Audubon NewsAudubon News

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

December 2004 A publication of Mecklenburg Audubon Volume 10, Number 4

Audubon News is published nine times a year, September – May by Mecklenburg Audubon SocietyServing Cabarrus, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg and Union Counties in NC and York County SC.

Monthly Meeting

No we’re not talking about the folks in Canada who show up in Myrtle Beach in January. But the birds in this case are from up north and show up in our yards some time in October looking for a place to spend the winter. White throated sparrows, yellow-bellied sapsuckers and juncos are just a few of these visitors. Taylor Piephoff will help us sharpen our identifi cation skills and provide us with some natural history of the winter birds found in our neighbor. This will help us get ready for the four Christmas Bird Counts that are coming up. Don’t miss this informative presentation at 7:30 PM in the fellowship hall of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Thursday, December 2nd. See you all there.

A widespread and common small sparrow, the Dark-eyed Junco is most familiar as a winter visitor to bird feeders. It comes in several distinctly different looking forms, but all are readily identifi ed as “juncos” by their plain pat-terning, dark hood, and white outer tail feathers.

Will the real Snowbird Please Flyby!Juncos are the “snowbirds”

of the middle latitudes. In the eastern United States, they appear in all but the most northern states only in the winter, and then retreat each spring. Some juncos in the Appalachian Mountains remain there all year round, breeding at the higher eleva-tions. These residents have shorter wings than the mi-grants that join them each winter. Longer wings help the migrants fl y long distances.

The Dark-eyed Junco in-cludes fi ve forms that were once considered separate species. The “slate-col-

ored junco” is the grayest, found from Alaska to Texas and eastward. The “Oregon junco” is boldly marked blackish and brown, with a distinct dark hood, and is found in the western half of the continent. The “gray-headed junco” has a brown back and gray sides and lives in the central Rocky Moun-tains. The “white-winged junco” is all gray with white wingbars, and breeds only near the Black Hills of South Dakota. The “Guadalupe junco” of Baja California is dull and brownish. Two other forms may be distinguish-

Saturday, December 4thWinter Waterfowl

Although Coddle Creek Reservoir [or what it is called now] has become the place to see waterfowl in the Char-lotte area, there are several other spots we will check as well. Hopefully, the weather up north will be co-operative this year and push the ducks our way. This trip will be a warm up for the numerous Christmas counts later this month.

We will meet at 8 AM at the McDonalds at University Place and will return about 12:30 PM. If you plan to join the group contact Taylor Piephoff at 704-532-6336 or PiephoffT@aol.com.

Charlotte Area CBCs

Each year more than 50,000 observers participate in this all-day census of early-winter bird populations. The results of their efforts are compiled into the longest running database in ornithology, repre-senting over a century of unbroken data on trends of early-winter bird populations across the Americas. Simply put, the Christmas Bird Count [aka CBC] is citizen

science in action.The primary objective of the Christmas Bird Count is to

monitor the status and distribution of bird populations across the Western Hemisphere. The count period, which is from December 14th to January 5th, in North America is referred to as “early winter,” because many birds at this time are still in the late stages of their southward migration, so it is not “true” winter. When these data are combined with other surveys such as the Breeding Bird Survey, we begin to see a clearer picture of how the continent’s bird populations have changed in time and space over the past hundred years.

The information is also vital for conservation. For example, local trends in bird populations can indicate habitat fragmen-tation or signal an immediate environmental threat, such as groundwater contamination or poisoning from improper use of pesticides.

From feeder-watchers and fi eld observers to count com-pilers and regional editors, everyone who takes part in the Christmas Bird Count does it for love of birds and the ex-citement of friendly competition -- and with the knowledge that their efforts are making a difference for science and bird conservation. For more information on Christmas Bird

FieldTripsPlease, remember to contact the trip leader several days before the trip. If you don’t, you may not receive information about last minute changes or cancellations. Also, if we don’t know you are coming we might leave without you!!

Did you know on the fi rst Christmas Bird Count on

December 25, 1900 18,500 individual birds [90 species] were seen by 27 people in 25

different locations.

