Hillsborough propels bird-watching team into first place
By:Minx McCloud
Shortly after midnight one recent Saturday, five men began a quest in Somerset County to spot as many bird species as possible in 24 hours.
The event was part of the 17th annual World Series of Birding, sponsored by the New Jersey Audubon Society. The team spent a good deal of time in the Hillsborough area, where it visited the Duke Estate, the Sourlands Mountain Preserve, and searched the grasslands that make up a large part of the township.
Led by team captain Chris Aquila, a wildlife biologist and instructor at Middlesex and Union county colleges, team members Robert Blair, Roger Dreyling, Phillip Brown and Clifford Hagen drove about 180 miles within the county, covering various habitats.
Mr. Aquila said that assembling a winning team was the first step in the competition.
“These guys are great birders,” he said. “I spend an awful lot of time analyzing individuals in terms of who I think can handle it and their individual qualities. I look at team chemistry and who can survive 24 hours nonstop.”
The World Series of Birding is one of the most prestigious birding competitions in the world, Mr. Aquila said. Drawing more than 500 participants, it raises a great amount of money for conservation efforts.
“This competition draws the best birders from all over the world,” he said. “People think of New Jersey as a highly urbanized corridor full of industry, but it’s one of the top five states for overall bird species.”
This year, Mr. Aquila chose to enter the Limited Geographic Area competition rather than the statewide or Cape May competitions. His team came in first in the LGA competition, spotting 95 percent of the “par value” in Somerset County.
“The par value is highest number of birds that Audubon’s experts say you would spot on a solid perfect day,” Mr. Aquila explained. “In Somerset County, it’s 152. The team that gets the highest percentage of their county’s total is the winner.”
All in all, they spotted 144 species of birds throughout Somerset County, or 95 percent of their par value, the second highest percentage ever recorded.
Since much of the competition takes place in the dark, one might wonder how fruitful night birding is.
“You have owls, rails, bitterns and certain types of marsh birds that are highly nocturnal,” Mr. Aquila said. “By about 2 a.m., we already had 25 species of birds. And many people don’t realize that there are many songbirds that sing or call throughout the night.”
The event is based on sight or sound, but generally speaking, 95 percent of a team’s total birds have to be seen or heard by all team members. The other 5 percent can be seen or heard by at least two team members.
“It’s done on the honor system,” Mr. Aquila said, “as is virtually every birding competition in the world. If you lie, people know. People can tell if your totals get too crazy. And if you lie, you become blacklisted in birding, especially if you tarnish an event like this. For whatever reason, the honor system works.”
The team was particularly impressed with what they found at the Duke Estate — knowledgeable and helpful personnel, as well as “impressive management of the property,” Mr. Aquila said.
“There’s no question in my mind that one of the main reasons we won was because of the Duke Estate,” he said. “It’s remarkable because of the tremendous expanses of grasslands. We found four state-endangered species of birds nesting, and along the Raritan River, we found a bald eagle.”
Remarking on the diversity of habitat and the pristine quality of the 2,739-acre Duke Estate, Mr. Aquila added that if the estate keeps maintaining the property this way, it will continue to be a haven for rare species like the bobolink, grasshopper and Savannah sparrows, and Northern harrier.
“Here is a place that is a great sanctuary for birds,” he said. “It’s a critical habitat. I never saw such spectacular open spaces of grasslands. And the property includes a very good low-lying deciduous tree zone along the river.”
Moving farther north into Hillsborough, the team found diverse species to record.
“What really surprises people about Hillsborough is that in the face of a lot of development, there are areas of major significance,” he said. “The remaining open grasslands and farmland are also very significant, especially, for example, the area along Mill Lane. I stress that one highly.”
Along Orchard Road, quite appropriately, the team found orchard orioles on the woodland edges.
“They’re similar to Baltimore orioles,” Mr. Aquila said, “but I think they’re even more spectacular looking. They tend to be a little bit more shy and stick to less populated areas.”
The team also visited the Sourlands Mountain Preserve, a 1,670-acre undisturbed natural setting, but on the evening they visited, it was anything but undisturbed.
They had hoped to observe a nesting pair of winter wrens that Mr. Aquila had spotted on a previous trip, a rare find due to Hillsborough’s latitude.
“We were in the woods at about 8 o’clock and saw the clouds building up,” he said. “but we tried to get to the nest — about a 15-minute walk. Suddenly the storm was moving in very, very fast.”
Mr. Aquila and his team analyzed the situation and “made a break for it.”
From inside their van, they watched nature’s fury strike with full force, complete with hail and jagged lightning.
“It was like a wild free-for-all,” he said. “It was as if a giant hand was shaking the van, trying to get us to come out. It was absolutely brutal. By about 10:30, it was gone, but we had lost two hours.”
They had planned to return to their starting point — the Environmental Education Center in Basking Ridge — but the blinding rain forced them to call it a night. However, they had encountered enough species to earn the coveted first place designation in the LGA competition.
Mr. Aquila credits the Hillsborough area for the win. A strong advocate of preserving open space in the township, he will be moving here later this month with Ming, his wife and “birding companion.”
“Overall, in terms of doing the World Series of Birding in Somerset County, even with all the places we visited, you cannot win the competition without going to Hillsborough,” he said. “That’s how significant it is.”