Fly & shop?

World-class Princeton birder Tom Southerland tours an unconventional local sanctuary.

By: David Campbell

Tom Southerland notes nesting birds in the overhangs in the Princeton Shopping Center.

Staff photos by Mark Czajkowski

   If you’ve visited Princeton Shopping Center, you may have noticed a pervasive presence in the interior open-air court.
   The chirping. The flutter of wings. The scores of nests that dress the metalwork of the awning over the interior walkway. With all the feathered activity in the trees and flowerbeds and around the nests overhead, the inner court of the shopping center has become something of an impromptu bird sanctuary.
   It may not be a bird watcher’s paradise, but according to Tom Southerland, it ain’t too shabby, either.
   Mr. Southerland is Princeton’s resident birder and runs Princeton Nature Tours, which he and his wife, Margot, founded in 1981 and today leads wildlife tours on all seven continents of the world.
   Mr. Southerland’s next trip will be a bird- and animal-watching tour of South Africa, and he has plans for a trip to Antarctica in 2004.
   "This is the doldrums for bird seasons," he said as he looked through his binoculars outside the Princeton Public Library’s temporary quarters at the shopping center. It’s the doldrums, he explained, because birds are now in their "second nesting" since early spring. The birds get very quiet, they "don’t want to advertise that we’re here," like they do during mating season, which is prime time to watch birds.
   "The nice thing is the garden. They’ve done a wonderful job," he said, noting the well-tended flowerbeds and a fruit tree past the central fountain. The birder set out across the plaza as if beating the bush on safari. "There could be humming birds in here."
   There weren’t, but Mr. Southerland did sight the New Jersey state bird in the fruit tree, a bright yellow male eastern goldfinch.
   And then, of course, there are all the house sparrows, the dominant bird at Princeton Shopping Center — they’re the ones doing all the chirping and carrying on.
   Mr. Southerland explained that the house sparrow is not a native species to North America. The bird was introduced here prior to the Civil War to help reduce crop insect pests. It took well to its new environment and, according to some, in time became a pest itself.
   The house sparrow originated in Africa with the so-called Old World weaver finches, a family of birds noted for their ingenious nest-building skills that render elaborate tree-hanging baskets. Evidence of the house sparrows’ African heritage is visible throughout Princeton Shopping Center’s inner court. "There’s a little weaving going on," Mr. Southerland said.
   He sighted high overhead a turkey vulture, recognized by its dihedral wings and its silver underwings. He said sometimes you can see black vultures as well, whose wingspan is flatter and whose wingtips are white — "and it almost looks like it doesn’t have a tail," he added.
   In the fall, hawks can be sighted from the shopping center, Mr. Southerland continued. Broad-winged hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks, red-tailed hawks.
   "Bird watchers would call that a ‘gas hawk,’" he said as a helicopter passed by overhead.