Vanishing Whip-Poor-Wills

                                                                                                                          Photo: Paul Cools

When mentioning to friends that I'd never heard the call of a Whip-poor-will, I'd  get the reply more often than not: "Oh yes, I used to hear them but don't remember the last time I did". Last year when I wrote a blog post on the Montague Sandplains  in Western Mass., I had heard about their presence there, but hadn't stayed late enough to actually hear one. I was determined to do so this year.  The Montague Sandplains is a 1500 acre pine barrens habitat of low shrubs, scrub oak and small pine stands, maintained with controlled burning, on a large sand delta formed by melting glaciers more than 10,000 years ago.  I am including a map below for anyone interested in visiting the area.

The species is shrouded in mystery. They are difficult to observe because of being active only at dawn and dusk, or on moon-lit nights.  Because of this crepuscular behavior and their camouflaging plumage little is known about them. They are an edge species, requiring dry woodland for breeding and open spaces for foraging, just what the Montague Sandplains WMA is offering.  When resting, they usually lie lengthwise on the limb of a tree and to the casual observer appear to be part of the tree.  Males establish and defend their breeding territories by calling from their perches on trees, fence posts or the ground. 

In the IUCN , International Union for Conversation of Nature, the Whip-poor-will is listed as a Species of Least Concern, and yet in the just published Second Atlas of Breeding Birds of Vermont their territorial range has shrunk dramatically compared to the first atlas published in 1985.  They were once very common and were widely recognized by their characteristic call  but having lost habitat to agriculture and suburbanization they are now a Species of  Special Concern in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Connecticut.

I had arrived at about 7 PM intending, while is was still light, to look for Prairie Warblers, Brown Thrashers and Eastern Towhees which are also common in this kind of habitat, and then wait until dusk for the Whip-poor-wills to appear. However shortly after my arrival three dirt bikers rolled in and started cavorting on the sand road and in the sand pit that formed one corner of the intersection of Plains Rd and the power-line corridor, their racket drowning out all other sounds. Fortunately they drove off just before 8:30 PM when the Whip-poor-wills started their repetitive calls.

I had brought a flashlight to see whether I could get a reflection from their eyes during their foraging flights, but it wasn't yet dark enough. I saw one briefly though as a gray shape flying around a solitary  pine tree. Here is a recording of their calls: 

The spectrogram below shows a small  initial  "whip" followed by a brief pause, and ending with a crescendo "poor WILL"  Each call lasts about a second and usually goes on for many minutes; one bird was once recorded as making 1000 + calls in a row.

The birds iintermittently sally forth from their perches after flying insects, or go after them during continuous aerial feeding flights. Their beaks are tiny but when open, their gape is enormous, wide enough to swallow a large moth tail-end first, as shown in James Audubon's painting below. 

                                                                                                   

Eastern Whip-poor-will distribution in the US

Directions to Montague Sandplains Wildlife Management Area

I placed a marker near the crossroad of Plains Rd (off Turner's Falls Rd) and a wide corridor with tall pylons carrying high voltage power lines. At the intersection a sandpit is shown  in the upper quadrant. The Whip-poor-will calls were recorded from a bird in left-hand quadrant and Prairie Warblers, as well as Eastern Towhees, were heard in all quadrants.

Prairie Warblers  and Eastern Towhees in the Northeast are also declining in numbers probably due to loss of habitat brought on by changes in agriculture and by urbanization. Eastern Towhees and Brown Thrashers, all abundant in this area, prefer dense low shrubs, whereas  Prairie Warblers prefer successional habitat dominated by small trees and scattered shrubs. 

                                      

Happy Birding!

Birds of Spring, and a new camera

A couple of weeks ago we, a local VT Audubon group, met in the evening to watch a Woodcock's mating dance. It was close to 8 PM and dusk was descending fast over the large bumpy field of faded grass, when we heard the first peenting. We moved closer to the source of the sound and stood in a half circle listening and waiting. The peenting continued at regular intervals sometimes closer, sometimes farther away indicating that the bird was walking about.

