The Birds of Dutchess County, New York
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The Birds of Dutchess County New York Today and Yesterday A survey of current status with historical changes since 1870 DIGITAL PART 1 OF 3 by Stan DeOrsey and Barbara A. Butler ◊ Published on behalf of The Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club, Inc. Poughkeepsie, New York 2006 ◊ To Joan, for introducing me to birding and for total support on this and other projects. L.S.D. To Helen Manson Andrews, my mentor and birding companion for many years. To Wayne, for his patience and support during this project. B.A.B. Copyright © 2006 by Stan DeOrsey and Barbara A. Butler All rights reserved First printing August 2006 First digital edition December 2010 with minor corrections and an updated Bibliography Financial support was provided through a grant from the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute. ISBN 978-0-9635190-2-3 Cover images: Front: Immature Black-throated Green Warbler photographed Sept. 7, 2005, at Sharparoon, Dover, by Bill Case. Back Top: Eastern Screech-Owl bookmark painting by Helen Manson (Andrews) from a Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club dinner meeting favor. For many years Helen regularly created eighty favors per year in a variety of mediums. Courtesy Joan DeOrsey Back Bottom: Eastern Bluebirds by Louis Agassiz Fuertes from Birds of New York , part 2, 1914. Fuertes spoke to the Rhinebeck Bird Club on the evening of June 6, 1916. Overleaf : The small bird symbol was created by Ralph Waterman to use on personal notes and to mark pottery fired as a hobby. It is traditionally used by the Waterman Bird Club. CONTENTS PART 1 DUTCHESS C OUNTY M AP ...................................... 5 FOREWORD by Otis Waterman ................................... 6 PREFACE ................................................... 8 TABLE OF M AJOR S OURCES OF R ECORDS ............................. 9 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................... 10 SUPPLEMENTAL D ATA ......................................... 11 PEOPLE N AMED ............................................. 12 PLACES N AMED ............................................. 16 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................. 21 PART 2 HISTORY OF O RNITHOLOGY IN D UTCHESS C OUNTY THE N ATURE AND U SE OF THE L AND BIRDS L OST AND G AINED IN D UTCHESS C OUNTY TABLES OF C HANGING N ESTING S TATUS LIST OF B IRDS IN V ICINITY OF F ISHKILL -ON -H UDSON , N.Y. by Winfrid A. Stearns (1880) PART 3 SPECIES I NDEX ANNOTATED L IST OF THE B IRDS OF D UTCHESS C OUNTY INTRODUCTION SPECIES A CCOUNTS MISCELLANEOUS R EPORTS GENERAL S UMMARY OF C URRENT S TATUS 5 DUTCHESS COUNTY , N EW Y ORK 6 FOREWORD It is my pleasure to write this brief Foreword, or possibly more correctly called “backward glance” to Barbara’s and Stan’s excellent treatise on this new Birds of Dutchess County . To both the new and old birders, they give a fine synopsis of the birds of Dutchess County both past and present. Their 4-5 years of research and writing is unparalleled in my humble opinion and rightly deserves our highest acclaims as Dutchess County birders. Maunsell S. Crosby (1887-1931) of Grasmere in Rhinebeck, New York, should properly be regarded as the Dean of Dutchess birders. From his many and precise records, Ludlow Griscom wrote the original Birds of Dutchess County , published by the Linnean Society of New York in 1933. Eleanor Pink and I updated this in 1964 and 1979 as part of the Club’s newsletter. In the ’30s and ’40s there were less than a dozen serious birders in the county, led by Allan Frost and Ray Guernsey who had birded and studied with Maunsell Crosby. Meg Guernsey, Ray’s great-niece, later became the R.T. Waterman Bird Club president in 1980. By the mid-1940s my father, Ralph, and I became students of Frost, Guernsey, and Ralph Palmer of Vassar College. Thru the 1940s and 1950s, my father and I participated in the annual May Census Day, which Crosby had started in 1919, with the above handful of birders. Strangely, my father was Otis Waterman and his father, Ralph Waterman, fishing on Sprout Creek near Stringham Rd., LaGrange in April 1946. Courtesy Otis Waterman 7 an avid fly fisherman and pheasant hunter prior to becoming a diligent birder. He even carried me in his bird hunting vest at age two. Ralph began teaching bird identification classes in the Arlington adult education program in 1948 and continued to 1958, when he and my mother were killed in an auto accident in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Some of his students, Jean Beck, Jane Geisler, Eleanor Pink, and Kay Sisson are still active Club members. From that nucleus of students, the Dutchess County Bird Club was formed in 1958 with Raymond