Saturday, December 18thGastonia CBC

Contact:Judy Walker

704-537-8181Birdwalker@mac.com

Sunday, December 19thSouth Lake Norman CBC

Contact: Taylor Piephoff704-532-6336

PiephoffT@aol.com

Sunday, December 26thCharlotte CBC

Contact:Wayne Covington704-362-1774

waynecovington@hotmail.com

Sunday, January 8thPee Dee NWR

Contact:Judy Walker

704-537-8181birdwalker@mac.com

Come join us for a rare two-day opportunity to participate in guided bird-watching trips with experts throughout the diverse habitats of Huntington Beach State Park. Habitats and topics covered will include: Jetty Adventure, Shorebird Special, Coastal Sampler, Winter Waterfowl, Birding for Beginners and others. These unique excursions are de-signed for both the beginner and experienced birders.

The weekend concludes Sunday with a special lunch banquet from noon until 1:00 PM in the scenic court-yard of the Atalaya castle, prepared by renowned local chef Frank Beckham.

Throughout the weekend, birders will also have an opportunity to compete for special prizes! All partici-pants will be provided with a birding checklist upon reg-istration. Keep up with your sightings and turn it in at the Sunday lunch banquet. Fol-lowing lunch, there will be an awards ceremony with prizes offered in the following cat-egories: overall number of species; over 100 species, most unusual species

Registration fee of $40 per person includes all programs and lunch on Sunday.

For more information call [843-235-8755 or email huntingtonbeacheducation@scprt.com.

Wings of WinterBirding FestivalDecember 4-5, 2004

Collisions with windows are estimated to claim the lives of as many as one billion birds in North America each year. The collisions occur in every season and have been reported wherever both birds and glass occur, but system-atic monitoring of houses suggests that most birds are killed in winter, when many are attracted to bird feeders.

That disturbing fact places well-intentioned bird feeders on the horns of a dilemma: Should they continue to provide food, thereby set-ting the stage for bird-glass collisions, or take down their feeding stations, thereby re-moving the potentially fatal attraction but forcing hungry

birds to fend for themselves? Keep feeding, answers biolo-gist Daniel Klem Jr. in the March 2004 issue of the Wil-son Bulletin, but move your feeders closer to the window.

Klem and colleagues at Muhlenberg College con-ducted trials aimed at de-termining the effect on bird mortality of the distance at which feeders are placed from conventional, vertically oriented windows panes. The result? The proportion of fatal window strikes grew markedly as the distance between the feeder and win-dow increased, but feeders located as little as three feet from the glass resulted in no bird kills.

“Avian injury and mortal-ity from collisions with glass can be reduced worldwide by those who feed birds,” Klem writes. “Feeders placed within one meter of a pane led to no fatalities and offer the most protection for birds, especially at residential buildings and visitor centers of local, state, and federal parks and other recreational facilities.”

From Birder’s World, De-cember 2004 [www.birder-sworld.com]

How to Avoid Collisions

able: the “pink-sided junco,” a pale version of the Oregon junco, living in the northern Rocky Mountains, and the “red-backed junco,” a gray-headed junco with a dark up-per bill, found in mountains near the Mexican border.

The Dark-eyed Junco is a common bird at winter bird feeders across North Ameri-ca. Data from Project Feed-erWatch show that it is often the most common feeder bird in an area, and it is on the top-ten lists of all regions except the Southeast and South-Central (where it is 11th and 12th, respectively). To view the top-25 lists of feeder birds from across the continent, go to the Project FeederWatch Data Retrieval page.

Continued from page 1

Juncos

Audubon North Carolina,announces the release of Important Bird Areas of North Carolina, a scientifi c assessment of the most important habitats for birds in the state. The culmination of six years of study, the publi-cation identifi es 92 places from the moun-tains to the coast that are vital for breeding, migrating, and over-wintering birds.

The nearly 4.5 million acres of land and waters encompassed by the report range from internationally known natural heritage sites such as 300,000 acres of Great Smoky Mountains National Park to a handful of two-acre islands that are little known but vital to breeding waterbirds. Manmade features, such as Falls and Jordan lakes, known for their growing populations of Bald Eagles in the midst of developing cities, also made the list. One Important Bird Area (IBA) includes 600,000 acres of ocean off Cape Hatteras where seabirds congregate and forage in huge numbers.