After several minutes of peenting the bird finally took to the air. It went up fast and high -  a member of the group indicated the flight pattern by the zig-zag motions of his hand. It was too dark by then for me, but we all heard the fluttering song of his wings. I had made a recording a couple of years ago. (If you use the Chrome Browser the sound starts right off and the browser lacks an on-off feature.)

When you listen carefully you'll hear the following sequence: the thin nasal  buzzy "peent" call preceded by a barely audible "tuko" sound, the twittering made by the wings during sharp turns, and the vocal chirping during aerial flight which becomes louder as the bird descends. The last part of the descent is silent. Then a soft fluttering of the wings as the bird lands.

I also took some photos of the bird on the ground, rotating in place while peenting. 

During the last week of April spring had arrived and migration had started. On a recent walk I saw and heard a couple of Blue Gray Gnatcatchers calling to each other across the trail. 

 The male sports a uni brow which gives it that fierce look.

Also present were Palm Warblers and Myrtles (Eastern Yellow-Rumps)

A pair of Blacks and White Warblers were flitting through the trees, One of them was a male, the other probably an immature bird or a female.

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The Ruby-crowned Kinglet is considered a migrant in VT, but I have also seen it here during a Christmas Bird Count. This the first one since last summer. 

The new camera
After reading Lillian Stokes enthusiastic review of the Canon Powershot SX50SH I had to have it, because its telephoto lens could zoom out from my current 400mm to 1200 mm, a feat that for my Nikon D300 would cost me thousands of dollars, and anyway would be way too heavy to carry. So I sold my Powershot S95 and bought this camera instead. I found out, though, to utilize this power I have to spend hours of practice. At such high power magnification with resulting small field of vision it's impossible to keep track of small birds on their foraging trips through the trees. So for that I went back to my large Nikon. 

Maybe I will yet the hang of it, anticipate, move faster... The camera works great for stationary birds, like the juvenile Red-throated Loon below which showed up on a sheltered bay of the CT River, or the Great Blue Heron about the snag his breakfast, or the Eastern Towhee below or the White-throated Sparrow.

 Have you noticed when the waiter brings the plates with food to the table, the diners' eyes pop out  just like this? 

Eastern Towhees were present in large numbers. This one was at Montague Sandplains WMR where, at dusk, I saw a whole flock of around 30 to 40 birds flying overhead east to southwest

The backyard is teeming with White-throated Sparrows. I have been scattering black oil sunflower seeds on the grass to avoid having them all at once sitting gobbled up by grey squirrels.

 This White-throated sparrow has unusual bright yellow alula feathers at the shoulders, which I haven't seen on any of the illustrations in my guide books. Alula feathers are often hidden; it's probably a variation, not a hybrid. 



Happy Birding!

How Google saved my life

White Storks used to be a common sight in the little village in Germany where I grew up. Their return to their old nests each year heralded the true onset of spring - and a new beginning since for us kids any sighting meant a new life was about to be born somewhere in the neighborhood. Gradually over the years sightings of storks became less and less common as the moors and wetlands were being drained to make room for agriculture.

There's only one pair now, and to be sure they stayed, the villager erected a stable platform for their nest.

On a trip to Spain though I discovered where our storks had stopped and stayed on their return from their wintering grounds in North Africa. Almost every high building or church spire in the city of  Caceres on the river Tajo had one or more of their massive nests and in the surroundings were plenty of ponds and wetlands to supply their favorite prey, frogs.

Storks near Caceres, Spain

A new beginning was what I was looking for too. I am apologizing that for the past several months I have neglected visiting and leaving comments on my favorite birding blogs. I have been dealing with a critical health issue, and so, in this post, I am not going to write about birds, but about how a Google search saved my life.

