This article was written by Alejandra Lewandowski. Alie was a summer technician for the Atlas in 2022 located in southwestern NY, primarily Allegany and Cattaraugus counties. Alie will be returning to work for the Atlas again in summer 2023, this time in her beloved Adirondacks.
Squish. Once again I’d found myself off the path, suspended in a tangle of ferns, beech brush, and fallen logs over mush—mud, peat, and dark water now seeping into my shoe. Momentarily fascinated by an array of tiny wetland plants, I remembered what I was here for, and lifted my foot. It was already late in the season; I wouldn’t be returning to this tiny patch of managed forest here in Allegany County in western New York. I’d already prioritized it for a third visit, as it fell below the arbitrary threshold I’d chosen for confirmed species per block, a standard I was desperately trying to reach in the final few weeks of the field season.
It seemed like just yesterday I was wandering this rural, under-birded, majestic little swath of nowhere for the first time. A few short miles away, I’d located a high-elevation wetland via satellite imagery. And I’d spent way too much time at that hidden roadside slice of semi-boreal paradise, the ethereal song of White-throated Sparrows wafting over waterlogged spruce. An early-nesting Nashville warbler had popped out and stared at me, her bill full of tiny slivers of nesting material, and it hit me—I was truly living the dream, working as a seasonal technician for the third New York Breeding Bird Atlas—it’s literally my job to be out here finding these amazing birds and evidence of their precious bird families! The songs of Alder Flycatchers and Blackburnian Warblers mingled with those of Red-winged Blackbirds and Field Sparrows. The cute yank-yank-yanks of Red-breasted Nuthatches, the buzzy chirps of Golden-crowned Kinglets, the clear-toned caroling of a Purple Finch. The intermittent muted drumming of a Ruffed Grouse. Each sound exquisite in its own right, and part of a glorious whole greater than the sum of its parts. And this was just one block, of over two dozen I was responsible for surveying. I think of them all, each with their own unique, complex flavors of habitat, of birdsong, and I am overcome. I can’t help but cry—for beauty, for gratitude, for love.
Back in the forest, I reassessed my progress. At least I’d found my family unit of Dark-eyed Juncos, speckled fledglings flitting up to be fed by surely-exhausted parents, all the while roving across the forest floor. Eastern Wood-Pewees and Scarlet Tanagers still crooned and burred high in the canopy. But I was running out of hope. Truthfully, I’d spent too much time at the high-elevation wetland and not enough in the lower-elevation deciduous forest. When I do this again, I thought, I’ll make sure to time my visits to the different habitats in a block to maximize species confirmed over the course of the season. There’s always time to wander around in search of rare, exciting breeders once the “easy” breeders in the block have been confirmed.
But the truth is that there’s never enough time. And so many mosquito bites, sleepless nights in the back of the van, lapses into loneliness, soaked supposedly-waterproof shoes later—it begins to wear on you. I was now in the midst of a delirious final push, and still I stumbled, eyes filling with tears. I thought I could feel the pain of the land—farmed, logged, drained, managed beyond being recognizable to itself. I thought I’d like to get my hands on a natural history of Allegany and Cattaraugus counties, to better understand and appreciate—to empathize with—my subjugated surroundings that still supported so many birds. But with birds, I realized, with the study of them, documentation, data-collecting in service of conservation, there’s never really any rest, or relief. You just have to find the glimmers of hope and joy in the process.
Early one morning, I found myself trudging up a steep incline strewn with splintered wood, huge limbs, entire trees, remnants of a recent state forest logging operation. Farther below, I’d seen some heavy equipment, vacant for now, seemingly frozen in the midst of its work. I’d also seen a sweet Junco family, and Winter Wrens darting over and under the brush. The June sunlight glistened, caught in the dew on the ferns encroaching on the humbled hill. In that moment, I thought that this sure looked like a good spot for… “Churry churry churry chew!” A Mourning Warbler! My favorite warbler. I grinned widely, my hunch confirmed. In fact, when my count for Mourning Warblers that morning tripped the high-count filter on eBird, I wished I could attach a picture of the habitat and say, if YOU were a Mourning Warbler, wouldn’t you like to nest here?
Suddenly, a bird swooped over me, and perched on a felled log, emitting a short, perturbed whine. A Hermit Thrush! I apologized to the alarmed bird. A gorgeous red Eastern Garter, lounging in the dust, slunk away from my steps. I had never seen one that color before. I apologized to the snake, too. As I approached the top of the hill, I found myself startled by a familiar and cherished song, one I was certainly not expecting to hear here,a Canada Warbler. My other favorite warbler! I expected to maybe find them in boggy wetlands or moist, shady Hemlock glens. Certainly not here, atop a recently-logged, dry, mostly-deciduous hillside. But here he was, singing away, seeking love (as birds define it) in the unlikeliest of places.
When I returned to “Mourning Warbler Mountain” in the heat of mid-July, things had changed. Now, there were even more baby Dark-eyed Juncos, hopping around everywhere and being impossibly cute. The Hooded Warblers down the mountain had babies to feed. So did the Blackburnian Warblers. Another Hermit Thrush whooshed by overhead, this time followed by a hungry speckled fledgling. Up the mountain, I watched a delightful family of Winter Wrens, multiple fledglings chasing each other and their parents around. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Careful count,” I wrote to appease the eBird filter. And of course, the Mourning Warblers—fuzzy, furtive fledglings hiding out in the brush, and a dazzling adult male gathering insects to feed them. I didn’t see the act of feeding itself. I didn’t need to. The recently-fledged young, the adult carrying food, that was more than enough, for Atlas purposes, to confirm the species breeding in the block. But I wanted to watch them just a little longer. They are such special birds to me. Despite their name, for me they symbolize the greatest joy and love. I’m sure we all have birds that have come to represent something special for us, for reasons as unique as we are, as birds are.
While I was watching the Mourning Warblers, an old friend popped up- the lone male Canada Warbler. He had begun to go into molt and was appearing pretty raggedy, though he still sang here and there. I empathize with that Canada Warbler. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a little bird- to survive migrations, predators, disappearing habitat, to seek out a territory and a mate, to hopefully send out healthy progeny into that perilous world. My task—our task—is simply to be a witness, to catch a small glimpse of that journey, and record where, when, and how. How could we tell, what behaviors did we observe that let us know this bird, or that bird, sought to make somewhere in New York its breeding ground? There’s a lot of ground here, a lot of birds, and only a little time for the Atlas. As the project enters its fourth and second-to-last year, I want my observations of birds—my witness, my testimony—to matter. I want them to be part of a project that will inform bird conservation efforts for years to come. Don’t you?