Important Bird Areas have no minimum or maximum size limit. What the sites have in common is they all are important and essen-tial to North Carolina’s birds.

The National Audubon Society is the lead agent for the United States in implementing the global Important Bird Areas (IBA) pro-gram. As part of a nationwide initiative and a global partnership to identify and conserve habitats critical to birds, Audubon has initiat-ed IBA programs in 46 states with programs in all 50 states expected in 2005.

IBAs are identifi ed at a state level by a thorough analysis of bird populations and habitats, then approval by a state IBA Tech-nical Committee, comprising leading experts on birds and their habitats. These areas may hold large concentrations or an exceptional diversity of birds, harbor rare or endangered species, or harbor a representative assem-blage of birds associated with rare or threat-ened habitat. Once approved at a state level, sites can then be reviewed by the National IBA Technical Committee for continental or global IBA status.

Being named an IBA places no restric-tions on property or its future uses. How-

NORTH CAROLINA’SIMPORTANT BIRD AREAS

ever, Audubon seeks to work cooperatively with interested landowners and managers to monitor, protect and improve these sites for birds and other wildlife. The program dove-tails with other natural heritage protection efforts, such as the state’s One North Caro-lina Naturally initiative.

As a voluntary program, IBA recognition is meant to inspire rather than require. To inspire greater appreciation of priority land-scapes and more sensitive management, to inspire partnerships toward expanded pro-tections & community stewardship.

Of the 92 North Carolina locations de-scribed and mapped in the report, 68 are in the coastal plain and sandhills, 16 are in the mountains, and 8 lie in between in the Piedmont. The distribution of sites refl ects where expanses of relatively undisturbed or suitable lands exist for concentrations of at-risk, sensitive or diverse species of birds.

Over the next three years, Audubon will focus its conservation efforts on a number of priority sites from the coast to the moun-tains. These focal IBAs are places where opportunities for acquisition or other protec-tions of vulnerable lands are available, where current management needs improvement, and/or where additional data collection is needed.

Some IBAs have been targeted for pur-chase so the sites will forever be protected. The Lea-Hutaff Island complex along the southern coast is one of the last relatively undisturbed barrier islands in the state. Cooperative efforts to buy-out owners of the island have been ongoing and will be increased, with fi nal ownership being trans-ferred to the state under Audubon’s manage-ment. The island supports breeding species such as the threatened Piping Plover, Least and Common terns, American Oystercatch-ers, and thousands of migrating/wintering shorebirds.

Other sites, such as the Pocosin Lakes Na-tional Wildlife Refuge, seemingly protected as public natural lands, are actually under great threat. Audubon is currently challeng-ing in federal court an attempt by the U.S. Navy to place a jet landing fi eld just miles away from this prime wintering ground for 100,000 Tundra Swans and Snow Geese.

Continued on Page 7

IMPORTANT BIRD AREAS by CountyCoastal Plain

Alligator River Lowlands Bald Head/ Smith IslandBattery IslandBeacon IslandBig Swan IslandBigfoot IslandBird Island-Twin LakesCape Hatteras National SeashoreCape Lookout National SeashoreCarrot Island-Bird ShoalCat (Wood) Island Cedar Island Marsh Chainshot Island Chowan River BottomlandsClam Shoal Croatan Forest Marshes/Pine

Island DOT Island Dunahoe BayEagle Island Ferry Slip Island Great Dismal SwampGreat Island Green Swamp Gull Island Hobucken Marshes Hog Island Holly Shelter-Angola BayJudith Island Point Lake Mattamuskeet-Swanquarter Lea-Hutaff Island Lower Neuse River BottomlandsLumber River Bottomlands Mackay Island Masonboro Island Middle Marsh Monkey Island Morgan Island New Dump Island North Pelican Island North Rock Island Ocracoke Village Heronry

Old House Channel, Island C, L, MN

Onslow Bay [N/a]Oregon Inlet Shoals Outer Banks, Inshore OceanOuter Continential Shelf, Cape

