by Gene Walz
If ever there was a guy who didn’t need another bird named after him, it’s this guy Wilson.
Think of it: Wilson’s Storm-Petrel, Wilson’s Plover, Wilson’s Phalarope, Wilson’s Snipe, Wilson’s Warbler, Wilson’s Thrush (now, thankfully, changed to Veery).
Over sixty North American birds are named after people, and ten percent of them are named after Wilson. His two nearest competitors have only three—Cassin (Murrelet, Finch, and Sparrow) and Swainson (Hawk, Thrush, and Warbler). Do the namers have no imagination?
Who is this guy Wilson? He’s Alexander Wilson—one of America’s great early ornithologists and painters. In his celebrated pre-Audubon work, the nine-volume American Ornithology (1808–1814), he illustrated 268 species of birds, twenty-six of which had not previously been described. So, it’s good that we honour him. I just hope that we don’t end up someday with all twenty-six bearing his name!
A friend of mine once facetiously suggested that we name birds more accurately or more “phylogenetically-aligned.” He proposed the House Weaver (for House Sparrow) and Canada Brant (Canada Goose) for starters; then he got carried away and proposed the White-headed and -tailed Fish-Eagle (replacing the Bald one), the Rusty-bellied Lawn Thrush (the American Robin), and the Orange-crowned Chicken-strutting Ground-warbler (the Ovenbird). Another facetious birder once suggested that the Red-breasted Nuthatch should really be called the “Soft Rusty/Orange Wash-breasted Nuthatch.” It’s an amusing game. But bird names are odd enough as it is.
If we haven’t crossed paths for a while, Syl, a longtime friend of mine, almost always asks me if I’ve seen any Rosy-breasted Pushovers lately. This is a typical non-birder to birder joke; birds with “funny” names often provoke snickers and smirks. Once, when I told him I’d just seen a Hoary Redpoll, his reply was, “Whoring Red Poles? There are actual birds with that name? That’s obscene! Or at least politically incorrect.”
When I was a kid without a bird book, I had my own personal names for the birds I saw. For instance, I called Common Yellowthroats Masked Bandits. And my grandson Torsten, you’ll remember, called Nuthatches Upside-down Birds. Maybe we should let preschoolers re-name birds. It might get them interested in the outdoors.
More seriously, we should change the names of birds that are just not descriptively accurate. The Red-bellied Woodpecker, for instance. Its belly is the least distinctive characteristic of the bird and often what little red there is isn’t visible at all. Or the Ring-necked Duck which should be the Ring-billed Duck. I’m even tempted to petition for the Orange-crowned Warbler (whose crown you almost never see) to be re-named the Dull Green Warbler. There are dozens more.
When I get to be president of the American Ornithologists’ Union (just after I become the first agnostic Pope!), I’m going to institute a checklist committee with a mandate to start re-naming birds. First rule: no more than one species can have a person’s name attached to it. Maybe even drop all surnames attached to birds. Think of all the publicity it’ll generate and all the fun we’ll have cooking up more imaginative, helpful, and apt names!
When it comes to naming animals, the Aussies have been the most creative. We could take our cue from them. Just saying the names they’ve come up with can make you smile. What we call a kingfisher, for instance, they call a kookaburra. And then there are their animals: platypus, pademelon, bandicoot, wombat, wallaby, echidna. What great names! Even their really familiar animals have memorably amusing names: kangaroo, koala, dingo, and Tasmanian devil. Some unfamiliar ones are even funnier: numbat, quoll, bilby, quokka.
I wish we could get a do-over not just on bird names but on all our North American animal names. They’re all so monosyllabic and uninspiring. Bear, deer, fox, wolf, moose, elk, hare. Was there some kind of prohibition in the past that limited the number of syllables you could use to name our fauna?! Government accountants must have named them.
As for the changeover to Canada Brant from Canada Goose: I think I’d prefer that we change the name to New Jersey Brant or Lawn-fouling Brant. The pesky birds have become such a menace in parks and golf courses in the last several years that we Canadians should officially disown them. Like the “cold fronts from Canada” that TV weather forecasters all decry, the Canada Goose is giving us a bad name.
