Look, Up in the Sky

It’s a bird – hundreds of them, at the Cape May Bird Observatory.

By: Carolyn Foote Edelmann

PHOTOS/CAROLYN FOOTE EDELMANN

Great egret.

   Cape May to most people means (1) the beach and (2) Victoriana. But there is an entire spectrum of opportunity having little to do with either.
   The overwhelming popularity of the film Winged Migration gives some clue. When spring and fall funnel the riding winds past Cape May, that little peninsula fills with intensity, beauty, rarity and courage. From avian monarchs, such as bald and golden eagles, to frail passerines (songbirds), hummingbirds and butterflies, hundreds of thousands of wings pass over sand and Victoriana, oblivious to all save wind direction and vital calories for their South American journeys.
   Birding is no idle pastime. It brought $1.24 billion into New Jersey coffers last year, amazingly ahead of hunting and fishing. If you’re at all intrigued, you can put yourself where the birds are, under the auspices of the Cape May Bird Observatory. Under "the wings" of the New Jersey Audubon Society, this establishment of scientifically astute enthusiasts lets the public in on its secrets all year round. But the big dates are Oct. 31 to Nov. 2, the next official Cape May birding weekend, by no means limited to experts.

A purple martin house.

   You can call CMBO in any season with birding questions, but now is the time to contact NJAS and make reservations for Cape May Autumn Weekend. NJAS members receive discounts on books, birding weekends, feeders, squirrel baffles, even optics. Handsome brochures containing NJAS Director Pete Dunne’s acerbic wit and astute observations are sent to members. These are enhanced with illustrations by two of the field’s top artists, David Sibley and Louise Zemaitis.
   Workshop choices are dizzying and birding weekends can be costly, yet those full three days will prove beyond price. CMBO sends a list of places to stay, some offering discounts. Off-season rates are surprisingly reasonable for generous beachfront accommodations.
   Even inclement weather did not dampen my spirits at the World Series of Birding weekend this past May. Storms are far more critical to seasonal migrants than to humans. CMBO provides warnings about shifting fortunes at seaside and alerts you to levels and layers of gear. Pay attention. This is no time for over-optimism.
   A spring weekend dinner speaker proclaimed conditions the worst in his 17 years of participation. We arrived on a Thursday evening and learned we were in for a Nor’easter. The Cape May-Lewes Ferry operator reported 45 mph winds, seas higher than the ship, and 65 northern gannets, blown off-course. (Birds seen where and when they are not expected are termed "accidentals.")
   I harbored jealousy toward everyone protected by false fleece or true wool, having stashed all my winter gear before I packed. Occasionally we would brave the elements. At Cape May Point, we swiped sea mist repeatedly from our optics. Our rewards were parasitic jaegers dive-bombing ring-billed gulls hovering over bottle-nosed dolphins. That evening, we would discover a female gadwall paddling about on the Congress Hotel lawn, as we dashed inside to cognac by the fire. What do you do in Cape May in a Nor’easter?

Watching the sunset at Cape May.

   First, revise your schedule. Accept tissues to dry off glasses and binoculars, before settling in for indoor birding, with superb films alongside other drenched birders. Watching Warblers took Michael Male and Judy Feith 11 years to film on-site. For once, it’s not up to you to snare in your binoculars that fast little bird you saw perfectly well with your own two eyes. The film captures males and females, feeding, luring, nest-building, tending naked young. You study them in preferred habitat. You may become disgruntled to learn that the American redstart is orange, not red; palm warbler prefers tamaracks and other evergreens, no mention of palms; black-throated green shows no green; chestnut-sided loses its chestnut in autumn; and female hooded rarely sports a hood. These are the breaks of the birding game. There are memorable sights, including actually watching warblers warble. (Videocassette available at CMBO).
   In the shorebird video, you can experience a horde of knots and ruddy turnstones. The previous afternoon, I had been seriously deprived of these rarities on Reed’s Beach. Here horseshoe crabs had not yet come ashore to lay their eggs, due to the brutal spring. No eggs meant no knots and turnstones. That outstanding film provides split-screen comparisons of breeding versus basic plumage, like David Sibley paintings come to life. You learn the difference between semipalmated plovers and semipalmated sandpipers — not that it does you much good in a Nor’easter. (Semipalmated means that their thin toes are slightly webbed — usually invisible in surf, of course, but visible in the film.)
   You can travel far (Costa Rica) and near (Cape May Bird Observatory and surrounds) with the slides of Mark Garland, author and CMBO senior naturalist. Mr. Garland describes his recent Cape May years as "surprise after surprise after surprise — a wonderful community of naturalists." Mr. Garland recounts the good ol’ ’70s, when a young Peter Dunne started the hawk watch. Day after day, he scanned Cape skies, seated on a picnic table, a lifeguard chair.