HatterasOuter Green Island Palmetto Peartree--Buckridge Pea Island Pocosin Lakes-PungoRaccoon Island Rawls Island Roanoke River BottomlandsRoanoke Sound, Island G Roos Point Sand Bag Island Sandhills East Sandhills West Sheep Island South Pelican Island Striking Island Upper Neuse River Bottomlands Waccamaw River Bottomlands Wainwright Island Whitehurst Island

PiedmontB. Everett Jordan Lake Caswell Game Lands Catawba River/Mtn. Island LakeEno River BottomlandsFalls Lake Pee Dee NWR Pilot Mountain South Mountains

MountainsAmphibolites Black & Great Craggy Mountains Blue Ridge Escarpment Gorges Bull Creek Bullhead Mtn-Mahogany Rock Chimney Rock-Hickory Nut

GorgeGrandfather Mountain Great Smoky Mountains NP Highlands Plateau Joyce Kilmer-Slickrock Wilder-

ness Area Max Patch Nantahala Mountains New River Corridor Plott and Great Balsam Moun-

tains

One outcome of the IBA process has been the identi-fi cation of gaps in knowledge of bird numbers across the state. Audubon, working with other organizations and volunteers, is undertaking additional data gathering at locations thought to be prime bird habitat but insuffi ciently documented. The popular Grandfather Mountain has long been known as a place to see birds, such as Northern Saw-whet Owls, Peregrine Falcons, and Red Crossbills. But scientifi c methods for monitoring populations were only recently initiated under Audubon’s leadership.

Presenting the results of the initial identifi cation phase of the Important Bird Areas pro-gram is only a fi rst step. The assessment of North Caroli-na’s birds and their habitats is ongoing and the list will be continuely updated. But the real success will be accom-plishing on-the-ground con-servation that results in the long-term protection of birds and their habitats.

For more information, and to see the full text of the Important Bird Areas of North Carolina, visit www.ncaudu-bon.org or call 910/686-7527.

Continued from page 2

What color should I wear while birding? This question, considered by birders and professional fi eld ornitholo-gists worldwide, has been speculated upon, but never answered satisfactorily. The reason there is no adequate answer to this question is because we (humans) do not understand the percep-tual world of any non-hu-man animal. In fact, we frequently have a tough time understanding the perceptual world of humans different from ourselves. For example, it is hard to imaging what be-ing blind, or even color blind, is like if you have normal vision. It may even be harder to imagine how other sensory modalities can be enhanced over our normal experience.

Birds see color, i.e., they have color vision. Their color vision is not only good, but it is actually better than our own. These two de-fi nitive statements describe what vision researchers are pretty sure is true - how-ever, at the highest levels of scientifi c rigor they have not been fi rmly established. Today it is widely accepted that the avian eye, not the human eye, is the quintes-sential color vision system. It is believed that birds see more colors (hues) than we do and the colors also ap-pear more saturated to birds than do ours to us. They are

able to do this because they have four (or more!) cones and pigmented oil droplets in their photoreceptors. Where-as we have short, middle and long (also called blue, green, & red, respectively) cones, they not only have short, middle, and long cones, but also have an UV cone.

When we talk about what colors we should wear in the fi eld, we assume colors look the same to birds as they do to us. This assumption may not always be correct. Birds probably do see colors simi-lar to the way we see them, but they are most likely never exactly the same, and may indeed be quite differ-ent. To clarify, a fl ower that is red to us is probably also red to most diurnal birds, but is probably seen by them as a different hue of red. If a fl ower (or other object) refl ecting the red light is also refl ecting UV light, the color (hue) seen by birds will almost certainly be different than anything we see.

When I teach bird watching I try to get students to think about how the world looks from the bird’s point of view. With the bird that is thirty yards away try to transport a piece of your mind into the bird’s head. Then, through the bird’s eyes, look from its perch back at yourself. From its vantage point what would be the view? This exercise

isn’t restricted to colors of birders’ clothing but is some-thing to develop into a general practice -- do this anytime you are in the fi eld. Birds are living entities

and possess highly developed brains. Like you, they experi-ence life and have individual perceptions. It is fun to not only see birds, but to see the birds’ world. You then feel a closer communion with them.

