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Back to Birding Backto Birding Paul R. Ehrlich Original illustrations by Julie Zickefoose MagdalenaAlpine Butterfly 237 ing at my head •n an attempt to dissuademe. That photographand another of a Long-tmledJaeger were publishedthirty yearsago in an Audubon So- I HAVEALWAYSLOVEDBUTTERFLIES. ICOL- ciety book, In the Arctic. At Duke of York Bay, I lected them when I was a kid, publishedmy first alsospotted my first (and to date only) Gyrfalcon. scientificpaper about them when I was fifteen, did In its honor, I named the channel leading past my doctoraldissertation on their classification,and Cape Welsford into the bay, through which pan have done researchon their evolution, ecology,tax- ice was moving and preventinga seaplanefrom onomy,and behaviorever since.I havealways extractingour party, "Falcon Strait." thought a good way to die (at age 110 years,of Birding occupiedeven more of my time in the course)would be to fall off a cliff while trying to summer of 1953, when I worked at the weather net an Erebia magdalena,a rare dark denizen of station at Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Island, talus slopesin the high Rockies. north of the North Magnetic Pole. Resolutehad Even when I've strayedfrom the Lepidoptera, rafts of King Eiders and many Rock Ptarmigan•n there has usually been a butterfly connection,ex- a rock desertlocation that supported no butterflies tendingto researchon the butterflyfishes of Aus- at all. It was there that, thanks to the sharpeyes of tralia's Great Barrier Reefs. But in spite of this, a young demon birder named Bob Goodell, I saw somehowbirds have always been there in the back- what for decadeswas my "best" bird--Ross' Gull. ground. My first seriousbirding was done as a col- It stoodon an ice floe for a long time, providing lege studentworking in the Arctic and subarcticfor us with a very fine look through a spottingscope. the Northern Insect Survey of the Canadian gov- BecauseI didn't start checkingoff common birds ernment. I still have my batteredcopy of the sec- when I did field work outside of the North until ond edition of Peterson's "A Field Guide to the 1985, for years I could tell birding colleaguesthat B•rds," with such notations as "Churchill, Mani- my life list looked like the gapsin theirs. toba" after Short-eared Owl and Horned Lark, After ResoluteBay, a careerin butterfliestook "Hay River, N.W.T." noted after the White- over. I watched birds casuallywhen I had a chance crowned Sparrow and Red-wingedBlackbird and during my field work, but it was a desultorything. "Resolute Bay, N.W.T." after the Red-throated While butterflying in Madera Canyon, Arizona, a Loon and Purple Sandpiper.All of those species,of local birder gave my wife, Anne, and myselfa course,are onesthat most birders first check off in good look at a trogon. We enjoyed kookaburras, more southerlylocations. rosellas,and Bell-miners in Australia, sunbirdsin In what still ranks as the most thrilling summer the Virunga volcanoes,Superb Starlings on the (1952) of my life, the Surveysent me in George SerengetiPlain, and albatrossesand other pelagic birds when traveling by ship. The only times I Miksch Sutton's footstepsto Coral Harbor on concentrated on birds were on trips to the Antarc- Southampton Island in northern Hudson Bay. tic and to the GalapagosIslands, where I could not There I hired Eskimos, one of whom had helped study butterflies.So for three decades,my interest Sutton more than 20 years earlier, to assistme in in the avian world was largely confined to follow- working on the rare Arctic butterflieswhich were ing researchon the population biologyand behav- my main interest(and which Sutton had also col- ior of birds in the scientificliterature--although lected).But I had plenty of time in the long days two of my doctoral studentsdid their dissertations to also study and photograph the amazing array of on the community ecologyof birds. b•rdsnesting on the tundra. I spenthours photo- It was actually my involvement in trying to graphingbirds by settingup my Bolseycamera on solveenvironmental problems that rekindled my a tripod over nestsand activating the shutter with interestin birds. In the face of the growingextinc- a long length of fishing line as soon as an adult tion crisis,my researchassociate Bruce Wilcox bird returned. I got a number of bird portraits that and I established the Center for Conservation B•ol- way, including a beauty of a SemipalmatedPlover. ogy at Stanfordin 1982. The Center'sfirst big pro- I also have fond memoriesof being strandedat ject was the study of the island biogeographyof Duke of York Bay at the Northern end of South- butterflies in the Great Basin. Each mountain ampton Island. There I scaleda cliff to take a rangein that region is a moist island in a desert picture of a young PeregrineFalcon in the nest, sea. By understandingpatterns of colonization and while the adults skimmed along the cliff face, div- extinction on those "islands," we hoped to cast 238 