May Lighthouse.

   Mr. Dunne kept pilgrimage for long autumn hours at the point, breaking hawk count records to the skepticism of seasoned professionals. Soon proven more than accurate, Pete’s hawk site now boasts a broad, sturdy, handsome hawk-watch platform, funded by Swarovski optics and various nature organizations. Here everyone from neophytes to ornithologists gathers by day and night to count, to marvel, to discuss differences between sharp-shinned and Cooper’s hawks overhead. But not in a Nor’easter.

Birders scouting their prey.

   In the shelter of the lighthouse — its beam terribly frail in downpour and wild wind — we meet lively, plover-obsessed Chris Kissel. She admits that not even the pros ventured forth in the teeth of the preceding day’s gale. She’s fretting over the single existing nest of piping plovers, our only federally listed threatened shorebird. Did it survive the night’s full-moon tides with following wind? Chris educates us about the three grave dangers to beach nesters, despite their cryptic coloration: habitat loss, human disturbance (people think those beaches belong to us) and predation by the wild, the tame and the feral. Ms. Kissel reminds us, "Shore birds need to get to shoreline."
  Outside, waves are taller than some motels. Only surfers venture forth, leaving soggy, froggy footprints as they return, hours later, to their bespattered cars. Following Ms. Kissel up the beach to find that piping plover nest safe behind a dune, we fight wind in our hair and sand in our teeth, mud on the cuffs of our hiking pants.
   Downing corn pancakes at Uncle Bill’s, we stare out at a sea awash in T.S. Eliot’s "white hair of waves blown back." We discover more variations on a theme grayer than Whistler ever painted: gray ocean, gray salt marsh, ditto freshwater ponds, ditto wind-whipped salt ponds behind dunes, where night waves broke through. Skies, at best, are the color of oft-washed old cotton sheets. One grouses about "the most expensive slide shows of my life!"
   But then we enter the grand ballroom for dinner. First time in hiking pants, boots and a sweatshirt. Celebs take to the stage, and there is no weather. They applaud their fellow workers who brought about this tour-de-force, as well as members of the audience who have heroically restored peregrines, ospreys and other endangered treasures to New Jersey. Speakers reminisce over the birth of their own winged passions. They tout and sign their latest books. There is nowhere else to be.
  Around the table sit new colleagues who share knowledge in the spirit of cooperation characteristic of modern birding. With the exception of a few grizzled guides, snobbery seems to have gone the way of the dodo. Over red wine and green salad — and, ironically, capon! — it is a time to compare notes on birds in the backyard, birding quests past and to come.
   You may worry, as I did, that there would be more birders than birds at such a weekend. But, out on the trails, it’s others who showed me first ever northern parula, too vivid to be real. Who pointed out female black-throated blue warblers flitting in the Beanery’s mangrove-swamp-like setting. Who exulted with me as the black and white warbler performed its classic head down, down-the-trunk hopping routine. Without others, I would never have found the female hummingbird on her thimble-sized nest.
   I realized, despite the incessant storm, that the salient quality of fellow participants is enthusiasm. Nothing dims that gift. They exhibit a great deal of commitment to honing skills, increasing lists, preserving bird habitat. Above all — from Pete Dunne right on through — there is wit. You may well experience as many spurts of laughter as flutters of wings at your own Cape May Birding Weekend.
Cape May Autumn takes place at the Cape May Bird Observatory, Cape May, Oct. 31-Nov. 2. Registration is underway. Complete weekend packages, including all events and trips, breakfast and lodging, start at $360. For information and to register, all (609) 884-2736. On the Web: www.njaudubon.org