Ok, you ask, so what is that world like? Again, no human knows. My best guess is that birds see colors slightly dif-ferently than we do in most cases and signifi cantly dif-ferent in some cases. Fur-ther, I assume colors appear even more saturated to birds than they do to us. Follow-ing these assumptions, earth tones should appear more natural to birds than bright colors that are not part of their normal environment. Since most of my birding is well away from human ac-tivity, I wear subdued earth tones except for dark blue jeans. Bright colors not only make us more conspicu-ous, but they amplify all our movements. For example, if you are wearing a white shirt with long sleeves and you move your arms that movement will be magni-fi ed against a natural back-

(Adapted from an article originaly published in the March, 1996 issue of the Horned Lark, the quarterly newsletter of the Kansas Ornithological Society. The author was a Ph. D. graduate student in ornithology at the time of its writing. The complete article can be found at http://www.ksbirds.org/kos/Color.htm.)

What Should I Wear While Birding?by Byron K. Butler

ground. Any other color that stands out against the back-ground will have the same ef-fect. The effect will be greater yet if the white also refl ects UV. Bright yellows, hunter orange vests, and other conspicuous objects are not normally part of such envi-ronments, and so are novel items to forest birds. Many birds are understandably neophobic (wary of anything new).

It has been observed that aside from bird photogra-phers few birders wear cam-oufl age clothing. I hypothe-size this is related to the fact that few birders ever sit still for any length of time. This is a hunting technique and birders today tend to regard hunters as enemies. And no one wants to look and behave like the enemy. This is really unfortunate because hunt-ing has much to teach bird-ers about how to ‘stalk’ their quarry. Many hunting tech-niques can be employed that I never see birders use. You don’t have to kill the animal in order to fi nd these tech-niques valuable, as bird and nature photographers know. If you sit and/or move slowly, camoufl age is very effective.

Also always wear a hat, a baseball cap, to hide your face and eyes from birds. If you are a nice morsel for a predator, as most birds are, you are in constant danger of predation and you know you’re in trouble if a predator has focused his stare on you. Think about the last time you noticed someone staring at you on a bus, or at any other public place. You feel more comfortable when you look around and there are no eyes

looking at you. This is the case for birds also - they look to see who is looking back. They know to watch for peer-ing eyes and the ones that are still alive are good at it.

The bird on a branch look-ing back at you is looking at your eyes to see what you are up to. It is no coinci-dence that our eyes are our best birding tools, and we go to great lengths to enhance them with fancy optics. The bill of the baseball cap pro-vides a shield by which you can hide your eyes and break up the outline of your face. I frequently turn my head and body away, looking off to the side of the bird, and then peek out from under my cap to try to sneak a candid camera view - another hunt-ing tip. The point here is that no matter what color cloth-ing you wear, if your big ole round face is sticking out like a neon sign then you’ve failed to pay attention to the part of you that has the most sa-lience to birds.

So, to summarize: Avoid anything that re-fl ects in the UV.Avoid bright colors.Avoid wearing white. Do wear camoufl age and subdued colors that match natural surroundings, es-pecially when you intend to sit still.Restrict your body move-ments at all times. Sitting still means not only that you are seated, but also that you make yourself appear as small as pos-sible and your arms and head are also still.When you move, move slowly and smoothly.

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Avoid jerky and fast movements.Disrupt the outline of your face and eyes. Hide your eyes as much as possible.Use your peripheral vision to sneak peeks.Never stare at a bird un-less it is some species that is known to accept stares, e.g., eagles. Look off to the side of the bird about 30 degrees and pan across to 30 degrees on the other side of it, stop-ping only long enough to capture a look. Then look away, and do it again.Learn “intention” move-ments and stop for a while if the bird is behaving as if it might fl y. After it settles down, pan again. Too many birders see intention movements then think they have to get a good look before the bird is gone. They don’t realize in doing so they are actually pushing the bird to fl y.Learn to be patient. We take up birding because we want to stop to smell the roses, then we get so caught up in list-and-run birding we still never take time to smell the roses. Bird watching is an activ-ity that encourages us to use our time to look closely at birds for more than their fi eld marks.

