The Birds

My friends on social media have noticed that I have started posting a lot of pictures of birds over the past year or so. This is for them, in case they are wondering what the bird thing is all about.

I have been a novice birdwatcher since the early eighties. I want to say that it was "Mrs Pat", our Sunday-school teacher from church, who first exposed my brother and I to the concept of birdwatching, but my memory is fleeting from that long ago, and my brain may have invented that. I just know at some point, a copy or Roger Tory Peterson's "Field Guide to the Eastern Birds" appeared at the house and I found it fascinating as a young budding amateur naturalist.

I remember looking out the back sliding door and watching birds in the snow in 1982 or 1983. I remember going through the guide finding birds I wanted to see one day. I desperately wanted to see an indigo bunting back then, but I wasn't old enough to fully grasp that different birds had different dietary or habitat preferences. In my mind, birds could fly ANYWHERE, so why wouldn't they show up in my back yard if I threw some bread out in the winter?

As I got older, my brother and I would occasionally let each other know if we saw a new bird, and we went out birdwatching a handful of times over the years, but it was never anything super-serious. If I saw a new bird I would make a note in the checklist at the back of my guide, but it was a rare thing.

In October of 2017, my traveling buddy and I took a trip to South Africa, and I had booked us three days/four nights at a camp in Kruger National Park. Africa had always been my dream so I knew I needed to take a decent camera for the game drives, so I broke in and finally joined the 21st century by outfitting myself with a Nikon D750 and the 200-500mm f5.6 zoom lens.

The plan worked perfectly and after getting up to speed on the workings of the camera, I took it to Africa and put it to use exactly as planned.

Lilac-Breasted Roller (Coracias caudatus)

After returning home, I now owned a camera and a large lens. I had loved the excitement of trying to get decent wildlife shots in Kruger from the back of the safari truck, but I had no rhinos or leopards here at home to chase, and Whitetail Deer are, frankly, kind of boring (...unless they have a large rack of antlers, and if they have a large rack around here, it is usually because they are good at avoiding people... with guns OR cameras.)

Enter my old friends the birds. I enjoy the hunt for decent pictures of any wildlife, from bug to beast, but birds were a logical place to start, so that is what I did. I went out to the England (Arkansas) fishing pond to take some pics of Black-bellied Whistling ducks on November 30th of 2017 and my hobby of chasing birds with my camera was begun.

Black-Bellied Whistling Duck (Dendrocygna autumnalis)

eBird

Somewhere along the line, I must have heard, or read, about setting up "Rare Birds Alerts" on the "eBird" website, because I set up an account a few months later (on May 31, 2018 to be exact) and configured it to send me an email whenever a rare bird was sighted. I can enjoy taking pictures of a Blue Jay in my yard if the light is good, but a rare bird is more of a challenge.

There are a few applications/websites around that allow birdwatchers to track their sightings, but none of them compare to ebird. It is free to join and is a huge database of millions of bird  sightings that are used by ornithologists for tracking population dispersal and trends on almost every bird species on the planet.

For the user, it is an easy way to keep track of what species you have seen while also helping to provide the scientific community with data.  For photographers like me, who shoot pics only for myself, it also allows a central repository for my best pics that will likely outlive me, and give those images a small purpose beyond gathering facebook likes. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.)

Northern Parula (Setophaga americana)

eBird is one of the best examples of "Citizen Science" around, and even if you are just a backyard feeder watcher, I would recommend setting up an account and tracking some of your better sightings via the app. Some old school birders who have years and years of written records look that the work involved in data input and decide it isnt worth the time to manually type all of those old sightings in... I understand where they are coming from. But I only had a handful of field guide notes and no bird journal.

(NOTE: You set your account up at the website, there is an app that will connect to it via your phone, but it is more for making lists in the field and is very limited for anything other than that.)

If you ever notice birds, you should go set up and ebird account. Just do it. It is 100% free and will take you like eight minutes to set up. Simple stuff.