The Passenger Pigeon
Apocalypse
Every fall, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) meets to assess the risk of extinction for Canadian wildlife species. At these meetings, the Birds Specialist Subcommittee presents status reports for threatened or endangered bird species. It must be depressing work. We hear all the time about the growing percentages of at-risk birds. A massive seven-year climate study, for instance, finds that unless action is taken, more than 300 species of North American birds could face significant threats to their survival in coming decades. (The international figures are worse: over 3,000 species, almost one-third, of all bird species, could be extinct by 2050.)
Greater Prairie-Chicken, a bird that once numbered in the millions on the grasslands: extirpated in Canada; Eskimo Curlew and Mountain Plover: endangered; Burrowing Owl, as late as the 1980s a resident just outside Winnipeg: virtually extirpated in Manitoba; Yellow Rail and Savannah Sparrow (the princeps or “Ipswich” subspecies): of special concern. Also in trouble: Sprague’s Pipit, Dickcissel, and Loggerhead Shrike, to cite just three species of special interest to Manitobans.
Over the past fifty years, grassland birds especially have suffered alarming reductions, some by more than ninety percent. As a group, they are declining faster than any other species on the continent. Humans, the most dangerous of the invasive species on the prairies, are entirely responsible.
More brutally and foolishly, humans were also responsible for the demise of the Passenger Pigeon. If you look at the award-winning Birds of Manitoba, you’ll see that the Passenger Pigeon has an entry in the book. It was once a frequent and abundant visitor to our province. Its entry in the Birds of Manitoba is unique. It’s an obituary, a lament, and, perhaps, a warning, the only one in the book.
The story of this species’ extinction, including its former occurrence in Manitoba, has been told many times. But it bears repeating—especially now, just after the 100th anniversary of its demise. In “A Review-History of the Passenger Pigeon in Manitoba” written in 1905, Winnipeg ornithologist George Atkinson called North American civilization a form of “modified barbarism” for its wanton extermination of the species, an act of human greed and selfishness. Over a century later, we don’t seem to have progressed beyond his apt description: “modified barbarism.” It is still difficult to read or write about the Passenger Pigeon without stirring strong emotions.
Emotions such as incredulity, because the Passenger Pigeon once numbered in the billions—as many as three to five billion—with a “b”—representing a quarter of all the birds on the North American continent. It was likely the most numerous bird species on the entire planet. As late as 1871, a colony of 136 million birds was discovered nesting in central Wisconsin. Migrating flocks were said to darken the sky, horizon to horizon, for entire days.
And emotions like disappointment, because the Passenger Pigeon was a truly beautiful bird whose speed and grace in flight earned it such names as “blue meteor.” Chief Simon Pokagon—poet, naturalist, and early critic of pigeon hunting—claimed that it “was proverbial with our fathers that if the Great Spirit in His wisdom could have created a more elegant bird in plumage, form, and movement, He never did.”
At forty centimetres in length, the Passenger Pigeon was markedly larger than the Mourning Dove, with a similar build, including a long, pointed tail. The male, more richly coloured than the female, had a slaty, blue-grey head and upper body with purplish iridescence on the neck; its throat and breast were, as Atkinson put it, a “rich russet vinaceous” colour that shaded to orange-pink on the lower breast and then a white abdomen. It was also unique of voice,
reportedly the only pigeon that “shriek[ed] and chatter[ed] and cluck[ed] instead of cooing.”
Their extinction should make us all angry because it was unfettered human greed that obliterated this ill-fated species, its breeding cycle totally disrupted by widespread annual slaughters. Hundreds of tons of pigeon carcasses were shipped by rail to city restaurants and markets. Tragically, many were simply discarded. This continued unabated up to and beyond the last great nesting in Michigan in 1878, even as belated warnings of extinction were being sounded.
