Greensboro Birds

My very first season counting birds for Cornell University’s Project FeederWatch was 2002–2003. We lived in a “loft” on North 1st and Kent in the acutely self-aware Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I say “loft” because it was essentially a decrepit shell of space without walls, plus, after moving from the third floor down to the first, a musty basement and postage stamp “yard.” Still, we enjoyed having our own outside space in New York City—with a tree and everything. (Unfortunately, we didn’t enjoy having no heat or the beer streaming through the ceiling from the hipsters’ upstairs parties, so we only stayed one winter.)

It was in this apartment where I learned that there are more kinds of sparrows than the house sparrow. In fact, I was motivated to make the most of my urban situation and bought a book called Sparrows of the United States and Canada so I could identify the few variations that found their way into our yard. Imagine, an entire book filled with 64 variations of little brown jobbies. That was the year I learned about the white-throated sparrow, a winter visitor to our region of the world—although we called ours Speedy. His white and black striped head markings made him seem racy. I also learned about the song sparrow (you know, the one with the bindi-like dot on its chest?), because one would alternate turns at the feeder with Speedy.

We took a few casual digital photos of Speedy and the song sparrow (which was never people-fied with a name), most of them through our perpetually blurry and uncleanable windows. I am, however, a notorious tosser of stuff both real and virtual, so the photo above is the only one of the song sparrow that survived. Imagine if you will several field mice scurrying around below the feeder in the photo. We had those, too. No rats, though—at least none that made themselves known.

One of the great things about the Project FeederWatch website is that you can stroll down the memory lane of FeederWatches past—even if you move to a new apartment every year or to another state or finally buy a house. Let’s see what my first season of FeederWatching amounted to in my small Brooklyn patch. It’s markedly different from my lists today.

House Sparrow 13.5 (average group size per count period)
House Finch 4.0
White-throated Sparrow 4.3
Song Sparrow 3.5
Northern Mockingbird 2.9
Dark-eyed Junco 1.0
Common Grackle 0.1
Rock Dove 0.5
Mourning Dove 1.4
European Starling 1.0

That’s it: 10 different species in our “yard” from November 2002 through February 2003. What’s the same? Well, I still see house finches, white-throated and song sparrows, mockingbirds, juncos, and mourning doves. (I have seen grackles in our yard during migration, but none now.) I have yet to see and house sparrows, pigeons, or starlings in our yard—and I rarely see the first two down here at all. We’re too rural I guess.

The biggest difference, though, is how PFW changed the way I go about my birding. I’ve gained more scientific knowledge about birds and am motivated to learn more all the time. My birding in the field has improved, too, although I still make plenty of embarrassing and goofy mistakes. I finally started a life list. I still enjoy watching the daily goings on of the commonest of birds. And Josh has become a birder, which is awesome, because who wants to geek out alone all the time?