NOT A BIRDER

Even though I joined eBird on May 31, 2018.. I only did it to get the "rare birds alerts". I was more interested in photography than in keeping a list of bird species I had seen. I wasn't a hardcore birder, after all... I was a photographer chasing birds. So I never uploaded a list for the first 8 months that I had an eBird account.

In late January of 2019 I got an alert that said that a Rock Wren was seen on top of Pinnacle Mountain. A day or two later, on the 26th, I threw my camera in my backpack and decided to head to the top to look for the bird. As I got there, I sat on the rocks at the summit breathing hard and reconsidering my cardio regimen, I had just started to think "I wonder where this bird is" when I looked down and he dashed by my legs a couple of feet away. My camera was still in my bag but the bird was friendly enough that I had time to get it out and shoot some shots. Success! I got my first "rare" bird and I got some decent documentary shots.

Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus)

One of my friends told me that I needed to upload the pics and the sighting to eBird since it was rare. I had never done that but figured it out.

OK I'M A BIRDER

That is when it really all started. My OCD kicked in and I starting adding my older sightings to my eBird account. Because of the rare wren sighting, I was contacted by the local editor of ebird, who then sent me info on the local chapter of the Audubon society and told me about a state wide LISTSERV for birders. I joined the local Audubon society chapter and went on a couple of field trips starting in the winter of 2019.

When I would be out and about looking for birds, I would also stop and talk to any birders I might stumble across and have made a number of important contacts that way. They taught me how and where to look for birds of different types in their respective habitats.

Purple Gallinule (Porphyrio martinicus)

As of this writing, it has been a few months short of two years since I got my pic of the Rock Wren on Pinnacle Mountain. My current list stands at 283 species in the state, , which is a solid number for a couple of years of chasing. It starts getting tough around 290, and few people get above 300. Almost everything left is rare and incidental at that point, (though there are a few more I should be able to knock out this winter.) [UPDATE: 307 on 8/14/21]

In Arkansas, there have been a total of 417 species ever reported in the state, but some of those are now extinct, (such as the Passenger Pigeon, Carolina Parakeet and Bachman's Warbler,) and some others have only been recorded once or twice, having been blown in on a storm or something. I don't know of anyone who has ever reached 400, though a couple are close.

I have a decent number, but I am a mediocre birder (at best). I have somehow managed to get to know some of the best birders in the state, and without their help, my list would be nowhere near where it is. I have a lot to learn.

Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea)

My time with the birds is split into a couple of categories. 

If I am BIRDING, I am usually with other people, learning about species and their habits and trying to add to my list. I might have the camera with me, but it is only there to document if we see something good we need proof for. (There is a high standard on ebird for "rare bird" sightings. A photo might be the only way to get it accepted.)

If I am out SHOOTING PICTURES... I am almost always alone. I wake up as early as I need to. I will often google the sunrise time at the destination and estimate my travel time so I can get there 30 min before sunrise. It is nothing for me to wake up at 4am and brew a thermos of coffee and be on the road by 4:30 AM... or earlier. Many days I spend half the day (or more) and don't get a single decent shot. I don't need to deal with anyone else's needs or preferences. A wary creature, which can be approached to within photo range by one silent, attentive and focused person, will remain unseen if I have a bored fidgety copilot.

Horned Grebe (Podiceps auritus)

Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis)

So this is what I do now in my free time. I go hunting for birds with my camera. The COVID-19 pandemic hasn't affected this hobby in the least, thankfully.

It is a peaceful and quiet hobby. I don't have to interact with screaming overly-political keyboard commandos if I am watching the sunrise in the cab of my truck, as the rising steam from my coffee mixes with the smoke from my pipe. A small field can be as wild as the Serengeti if you scale down your view.

Blue Grosbeak (Passerina caerulea)

Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)

I don't know how long I will be concentrating on avifauna. I have always liked seeing new birds for the first time, and I always will... and I will always view birds as a wonderful subject for nature photography. But they are not my ONLY interest. I will shoot any creature. I plan to start working on my macro photography in the spring. There are dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, and wildflowers to learn about and photograph as I scale down my view even further.

