I am a genuine birder but a somewhat old and lazy one, with limited ability and ancient binoculars. I have some idea what is out there- soaring, skulking, or flitting about- but it is woefully incomplete compared to the information possessed by the array of gifted and obsessed observers that roam the Cape on a regular basis with powerful optics and awesome cameras.
One of them is my grandson. “Hey,” he texted me, “are you going to go look for the Spotted Towhee out at the airport?” Now, he is at Bowdoin College in Maine and I am in Provincetown- but he knows about the bird before I do. How is that? Well, he is 60 years younger than I, and fully enmeshed in the digital age, while I have the barest finger-tip-hold on it. Specifically, he saw the notice of this unusual species- more apt to be found in California than Massachusetts- on eBird.
For those few of you who don’t know, eBird is a powerful electronic app wherein birders record and document their observations in real time and share them with a huge network of interested folk, including scientists and those studying populations, distributions, and the like. It has revolutionized the birding world, as Mark Faherty has reminded us more than once.
But birding is still birding. And I am an old dog learning a new trick.
Anyhow, I hastened to get out to the Provincetown Airport on a mild November day. In the parking lot I met two individuals, Mike and Hans, with their binoculars and long-lensed cameras, intently scanning the bordering bushes. I didn’t really have to ask why they were there. Mike informed me that the bird had been observed an hour or so ago but not since. He went off behind the airport building while Hans and I quietly chatted and scanned. Shortly we heard Mike cry out and we followed his voice. We found him excitedly staring into the brush. When we got there Mike played the Spotted Towhee call on his phone- a harsh and raucous EAHHH!- and immediately the bird called back with the identical sound- like an eery echo. So I heard the bird but still had not seen it. “There,” Mike whispered loudly, “just to the right and below that dead snag.” I could just make out a dark shape and thought I saw some white spots through the maze of branches, but it was hardly a good look. That dark shape moved around a bit in the underbrush and then vanished. I probably should note that towhees of any variety are mainly underbrush birds, not apt to be perching high in a tree. Oh well, I thought, I definitely heard a Spotted Towhee and I more or less saw it. I’ve had worse looks at birds.
Mike and Hans eventually moved on. I thanked them for their generous help- that’s the thing about birders: they are very generous and sharing- and was about to join them, but decided I would just hang around a bit. Ten minutes, 15 minutes, standing staring at a tangle of branches of pines, oaks, willows, sumac and highbush blueberry, thinking to myself that I was at least in the vicinity of a Spotted Towhee, even if I did not have the best look. There is something in that.
All of a sudden, I heard that raucous call again, although this time it sounded plaintive as well. And then I saw it, about two feet off the ground in a little opening in the brush. I could see its bright red eye, its white breast, its shiny black wings adorned with white spots. And it was looking in my direction and it was calling. This poor bird, which should have been in Baja, was all by itself in the Province Lands. Of course it was calling. I sympathized with this bird, as I do all others that find themselves out of their range. I felt for him; I connected with him.
But back to eBird: I knew that both Mike and Hans had recorded the bird, along with some photos, but felt that I should as well. I tried to get the app up on my phone but could not master the location. I could not connect at all. There, amidst a flurry of birds- and a rarity- I was fooling with my phone. This is not a diatribe against technology. This is simply saying that sometimes the experience and the act of recording it are separate.
Sometimes it’s just about being with the bird.
