scientist?

No, I'm not a scientist.  The reasons why I love birding are many, but the "goal" of it - as I explain it to those inquiring minds - is "to see all the different kinds of birds there are."

"You mean like Pokemon?" One of my delightfully-nerdish friends responded.  "You've 'Gotta Catch 'em All?'"

Now, I don't know anything about Pokemon and didn't know what the hell she was talking about.  But you know what?  Birding is a LOT like a real life version of Pokemon - a worldwide entertainment sensation that is played by, like, a billion kids.  Making that connection explicit to the kids of today - and to the young adults who've outgrown Pokemon's demographic - may be the ticket to get a lot more people participating in and caring about birding.

Pokemon started in 1996 as a video game for Nintendo's Game Boy (n00b alert - I'll be cribbing from Wikipedia for this paragraph).  The game's creator, Satoshi Tajiri-Oniwa, was inspired by his childhood passion of collecting insects.  The thrust of the game is that characters named Trainers walk around in a landscape hoping to encounter - and then capture - wild creatures called Pokemon.  Other stuff happens (apparently) once you have these guys captured, but seeking out all the different iterations of Pokemon is the focus.

Sound familiar?  It sounds a lot like birding to me.  One major difference I can see between birding and Pokemon is that kids around the world have bought more than 200 million Pokemon video games, watched 15 different Pokemon movies, played a trading card game, watched a TV show and generally gone bananas for Pokemon...popularity not at all shared by birding.

Seems like an opportunity to me.  The "nature and environment" aspect of birding is essential, but I am still most attracted to the adventure of it.  I think kids might be too, and if we can draw the comparisons.  There are lots of organizations out there who are encouraging young people to start birding, maybe connecting birding to this Pokemon phenomenon is a good idea.  Who knows, but at the very least, if a kid asks you why you like birding so much, just say Birding - Gotta Catch 'Em All!

How To Make A "Where I've Birded" Map Using Your eBird Data

I've always wanted a map showing just the areas I've birded, but didn't know how to get one.  LONG STORY SHORT: I figured it out.  Check it:

Click on it to make it better (but remember this is just a screenshot, not the interactive Google Map that is actually is).

Want one?  Here's what I did:

1. Go to eBird > My eBird > Manage My Locations
2. Make sure you hit "Show All" in the lower right so all of your locations are on one page
3. Select all the text, and copy it into an Excel spreadsheet
4. Delete the "in my locs?" "Type" and "# checklists" columns (and any other stray stuff that got in there).
5. Make sure you have "Location" "Country" "State/Province" and "County" as Row 1 in your spreadsheet, or else insert a new column and add them.  It'll look something like this:
   
   
6. Go to www.BatchGeo.com
7. Copy your spreadsheet into the big "paste here" box at the BatchGeo homepage.
8. Go to Validate & Set Options > Advanced Options and make sure that "Enable clustering for high density markers" is NOT checked.
9. Make the map!  Check it out!

It's pretty cool to see where you've been spending all your birding time (and where you haven't been).  The maps isn't foolproof, and I'm still working out some of the details stemming from oddly-named or inputted eBird checklists (i.e. Washington County, IL shows on the map as Washington, IL - a very different part of the state).  I'm sure you can do a better job than I have, but it's a great way to visualize your birding.