Semi-Tuft
Forget your Dallas cowboys and your Houston Astros. Texas’ real champions count birds once a year at freeport. They’re not bird watchers, they’re birders. And therein lies a tail.
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I do not wish to appear cynical—even if I am—but I do not believe many Christmas Bird Counters think much about science on the day of the Count, any more than young men play football to gain information on the weakness of the human knee. The purpose of the Christmas Count, viewed from a phenomenological perspective—that is to say, from a perspective that focuses on how the participants themselves interpret what they are doing—is to provide birders with the opportunity to beat the competition. The competition varies. The count in Kouchibouguac National Park, New Brunswick, which turned up only fifteen species last year, can hardly expect to compete with counts in California or Texas or Florida, which may report over 200 species, but it can try to break its own record and perhaps nose out Summit Lake, Wisconsin, in the bargain. Similarly, Fort Worth or Dallas have little chance against Texas coastal counts, but they can and do compete with each other. The crown jewel of Texas counts is the Freeport count, which holds the U.S. record for the event with 226 species, a record many birders feel will stand forever. Moreover, Freeport placed first in the nation in both 1971, the year of the record, and 1972, when it tied Cocoa Beach, Florida, with 209. Besides Cocoa Beach, Freeport’s main competitors are three California counts—San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Point Reyes Peninsula—each of which regularly scores in the 200-species range.
The Freeport count began fifteen years ago, when the late naturalist Armand Yramategui suggested to Victor Emanuel and Carl Aiken that Freeport would be a better area for a Christmas Count than Baytown, where the Houston Audubon Society traditionally held its count. Yramategui pointed out that, in addition to a coast that enabled the sighting of pelagic (pe-lag’ic. adj. Of or pertaining to the ocean; oceanic.) species, Freeport was relatively undeveloped and had a wide variety of habitat in a small land area. Emanuel and Aiken followed his suggestion and quickly developed the Freeport Count into one of the most prominent in the nation.
In recent years it has received television coverage, been the subject of a film, and been described for Audubon magazine by participant observer George Plimpton. This past Christmas, I accepted an invitation/dare from my friend Jane Robinson to participate in the count. If Jane, a multi-talented woman of fine intelligence and exquisite taste, had found pleasure in traveling all over the world in birdy pursuits, then surely I could risk a single day in Freeport.
Normally, I am not awake at 4:30 a.m. As I sat crunching my granola and anticipating the day, I did not feel normal. I felt foolish, but relieved my neighbors would not see me sneaking out to count birds. By 5 a.m. Jane and I were moving through the night toward Freeport, past cafes already open and at least a quarter filled with men in hats drinking coffee. I wondered who these people are who rise while it is yet night and stir about, doubtless seeking some advantage over those whose consciences permit them to sleep at least until God gets up. We passed prison farms and I wondered, at first with amusement, then with some guilt, how many of the inmates would trade with me for a day if they knew they would have to spend it wading through swamps in search of the Rufoussided Towhee. At 6:15, still before dawn—I had no idea when the sun would rise—we pulled down Dike Road in Lake Barbara.
Down Dike Road, we met two other carloads of birders. We comprised one of fourteen parties who had responsibility for a specific portion of the count territory. Each of these parties was led by an experienced birder who knew the area thoroughly and who informed the members of his group what birds they should expect to find and what part of the territory they should cover at what time of day, for best results. Dan Hardy, an earnest young student who served as our area leader, gave us a hand-drawn map of our territory, explained it by the glow of his flashlight and told us where to meet him at 6 p.m., and that we would have to hurry since there was not much time. Birding has strange effects on one’s sense of what constitutes a short day.
Our little party consisted of Noel Pettingell, Jane Robinson, Elaine Cook, a student from Cornell who had ridden the bus all the way from Baltimore to join the Freeport count, and your intrepid observer. We began on a note of apparent disaster. We were to cover a wooded area first, in search of the elusive Screech Owl. When Noel tried the gate, he found it locked and exuded dismay until we discovered that the high fence and gate were apparently designed to keep vehicles, not persons, out and that the fence ended a few yards from the gate, enabling us simply to walk around it.