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Birds pay a price for the advantages of fl ight. They must commit their forelimbs almost entirely to that en-terprise. As a result the bill often must assume responsi-bility for diverse function for which many mammals use their forelimbs – grasping, carrying scratching, fi ghting, and digging.

The bill (or “beak”) consists of the upper and lower jaws (mandibles), ensheathed in a layer of toughened skin. The horny outer layer tends to be especially thick near the tip, where the most wear occurs. The edges of the bill may be sharpened for cutting, or ser-rated for grasping. But the edges of some bills, includ-ing those of ducks, are blunt and relatively soft except at the tip, which is hardened. Ducks often must sort insects and seeds from murky water, and the edges of their bills are richly supplied with touch receptors that help them to detect their food.

In most birds the upper mandible is perforated by nostrils, although in some high-diving birds like gan-nets the external nostrils are missing. Gannets avoid fl ood-ing by being “mouth breath-ers” and keeping their mouth shut when they hit the ocean. Similarly the nostrils of wood-peckers are reduced to nar-row slits. In the albatrosses and their relatives, the nos-trils are a tube (storm-pe-trels) or pair of tubes (al-batrosses, shearwaters and fulmars) on top of the bill.

In most birds the horny sheath exfoliates (peels) and is continuously replenished from underneath. Sometimes the sheath develops special protuberances that are used in courtship and subsequently shed. The large, eye-catch-ing grooved bill of the breed-ing Atlantic Puffi n returns to its smaller, duller appearance after the fancy scales peel away at the end of the repro-ductive season.

As tools, bills are not used just for eating food, but also for catching it, prying up bark that conceals it, fi ltering it from water, killing, carrying it, cutting it up and so on. Bills also serve for preening, nest building, excavating, egg turning, defending, attacking, displaying, scratching hatch-ing, climbing and so on. It’s no wonder bill size and shape are characteristics that vary enormously from species to species and among major groups. And small wonder that the adaptations of bills to these various functions have long fascinated orni-thologists.

The most obvious adapta-tions of bills are those related to feeding. Birds that catch fi shes with their bills must maintain a tenacious grip on

slippery prey. Thus albatross-es and pelicans have hooked upper bill tips, and mergan-sers have serrated margins. Most waders hunt by probing in mud and sand and have long, slender, forceps-like bills for fi nding and grasping their prey. Avocets, however, tend to feed more at the wa-ter’s surface and swing their upward-curved bills from side to side. Oystercatchers have especially stout bills designed for hammering and prying open recalcitrant mollusks.

Whip-poor-wills and their relatives have a wide-gaping bristle-fringed bill that acts as an aerial vacuum cleaner, sweeping in insects during fl ight. And tyrant fl ycatchers, such as kingbirds, pewees, phoebes, Myiarchus and Empidonax fl ycatchers, have Empidonax fl ycatchers, have Empidonaxligaments connecting the up-per and lower jaws that act as springs to snap the gaped jaw shut when the insect is snared.

Birds such as warblers and creepers that glean foliage or bark for insects tend to have slender bills that may or may not be down-curved. Those subsisting on seeds, such as sparrows, buntings, and other fi nches, have short, stout bills adapted for crack-ing and husking seeds. The stout, crossed mandibles of crossbills have evolved for the job of extracting seeds from conifer cones. The bills of omnivores like crows have an intermediate shape be-tween those of insectivores and those of seed-eaters.

Bills, Bills,Bills

Continued on page 9

Skimmers have one of the most interesting bills of all. Since, when foraging, they fl y with their lower mandible slicing through the water, the mandible would be quickly eroded away by friction if it did not grow at roughly twice the rate of the upper mandible. Skimmers in zoos, deprived of the opportunity to skim, soon have lower mandibles much, much lon-ger than the upper.

In summary, a great deal can be surmised about bird’s feeding habits simply from examination of their bills. One should always keep in mind, however, that bills do serve other functions.

[Adapted from The Birder’s Handbook, by Paul R. Ehrlich, David S. Dobkin and Darryl Wheye.]