And it should make us feel terribly sad because this prodigiously gregarious species, whose nesting colonies once extended up to 1000 or more square kilometres, was finally extinguished with the lonely, pathetic death of a single bird called Martha, the last known Passenger Pigeon, in the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens on September 1, 1914. Although the species bred readily in captivity, the last captive birds were descendants of a single pair captured in 1888, so inbreeding precluded any eleventh-hour miracle.
Records compiled by several authorities indicate that the Passenger Pigeon was a more abundant migrant in the settled portions of Manitoba. A tolerably common summer resident of the wooded regions of the province, its range extended north of lakes Manitoba and Winnipeg, with sporadic sightings around Hudson Bay at York Factory and possibly Churchill. Its presence was noteworthy enough that there is a Pigeon Rapids, Manitoba named after the bird.
The birds arrived in the province as early as mid-April, but mainly in May, and remained until October. Voracious eaters of deciduous forest mast in eastern North America, their nomadic movements and concentrated breeding revolved around the sporadic abundance of beechnut, acorns, and chestnuts. They fed extensively on acorns and wild berries in Manitoba, but also became significant agricultural pests.
Nesting colonies in Manitoba were not as wildly extensive as they were in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin where nest sites were legendary for their size and density. Colonies could be scores of miles long with some trees sagging and branches breaking under the weight of the birds and their flimsy nests. Passenger Pigeons were sufficiently abundant near the south end of Lake Winnipeg, however, to furnish a subsistence diet for Aboriginal people in summer, between the spring sturgeon runs and the fall wild-rice harvest. Nesting localities mentioned by famed naturalist and writer Ernest Thompson Seton included the Red River Valley, Ossowa (near Poplar Point), Portage la Prairie, along the Waterhen and Shell Rivers, and probably Carberry. Eggs were also collected at Oak Lake and the southwest shore of Lake Manitoba.
Passenger Pigeons were first reported in Manitoba in 1827 by Arctic explorer and naturalist Sir John Richardson, and they were evidently abundant in Manitoba in the 1850s. But a marked decline was noticeable by 1870, and the species last came to the province in some force in 1878. The species had all but disappeared by 1885, although hundreds of dozens were reportedly still going to market from “Indian Territory” in Manitoba as late as 1892. Norman Criddle reported a forlorn male near Treesbank on September 21, 1902, one of a handful of plausible early 20th century reports. After this, nothing.
To see Passenger Pigeons now, you have to go to the Manitoba Museum; four specimens are preserved there. Two eggs and two skins from Manitoba are also housed at the University of California, Berkeley, one egg and one skin from this province are at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and one egg is at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. They could be the centre of an exhibit in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.
From billions and billions of birds to a few preserved skins and eggs; and it took less than half a century. What a record!
If there is a lesson to be learned, it is not the simple one that we must not take natural abundance for granted. Passenger Pigeons were exterminated because they were easily slaughtered and were a profitable commodity. In an era when many species are endangered and the environment is under attack, we must make it difficult and expensive for profiteers to squander and deplete our natural resources.
Bird Feeder Freeloaders
Despite the title of this section, I am not a grumpy guy, just occasionally testy, petulant, “out of sorts.” There are too many grumpy guys in the world. Just look at TV cop shows: Criminal Minds, Law & Order, and CSI all feature old guys with bad dispositions. Whenever I feel a bout of negativity or crabbiness coming on, I turn on one of those shows and tell myself to chill.
But one thing really gets my dander up: squirrels! If you’ve got a bird feeder or two, your biggest enemy is the squirrel. Squirrel-proof bird feeders! Ha! Nothing works. No self-respecting bird book would be complete without some mention of squirrels.
I’ve (mostly) learned to live with the pesky rodents. I’m not a crotchety, old coot who sits on his deck with a BB gun or a water rifle full of ammonia. I don’t begrudge them the sunflower seeds and peanuts they work so cleverly to extract from my supposedly squirrel-proof feeders. What annoys me is when the squirrels dominate the feeders. The birds have to wait their turn, and during the wait, the birds are vulnerable to other predators—hawks, shrikes, and free-range cats. Squirrels are also more direct enemies of birds; they steal eggs from nests and even kill young birds. Although I figure it’s a trade-off, since hawks take down squirrels, too.