At 6:30 it was still quite dark and quite silent, except for the noise I made by stepping on twigs like one of Fenimore Cooper’s hapless Indians. As I thought about it, I realized I had not been in the woods in the night since I was a boy scout, which was 87 years ago. The trees reminded me of the trees in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the thought crossed my minds that it would be comforting to have a theater seat to scrunch down behind so that I would not have to look at them. I was beginning to wish for dawn. Noel would blow his Screech Owl call and the Screech Owls would chuckle to themselves and not make a sound. We heard a rooster, a dog, and another bird-caller, but no Screech Owl.
Around 6:40 the sun rose (or appeared to, unless one clings to the old cosmology), looking a lot like it usually does, I suppose. Still, no sign or sound of a single bird. Then, at 6:50, as if an alarm had gone off, what a writer might call “a veritable chorus of birds” broke out in song and I soon spotted several small objects which I was immediately able to identify as birds. As the light came, I surveyed our territory and saw it was comprised of equal parts of woods, swamp, and thorns, but still not too many birds. At 7:18, the paucity was overcome and a large flock of grackles flew over. Grackles are not an exciting bird, but they are faithful in attendance. The famous Freeport Christmas Bird Count had begun.
Noel, ever on the alert—he admits he psyches himself up for several weeks before the Big Day—heard a Pileated Woodpecker, a good bird to get. In a bit, he sighted the bird and marked him down. We would be expected to find the Pileated, but it would be possible to miss him, too, and it was good to have him out of the way this early in the morning. The ‘Pecker started things rolling for us, and we began to log more good birds.
“Cormorants, Noel, Cormorants.”
“Good! Very good!”
“How would you like a Brown Creeper?”
“Good! Good!”
Jane spotted a duck at the far end of a lake, about 300 yards away, that she thought looked different from the others around it. “We’ll just have to go over there. It’s just a skooge too far to see clearly, but when it turns sideways you can see it is a little different.” I am astounded at the distinctions expert birders can make at such distances. Even with my field glasses, I could barely distinguish the bird from a nutria swimming in the area, and Jane was picking up subtle differences in profile and feather markings. My respect for the skill of birders was growing. Unhappily, by the time we reached the other end of the lake, the Mystery Duck had disappeared into the reeds, but my companions did pick up a gallinule, a grebe, and a coot. I picked up a shoe full of water and a renewed sense that 6 p.m. was a long time away. For the rest of the morning we tromped through woods, sloshed through mud, picked through thorns, climbed over fences, avoided Jersey bulls, and shared the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of knowing things most people do not.
“Do pipits move their tails up and down?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Are Palm Warblers often with pipits?”
“It’s possible. We got the Palm Warbler right down there last year.”
One soon learns that the image of birders as frail creatures who took up the hobby when shuffling both decks for canasta got them down is inaccurate. Despite a near perfect body and great natural stamina, I was beginning to fade and it was still not noon. Fortunately, we stopped for the first of several sandwich breaks and talked of pleasant things we had seen and done. During brunch, we added Red-winged Blackbirds and several killdeers (For readers in South Texas, “killdeer” is the proper name for a bird known more popularly as the “killdee” or “Damn Killdee,” as in “No use wastin’ a shell. It’s just a Damn Killdee.”). I had been impressed at the number of species we had seen, but Noel and Jane were worried. We had been out over four hours and we had not yet seen several birds that should have been there. Three days of cold earlier in the week had probably driven a lot of lingerers out and that would be bad for the count.
A brisk wind was also working against us because birds don’t move about much on windy days. A car of birders from Arlington drove up and added to the gloom by telling us they had seen almost nothing in their area and were thinking of abandoning it. They had driven all the way down here for a big count and, shoot, they could find this many birds in Fort Worth.
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