I had become aware of some problems with my memory, such as blocking on names and words, and had started feeling insecure on walks. I was falling frequently without clear cause, falling on trails, on side walks, into a pond, and in an airport.There was no rhyme or reason to these falls, no stumbling or tripping that I was aware of, and fortunately no serious injuries other than bruises. My walking had turned into a choppy gait when tired and hurrying. My husband remarked on it and demonstrated to me what looked like a Parkinsonian gait.  But I knew it wasn't Parkinson's, since there was no rigidity or joint stiffness. It was also puzzling that these problems appeared only intermittently, days or weeks at a time.

The pattern didn't fit any of the common neurological diseases. My memory problems made me worry, of course, about Alzheimer's disease (AD). My dad had died of it, and I was afraid I was heading in the same direction. As a physician I had taken care of plenty of patients with advanced AD and was horrified of facing that same future, an existence devoid of any joy: the patients never smiled, laughed or showed any pleasure, only occasionally displayed anxiety or anger. It was as if a cataract was blocking their mental access to the world and finally obscured it totally, like this:

I saw a neurologist who however couldn't find anything abnormal and referred me for baseline neuropsychological testing. But it turned out to be more than a baseline. The tests looked like child's play with colorful disks, pictures, cards, photos...but the report, after several hours of testing, and the test results being abstracted into numbers and the scores compared to standard data, showed I was no longer as smart as I once was. The neuropsychologist reassured me however that the test results did not point to AD.

I had done extensive reading on neurological diseases such as Parkinson's, AD and multiple sclerosis and had found none that matched what I was experiencing. So I finally entered my symptoms into Google search and I think putting "frequent falls" first was the tip-off in that a new disease popped up: Adult Onset Hydrocephalus and specifically Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH).  Everything fit: my many falls, my instability when traversing rough terrain, my memory problems and lastly, which I actually hadn't considered a problem yet, urinary urgency (or the sprint to the BR when observing my dogs relieving themselves before bed time).

The tragedy is that the disease, although rare, is treatable but most of the time is not diagnosed. Many patients, bed-ridden or wheelchair-bound in nursing homes because of inability to walk, dementia and bladder incontinence, may actually be suffering from NPH. Dr. Harold O Conn, a former Yale hepatologist (liver specialist), eloquently recounts his own many-years-long journey as a misdiagnosed Parkinson's patient until a new neurologist came up with the correct diagnosis. He was cured with the placement of a shunt to drain off excess fluid from his brain, and since then has been devoting his remaining years to NPH research.

The CBS program 60 Minutes devoted a segment to this disease which then served as a wake-up call to many patients, their families and to physicians.

Along with the triad of symptoms - problems with gait, memory, and bladder control - diagnosis depends on showing enlarged fluid-filled lateral ventricles on CT scan or MRI. An MRI of my brain was initially read as normal. However I also happened to have had an MRI in 2003 for an unrelated problem, and a comparison between the two showed that in the current one the ventricles were significantly larger. I was so lucky to have come up with a diagnosis so early in the course of this  disease, which so infrequent, is often missed.

The next steps went pretty fast. I was referred to neurosurgery, had some more testing, and a couple of weeks later was admitted for placement of a shunt which drains the excess fluid from my brain through a thin tube under my skin to my abdominal cavity where it is being reabsorbed into the blood stream.  The symptoms related to my walking resolved within a couple of days; my memory may take a little longer. I am sure of one thing though: a Google search averted a catastrophe and gave me my normal life back!

I am looking forward to go birding again this spring, venture off trail without fear of falling. At 6 AM a couple of mornings ago I heard a Woodcock's twittering wing beats overhead and another one peenting from the wetland across the road. Shortly after, as the sky lightened, a Robin started singing. All day a Tufted Titmouse has been calling loudly advertising his availability as a mate. Last night we heard the first spring peepers in the swamp next to our house. The snow has melted and spring is here!

Cheers and happy birding!