So, when I came acros a blog titled “100 Dead Squirrels,” I laughed with glee. “Great,” I thought, “100 fewer squirrels left in the world. It’s a start.” Sad to say, the title of the blog was misleading.
To me, red and grey and black squirrels are not, as my daughters claim, cute. Let’s be frank here: they’re just rats with flexible, fluffy tails. Rats who prefer trees to sewers and have no fear of heights. Rats who could probably work for Cirque du Soleil if they could fit into tiny, colourful spandex outfits. Destructive tree rats.
One night, when my daughters were teenagers, they complained to me that the upstairs bathroom fan was not working. Bathrooms are sacred areas to teenagers. I had to act quickly. So I grabbed a stepladder, put on my handyman face and gloves, and removed the fan. As I did, two gallons of acorns cascaded down on me. Plus other assorted bits of debris and dozens of maggots, the larder of a red squirrel. The little red monster had chewed through the vent cap and set up his winter home in the pipe.
Two weeks later, my clothes dryer croaked. Evicted from the bathroom vent pipe, the red devil had built a new nest in the dryer vent, preventing the heat from escaping and cooking the dryer. That cost me big bucks.
I set up a live trap to catch it, but caught a grey squirrel instead. Fine. It was the guy who had gnawed his way through three two-by-fours on my deck. I drove him ten miles away and dumped him in a park. To make a long story short, I caught ten more grey squirrels before I called in an exterminator. He caught three more before he got a little red one. One grey had gnawed his way into the attic, one had chewed a hole into the soffits. More $$ gone!
Then another red squirrel chewed through the roof of my tool shed. Rain and snow came in before I discovered the hole. I was momentarily amazed at the fancy digs he’d set up: a place for his acorns, a separate place for his crab apples, another spot for his pine cones, another for his bedroom, and another for his latrine. His carpentry rotted the floor, wrecked the place. More $$$ gone.
But he had a weakness for peanut butter, and we caught him.
As the exterminator carted off the red monster, his parting advice was: “You’ve got a yard full of oak trees. It’s a squirrel magnet. Find a couple of squirrels you like and learn to live with them.” He sold me his live trap.
I’m still trying to find a squirrel I like.
Bird-Guiding
Not as Tempting as It Seems
Whenever Winnipeg winters got too much for me or my job got me down, I would fantasize about ditching everything to become a bird guide in some warm, sunny place. Costa Rica, for instance, or Ecuador, Brazil, Thailand, or Australia. Warm climates, lots of birds. Ah!
For a
n avid birder, could there possibly be a better job?
Bird-guiding can be delightful—sharing your knowledge of birds and helping novices identify beautiful winged creatures and discover the joys of birding while enjoying the great outdoors. I love going into the woods with my grandson and teaching him about birds, pointing out where they can be found, what strange habits they have, and how they’re different from one another. He’s a keen, inquisitive student with active eyes, sensitive ears, and lots of patience.
But being a professional bird guide isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
To be an expert bird guide, you have to be able to quickly identify each bird you see or hear. You have to point out the precise characteristics that led to the identification—sometimes an almost impossible task as the distinctions can be miniscule. (In Craig Robson’s The Birds of Southeast Asia, for instance, there is an entire page of warblers that, to the inexperienced eye, look exactly the same.) And you have to point out the exact location of the bird so that everyone can find it before it flits away and often train a spotting scope on the bird for all to see it in close-up. Not at all easy!
But the birds are not always the problem. It’s the wannabe bird observers that can drive a guide nuts. Some people can’t even see birds lined up full-frame in a spotting scope; some can’t hear birds two feet away from them.
After doing some bird-guiding around Manitoba, I soon realized that it would be easier for me to become quarterback for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers (sometimes I think I should audition!) than for some people to become proficient birders.