Today is the Monday before Christmas and all sorts of preparations are being made. The tree is up and decorated with lights and glass ornaments, the refrigerator is full of all sorts of delectables, the wood box is loaded and ready to go and all sorts of recipes are being consulted before the cooking gets started. Since last year’s Christmas celebrations were canceled due to the general alarm about health concerns, this year seems particularly special.
I’ve made the list of outlandishly expensive gifts that I make every year. On it are fancy cameras, fancy lenses, fancy fountain pens and other such items that will never be purchased. I don’t know about you, but I think that a new all-electric car is just a little pricey and is unlikely to fit into a stocking anyway. No need to fret, however. I am far more interested in seeing family that receiving material goods anyway. Family is all that matters.
But one cannot overlook friends. Some of us have work friends that have become important to us. Others may have friends from social clubs, theater groups and sporting groups. Some have old college friends, even older high school friends and even older friends from elementary school. And then, let us not forget the almost sacred status of the BFF. Where would some of us be without these special people who will be with us forever?
Well, I have a slightly different, but no less important friend that falls into the BBF category. In this instance the letters BBF stand for Best Birding Friend and I have bestowed that particular honorific on Merry Cushing. A neighbor from down the street, I have known Merry for my entire life and although I no longer live at my childhood home in Amherst I still send cards in the mail and messages through the digiverse. No matter what the occasion may be, birds are always a major theme in our conversations and this was again shown to be true in our most recent communication.
I received a message from Merry that contained a link to an article published by Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. The topic of this article was the valuable role played by citizen scientists in the discovery of large movements of nuthatches. A citizen scientist is anyone with any sort of scientific expertise (in this case bird identification) that makes a contribution to the general body of knowledge. The vehicle for this contribution is a platform called eBird, which allows anyone, anywhere to report bird sightings.
Think of it this way. You are looking at your backyard feeders and you notice an odd and unusual bird. Perhaps you write it down somewhere and perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you mention it to your BBF and perhaps you don’t. Chances are that this observation will go unrecorded and be lost into oblivion because you don’t know who to share it with.
Now imagine a scenario in which the same bird sighting is recorded on eBird. A day after seeing the bird you may forget all about it, or, if your are like me, it will stick in you mind for a long time. Odds are that you as an individual will not ever understand the implications of this one bird sighting, but if everyone records all of their bird sightings in the same database and if trained scientists are then able to pore over that data, then a very different picture might develop. (Please note that I used the word “pore” correctly this time.)
Well, it was an astonishing coincidence that the message about nuthatches from Merry happened to arrive at virtually the same time that a real nuthatch appeared at my feeders. I have white-breasted nuthatches at my feeders on a daily basis, but the appearance of a little red-breasted nuthatch is a rare and wonderful event. I usually observe red-breasted nuthatches as occasional migrants that are here one day and gone the next. But there was one magical year when the birds arrived in the winter of 2016 and stayed for the entire breeding season of 2017. This also happened to be a major year for nuthatches that was identified in that article from Cornell.
Well, as luck would have it the year 2021 has been identified as another big year for nuthatches and the arrival (and continued presence) of a red-breasted nuthatch has me feeling pretty excited. Will the little birds hang around? Will they linger for the breeding season and bring baby nuthatches to my feeders? That would truly be a gift from the birding gods and I will keep you posted as the winter unfolds.
In the meantime I want to wish all of you a peaceful and joyful Christmas. I know that I am really looking forward to seeing people that I haven’t seen in a while and talking with them about all sorts of little, unimportant things as the fire pops and the kettle whistles on the stove, signaling the imminent arrival of cups of hot cocoa. And a special shout out to my BBF as well. Keep the birding news coming!
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 24 years. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, the Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and he currently teaches high school biology and physics. For more in formation visit his website at www.speakingofnature.com, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.