I also want to go larger. I want to work on my landscapes. I want to shoot waterfalls and even mess around with astrophotography a bit. There are always new skills to learn. 

But for now... it's the birds.

I am improving as a birder and as a bird photographer. Perhaps I will do a couple more posts about the photography end and get in to the details.

'

Black-and-White Warbler (Mniotilta varia)

On Republicans and Confederate Statues

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia was rejected as the national flag of the CSA, but is the most common confederate symbol known today.

Currently in our country (June 2020) there is a national discussion in regards to public statues dedicated to the memory of confederate soldiers. I personally believe that this is a healthy discussion currently being had in immature and unhealthy ways, but we will set that aside for a moment.

The puzzling part is that, judging from my social media feeds and the mainstream media... it seems to be primarily southern Republicans who are defending the statues with the "history not hate" mantra, and the Democrats on the left who are trying to remove them. Both sides have some valid points... and some nonsense ones.

But THIS post is directed towards those southern Republicans currently opposed to the removal of the confederate monuments.

Ya'll need a little history reminder.

I am generally very opposed to oversimplification of thorny issues. It is natural to take complex issues and reduce them down to good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. I am of the opinion that this is not the best way to process history, though I fully admit I fall victim to it sometimes.

But in the interest of making a larger point and not getting off in the weeds, I am going to have to simplify a bit. I know you could pick around the edges and find individual exceptions that prove the rule... I acknowledge that, and if we ever find ourselves with 37 hours to sit and discuss it... then we can get in to the details. Right now we need a quick overview.

So here are a few things for my Republican friends to understand about those statues and that flag.

Slavery is wrong.

Slavery was always wrong. This is the entire basis for the founding of your political party. OK?

There were abolitionists from the moment the first slaves hit the shore. There were people who were horrified the first time they became aware of the practice. There just weren't enough of them. But they were always there and their ideas spread, even if not as quickly as we might have wanted.

In the mid-1850s.. things started to reach a tipping point. The agricultural south had built almost their entire economy on the use of slave labor in the fields, and the politicians and rich landed slave owners (often the same people) were far more reluctant to see the horrors of slavery than the industrial north where slavery wasn't as critical a part of the economy. 

This is the environment in to which the Republican party was established in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854 by a bunch of abolitionist Whigs. (...OR on July 6, 1854 on the outskirts of Jackson, Michigan if you guys need more stuff to argue about...) In any case, they soon developed a following in the north and grew in power and the Democrats in the south soon saw which way the wind was blowing. By 1860, the southern Democrat states threatened secession if the Republican, (one Mr. Abraham Lincoln) won the presidency. 

He did... and we were off to the races.

The Republican party was non-existent in the south as the war started, and the majority of the Democrats in the north tried to foil Lincoln at every turn. Many Democrats died wearing the blue of the union army, I don't want to minimize their sacrifice. There were "War Democrats" and even some abolitionist Democrats. But for the most part, politically speaking, the Civil War was largely the Republicans in blue vs the Democrats in confederate gray. 

The confederate flag you defend is essentially a Democrat flag. It exists because a Republican won the presidency.

The southern Democrats were afraid the Republicans were going to take their slaves and the rest is history. The Republicans won. The Republicans passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments... but old habits die hard.

After the war, as Republican party chapters were being established in the south, (often by blacks), six southern Democrat ex-confederate soldiers formed the Ku Klux Klan, which quickly grew to be an underground wing of the Democrat party known for their subversive and terrorist tactics in fighting Republican reconstruction initiatives by any means necessary.

Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest joined a couple of years later and became it's first "Grand Wizard". (In fact, his Civil War nickname of "the wizard of the saddle" is why the klan has a "grand wizard" designation. That is where that comes from.) He was also a delegate to the 1868 Democratic Convention, and his friend, Frank Blair Jr was the Vice Presidential Candidate.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

The campaign slogan of the Seymour-Blair Democratic Ticket was "Our Ticket, Our Motto, This Is a White Man's Country; Let White Men Rule."