Fieldbook of Wild Birds and their Music by F. Schuyler Mathews

The modern American fi eld guides we are used to -- Pe-terson, Kaufman, Sibley, etc. -- offer detailed migra-tion information, pithy de-scriptions of each bird, and digitally enhanced images. On the internet, dozens of bird-identifi cation sites can be found, and many more websites allow bird songs to bubble forth from our com-puters. It wasn’t always this way, though, and F. Schuyler Mathews’ 1904 Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Mu-sic, reissued by Applewood Books, is a pocket-sized reminder of what bird books used to be. Whereas our modern fi eld guides are bent on helping us quickly and accurately identify birds, many popular fi eld guides of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries blended the goal of identifi cation with encouragement for readers to revel in the beauty of birds and their music.

Book Nook

Mathews writes this about the Ruffl ed Grouse (our Ruffed Grouse): “There is no doubt about it at all, here is the kettledrum of Nature’s orchestra!” Looking at older fi eld guides, one starts to wonder, in our rage to identi-fy identify identify, has some-thing been lost?

Mathews’ Field Book of Wild Birds and Their Music de-scribes the Eastern birds (or most of them) in elaborate passages, but what is most ambitious about this book is the music. Mathews renders each bird’s song on a musi-cal scale, complete with liner notes and commentary. Don’t read music? Don’t worry. Mathews offers both a quick primer on how to read mu-sic and a glossary of musi-cal terms. Paging back to Mathews’ handy glossary, you’ll know just what he means when the lark’s song is described as affettuoso or the robin’s melody as soste-nuto. On the other hand, if you do happen to read mu-sic, this guide breathes new life into bird songs.

F. Schuyler Mathews, au-thor of numerous books and fi eld guides in the early twentieth century, was also a careful watercolorist, and this fi eld guide includes 53 plates. Whereas the early editions of Field Book of Wild Birds and

Their Music, still available in many libraries, featured Mathews’ water colors in the three-color lithographic process, the black-and-white reproductions in this volume pale in comparison. That said, this fi eld guide is still a startling little book with the very great potential of help-ing us see and think about what we’ve come to take for granted every time we open a fi eld guide.

Bills [Continued]

12/2 - Snowbirds - Monthly Meeting12/4 - Waterfowl - 1/2 day Field Trip12/4-5 - Wings of Winter [Huntington Beach St. Park]12/18 - Gaston Christmas Count12/19 - Lake Norman Christmas Count12/26 - Charlotte Christmas Count1/2 - Pee Dee NWR Christmas Count1/6 - Potluck/Members ‘Slides’ Night1/22 - Huntington Beach St. Park [Full Day]

ACTIVITIES CALENDAR

For additional activities and information go to http://meckbirds.org

Published by Mecklenburg AudubonA Chapter of National Audubon

P. O. Box 221093, Charlotte, NC 28222meckbirds.org

Audubon News

WHAT’S INSIDE?Monthly Meeting 1Dark-eyed Junco 1Field Trips/CBCs 2Avoid Collisions 3Wings of Winter 3NC IBAs 4What should I wear? 6Bills 8Book Nook 9

Board MembersJudy Walker - President

704-537-8181 704-537-8181 birdwalker@mac.com birdwalker@mac.com

Rob Bierregaard - Vice President 704-333-2405 704-333-2405 rbierreg@email.uncc.edu rbierreg@email.uncc.edu

Larry Barden - Secretary 704-547-4059 704-547-4059 larry@lbarden.com larry@lbarden.com

Lucy Quintilliano - Treasurer 704-364-9028 704-364-9028 lucyq@carolina.rr.com lucyq@carolina.rr.com

Taylor Piephoff - Field Trips 704-532-6336 704-532-6336 piephoffT@aol.com piephoffT@aol.com

Wayne Covington - Bird Count 704-362-1774 704-362-1774

Marek Smith - Membership 704-875-1391 704-875-1391 maresmit@aol.com maresmit@aol.com

Louise Barden - Publicity 704-535-6385 704-535-6385 louise@lbarden.com louise@lbarden.com

Mecklenburg Audubon is a chapter of Na-tional Audubon. Meetings are held at Sharon Seventh Day Adventist Church, 920 N. Sha-ron Amity Rd. on the first Thursday of each month, September through May at 7:30 PM.

Evergreen Preserve Workday