American Birds, Summer 1987 JuvenilePeregrine Falcon light on the requirements(size, shape,degree of that would not be a serious barrier. We both isolation,etc.) of nature reservesdesigned to pro- agreedthat birds were politically much more im- tect invertebratespecies. When soonafter our portant animals than butterflies, and that they work began it became clear that we should be should play a central symbolic role in our efforts making comparisonsbetween the distributionsof to halt the lossof biodiversity. butterfliesand those of birds and mammals, we It wasn't, however, Jared'sintellectual argu- starteddoing bird censuses. ments (delivered in his kitchen) that sealedmy About the same time, I was discussingconserva- fate. After some talking, he draggedme, binoculars tion problems and the Center's activitieswith in hand, into his backyard in a canyon in subur- Jared Diamond of the University of California ban Los Angeles.Soon Jared had me peeringat at Los Angeles,a distinguishedecologist who Phainopeplasand listening to the call of a Be- has worked extensivelyon the avifauna of New wick's Wren. I was instantly hooked. Guinea and neighboringislands. He urged me to The last three years have been a kaleidoscopeof get involved in researchon birds. I told him that I birding experiences.Jared fired me up in May of didn't think I would be much good in the field be- 1984, and in June I was censusingWarbling Vir- causeof my color-blindness,but he maintained eos and other birds with a field party from our Volume 41, Number 2 239 ElegantTrogon Great Basin project. By July, at the Rocky Moun- tain Biological Laboratory in Colorado, Anne and I and Darryl Wheye (who has worked with us for years)were birding wheneverour long-termbut- terry work at the field station would permit. That fall, I decidedto go whole hog. Stanford'sDepart- ment of Biology tends to be rather theoretical, and there are often complaints from studentsthat it doesn't offer enough coursesabout "real animals." Since I had a very knowledgeableornithologist, David Dobkin, as a postdoctoral student at that time, I proposedthat we jointly offer a coursein ornithologyin the springof 1985. There'snothing like giving a coursein a subjectyou know little about to make you learn it fast--especiallyif you're trying to stay one stepahead of very smart undergraduatestudents. David did a lot of teach- ing and I did a little teachingand a lot of learning, and the course was a great success. That same spring, Anne and I managed to get away on a quick field trip to southern Arizona, Big Bend National Park, and the lower Rio Grande Valley. I doubt if I'll ever have sucha successful birding trip in North America again--since I was able to add 78 speciesto my life list. Perhapsthe high point of that trip was seeingtrogons again in Madera Canyon a quarter of a century after Anne and I had our first experience with them. As I had expectedit would, my renewed interest in birds has given me lots more ammunition to use in the battle to maintain environmental qual- ity. I have seenBlack-capped Vireos in their small remnant habitat on the Edward's Plateau outside of Austin, Texas. One could hardly hear the birds singingfor the roar of bulldozerschewing up land adjacentto that occupiedby the remaining popu- lation. There is a program of cowbird suppression in the area, but unlessa program of bulldozer suppressionis launched soon, the vireos will disap- pear anyway. I've had the opportunity of goinginto the field with David Wilcove, whose work has been so im- portant in helping us to understandthe role of for- est fragmentationin reducingpassefine popula- tions in eastern North America. I have also taken advantageof my old student Harry Recher, now an outstandingornithologist, ecologist and conser- vationist in Australia. Harry, Anne, and I birded togetherfor a couple of weeksin Australia, and helped encourageresistance to insaneforestry practicesthat threaten many elementsof that con- tinent's fascinatingavifauna as well as the forests themselves.Ecologist Stuart Pimm (who has done Volume 41, Number 2 241 Black-cappedVireo superbfield and theoretical work on the intro- On right-hand pages,where the picturesusually duced Hawaiian b•rd fauna) and I have studied are•n bird guides,we havearranged some 200 drepanididfinches together in Hawaii and are mini-essaysdealing with a wide variety of topicsin planninga long-termresearch project on invasive bird biology.These range from the recentwork on speciesand conservationof Pacificisland bird bird classificationand descriptionsof how birds communities. fly, navigate,copulate, and vocalizeto essayson All of this has allowed me to introduce more polyandry,brood parasitism,size and sexin rap- bird examplesinto lecturesabout the human pre- tors, habitat selection,community ecology,and dicament. Audience responsehas made it clear varioustopics related to conservation(including that anecdotesabout endangeredbirds and endan- essayson each extinct species).
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