They were beaten by the Republican, Ulysses S. Grant. His slogan was "Let Us Have Peace."

The Democrats maintained almost universal power in the south after reconstruction, writing Jim Crow laws and burning crosses and lynching folks and such, but eventually, the klan died down. and Republicans and blacks made progress.

But just after the turn of the century. Democrat Woodrow Wilson (possibly the most racist man to ever serve as president, IMHO) was elected and RE-segregated the federal government. The first movie ever shown in the white house was D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "Birth of a Nation" (originally called "The Clansman"), shown in the East Room, on February 18, 1915.

That movie was a blockbuster before the term ever existed and the klan rolls swelled again among southern Democrats. The image of the righteous klansman was so popular in the south that there was even a short-lived soda marketed called "Klu Ko Kola". In many small towns, it would have not been unusual for the mayor, the police chief, and many of the major business owners to be klan members. Crosses were burned again. Republicans were targeted and killed. New Jim Crow laws were written and those that had gone un-enforced for years began to be enforced again.

...and it was during THIS period, 50 years after the end of the Civil War, that most of these confederate statues went up in parks and courthouses. The Democrat (and reportedly KKK connected) "Daughters of the Confederacy" raised funds and erected statues to confederates and klansmen alike. Schools and parks and streets were renamed after prominent (Democrat) confederates. They tried to re-define the reasons for the war into ONLY a noble states rights argument... (some of it WAS, but it was PRIMARILY over preservation of the south's slavery economy.)

There might have been SOME people who supported the placement of the statues out of a spirit of reconciliation, but again... this was ~50 years after the war. Mostly, those statues were put up by Democrats in order to show blacks and Republicans (often the same people) who was in charge in the south in the early 1900's. It is really that simple.

I could go on... the Democrats racist nonsense lasted up until the Civil Rights act of 1964 was passed (by 80% of Republicans and 63% of Dems), but that gets us to these statues, which brings me to my point.

If Democrats today want to undo monuments to their shameful history of racism which THEY erected as a threat (at the time) to Republicans... I have no idea why any Republican would object. 

I really don't. It makes no sense to me.

I say "good on 'em". It has nothing to do with me. I am not a flag waver for any party. None of them represent me adequately so I don't represent them. Every vote I cast requires me to hold my nose.

Listen... I think that confederate flags are fine in museums, or at confederate battlefields, or on confederate graves or in historical re-enactments (and I do NOT think confederate re-enactors are doing anything remotely racist - we need to preserve history to learn from it.). 

I think having a tantrum over a flag painted on the roof of a fictional character's 1969 Dodge Charger on a TV comedy from the 80's is absurd. What are we going to do next? Digitally remove all of the swastikas in "Saving Private Ryan"?

That being said.. I don't personally see any virtue or historical value in flying the flag of a conquered nation... which is how I view the confederacy. (YMMV.). And I think confederate monuments should be at battlefields or museums... not at the court house that is supposed to blindly dispense justice to people of color who, understandably, might see those statues as monuments to INjustice.

I have plenty of southern pride. I don't need to fly the flag of a failed and conquered Democrat state (or a failed Democrat attempt at secession if you prefer) in order to love the south... it's people... and much of it's culture.

but I also do not need to turn the front line confederate soldier in to a moustache-twirling villain. Some of them were... no doubt... but so were some union soldiers. For most, they were just defending what they viewed as their homeland, and many had no strong opinions about slavery either way prior to the war. My beef is, (as always), with the politicians. THEY were the rich slaveholders. THEY seceded.

Perhaps your great, great, great grandfather fought for the south. I am not saying you should replace his name in the family tree with a black bar.

But that flag, and particularly those statues erected in the early 1900s, are not YOUR legacy as a Republican. They are the legacy of southern Democrats... and if they want to undo some of the harm they have done, let them.

It has nothing to do with you.