Connelly as the first president. With my father’s death the name was changed to the Ralph T. Waterman Bird Club in late 1959. In 1959, following in my father’s footsteps, I continued teaching the adult education classes from 1958 thru 1972. Eleanor Pink and I initiated the submission of monthly records by Club members in 1958, and it continues today. These records, kept by Eleanor from 1958-1989 and Barbara Butler since 1990, are the basis for this current book. Additionally, the Christmas Census summaries, which Florence Germond and I started in 1958, and the Club’s May Census Day accounts add to the records available on the website. Though the Club’s records of the May Census cover the entire county, my own group continues to follow the original route conceived by Crosby in 1919. With major loss of habitat and huge increase in population (120,000 – 1940 and 280,000 – 2005), I notice a large decrease in warbler counts for just my group. For example, resident type warbler counts for the day dropped from an average of 150 in the ’60s and ’70s to below 100 in the last 10 years. Migrant warbler counts of 50 to 100 are down to 10 or under. Even the species totals for the day for the one route dropped from 120 or more to 90-100 in the last 10 years! I should list all the fine and excellent birders I’ve known over some sixty years of birding, but Stan and Barbara just can’t allot the space. Probably the most well-known was Roger Tory Peterson, who used to call my father “Mr. Cerulean Warbler” and who kindly drove 200 miles to come and name our son Roger Tory at his Christening in 1962. Next on the list are my compatriots for my route on the May Census: Marion Van Wagner, the sharpest birder I ever knew; Eleanor Pink, my closest friend; and our son Fritz Waterman and daughter Krista Morris. I also have to list Florence Germond, the most vivacious, who originated the county’s Bluebird Trail and did the Christmas Census and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Breeding Bird Survey with me for over 30 years. Actually, “number one” on my list is really my wife Ginny, who has put up with all my bird activities for 53 years, when I should have been home working! I also cannot fail to mention Thelma Haight and Elting Arnold, who, as part of the Thompson Pond Committee of the Nature Conservancy, almost single-handedly raised the money to purchase the Thompson Pond Preserve in the 60s and 70s. This area was a favorite birding spot for Crosby and Frost and remains a favorite for present day birders. My Dutchess County “Life List” of species now stands at 276 and was started at age 7 in 1937 with a handful of Blue Jays at my Grandmother’s feeder in Poughkeepsie. My first real “birder” birds were a Chipping Sparrow and a Rose-breasted Grosbeak in 1944 at our home, seen with my father’s 1930 vintage Zeiss binoculars given to him by Ray Guernsey. My daughter Krista and son Fritz still use them occasionally! Good birding. OTIS W ATERMAN 8 PREFACE Dutchess County is fortunate to have its avian history well documented. Over 70 years ago, Ludlow Griscom published the first book, and 25 years ago the last update appeared. It is time for a new comprehensive work using the extensive records of the Waterman Bird Club. This book describes the status and history of 312 bird species found in Dutchess County, New York. Its purpose is to consolidate, summarize, and preserve all known data on Dutchess County birds, and to establish a foundation for future comparison. Based on well over one hundred years of virtually complete records, historical changes are presented in detail for each species. These changes are more extensive than generally understood and have not previously been as exhaustively documented. An astounding 45% of nesting species have started or stopped nesting since 1870. We especially hope that our readers will learn more about the birds around them and contribute to preserving our bird life for future generations. The area covered is the entire county of Dutchess plus the adjoining Hudson River to the west shore. No attempt is made to determine whether a bird seen on or over the Hudson River is within the political jurisdiction of the county. Dutchess County has a relatively large number of good areas in which to observe birds. While some historically productive birding sites have been lost to development, many more have been preserved. Situated near the southern edge of the breeding range of many northern birds, while also near the northern edge of the breeding range of many southern birds, the county attracts a rich variety of bird life each year. Although Dutchess County does not border the ocean, its entire western boundary is the Hudson River, a sea level estuary with tides and some salinity, which forms an attractive migration corridor.