Getting the Bird

The name of the operation is called variously the "May Run," the "Grim Grind" or the "Big Day." Its object is to identify, by sight and song, as many species of birds as possible in a 24-hour period. The time is now, when, because of the late spring, the north ward migration is still going strong.

Across the nation, bird watchers -- they number over 8,000,000 in all -- are out in full force.

The basic equipment for birders, who operate in teams of two or more so that there is at least one corroborating witness, is simple: binoculars, a copy of Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds, and a car to enable them to cover a greater variety of habitats quickly. Thus, beginning at dawn, 20 members of Florida's Pelican Island Audubon Society raced through the boondocks south of Cape Kennedy to cover a 15-mile-wide circle of fresh-water marshes, piny woods and citrus groves; whenever their cars stopped, their binoculars popped up and down like yo-yos. They quit early at dusk, satisfied at having spotted 129 species, including such rarities as the upland plover and the western kingbird.

Cherry Bombs & Tapes. In Delaware, Dave Cutler, who can identify more than 200 birds by song alone, led his five-man team over 500 miles of rainswept back roads. Armed with a supply of cherry bombs (to startle sleeping birds into song) and a portable tape player programmed with 42 different calls (to trick them into answering), the team identified 187 species.

For some 150 New York City birders, the search centered on Long Island's Jamaica Bay, where the stealthier spotters bellied through the wet marsh grass as if sneaking up on a machine-gun nest. Though they found a number of rare birds, they were disappointed at total counts, which were as small as 100 species. And in Illinois, 50 members of the Champaign County Audubon Society slogged through mud and rain, uphill and down, for views of herons and chimney swifts, wood ducks and Blackburnian warblers--and a day's total of 100.

So dogged were the birders that even the birds far at sea were under surveil lance. Nearly 100 members of California's Golden Gate Audubon Society set out in a three-ship flotilla for the three-hour cruise to the offshore Farallon Is lands. In the process, the birders had to weather a sickening swell, the pungent aroma of the guano-splattered Farallons and the even more pungent smell of overripe suet, thrown overboard for bait. For their fortitude they were rewarded with such rarities as Brandt's cormorants, tufted puffins, pink-footed shearwaters and a couple of black-footed albatrosses.

Backyard Beginnings. The birder must be physically fit to slog through swamps, intellectually alert to recognize the innumerable species he might encounter, keen enough to thrill at the sight of a great blue heron overhead. But what gets him started in the first place? "We began watching birds in our backyard," explains Seismologist James Ellis. "Then we didn't recognize a bird, so we bought a cheap book. Then there were more birds, so we bought a more expensive book. It kind of grabs you after a while." It grabbed San Francisco's Raymond Higgs so hard that he bought an $800 Questar telephoto lens in order to photograph them better.

What keeps them birding, despite such avocational aches and pains from gazing skyward as "warbler's neck" and "Audubon back"? Partly, it is the challenge of building an ever bigger lifetime list. "It gets to be a game to see how many species you can find," says Florida's Maggie Bowman. Chirps Shar on Lumsden, of Champaign, Ill., who has 279 birds on her list: "We've seen 96 birds in our backyard alone." Adds San Francisco's Valeria Da Costa, whose list contains 600 of the U.S.'s 700-odd birds: "There are only two warblers I haven't seen in the entire country."

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