GREENFIELD — After 13 years as the drummer for a heavy metal band, Adam Wilson wanted to be outdoors.
“I wanted to find a hobby that was outside and not in my basement with my headphones on,” he explained. So he took up golf. But rather than perfecting his drive, he found himself standing out on the green, leaning on his golf club and looking at the birds. Eventually, an idea occurred to him.
“I realized I could probably watch the birds for free rather than pay to play 18 holes and get in other people’s way,” he said.
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That was four years ago. Since then, Wilson and his wife, Sara, have become avid birders, and active members of the Greenfield Birders, a bird-watching group overseen by Greenfield Parks and Recreation. As co-leader of the group, Adam leads bird walks twice a month. The group rotates its walks between three Greenfield parks: Beckenholdt, Brandywine and the Thornwood Nature Preserve.
Bird-watching can be a chaotic hobby, the Wilsons say. A planned-out day can change on the spur of the moment if a rare bird is spotted two hours away. The Wilsons have been known to “drop everything” and go in search of it.
The Wilsons use a free cellphone app — eBird — to record their sightings. eBird, developed by Cornell University, gathers data from more than 360,000 birders worldwide. The information is used in research and conservation needs of more than 10,000 species of birds. The app assists its users in locating birding hotspots and sharing their data on a global scale.
The Wilsons compared eBird to another popular app — Pokemon Go. Both apps help you locate what you’re looking for — birds or Pokemon. The data is recorded and then shared with others.
The Wilsons keep track of their bird sightings through a number of lists. A ‘life list’ keeps track of all birds ever sighted. An annual list documents birds seen in a given calendar year. They also have a state list of birds they’ve seen in each state, a county list and a park listing of birds seen in certain parks. Their year list starts over every year.
For birders, New Year’s Day is the first day of a new year list. The Wilsons usually hit the sack well before midnight, but are up by 4 a.m. to get a jump start on a new list for a new year. Favorite New Year’s Day bird watch locations include Goose Pond near Bloomington and the Somersville Mine near Oakland City.
The Wilsons are also avid participants in the annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The history of the event dates back to the late 1880s when the ‘Christmas Side Hunt’ involved a shooting competition with the winning team amassing the largest pile of dead birds. Frank Chapman, an officer in the early days of the Audubon Society, worked to morph the tradition from the counting of dead birds to the counting of live birds.
Each year, groups and individual birders interested in participating in the CBC select a day (between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5), an area (a circular area with a 15-mile diameter) and count birds — not just species, but total birds for a 24-hour period (from midnight to midnight).
Birders are a dedicated community. A visit to the Greenfield Birders’ Facebook page features a video captioned with the question, “Is this a Eurasian collared dove?” Advice comments recommended visual identification to rule out the deceptively similar African collared dove.
Adam Wilson, one of the administrators for the page remarked that group membership had tripled during a three-week period when two snowy owls were repeatedly sighted near the Mt. Comfort Airport.
But the Wilsons aren’t just bird-watchers; they’re bird advocates. The Adam noticed that their bird watching lists contained fewer and fewer mentions of Eastern bluebirds, so about a year ago, the couple hatched the idea of a bird-housing project. Tapping into the expertise of friends from the Amos Butler Audubon Society, they developed a plan to create nesting opportunities for Eastern bluebirds.
Through their research, the Wilsons learned that tree swallows — like Eastern bluebirds -– typically make their nests in the holes of dead trees. They could live in the same kind of houses and live in proximity to each other, so the Wilsons expanded their project to include tree swallows.
Looking at the assortment of parks in Hancock County, they settled on Beckenholdt Park as having a favorable habitat and the most need for houses.
In mid-March, with the OK of Greenfield Parks and Recreation and funding from the Audubon Society, bird enthusiasts the Wilsons, Carole Blaser and Richard Garrett erected 16 birdhouses — in eight pairs — around the 1-mile trail at Beckenholdt Park.
Over the next few weeks, the group worked on a rotating schedule to monitor the houses every three to seven days, and seven days a week after baby birds had hatched.
All-in-all, the group had great success with the tree swallows — 26 hatchlings in all — but decided it may have been too late in the season to attract bluebirds.
“Next year, we’ll get out there soon to hopefully get some Eastern bluebirds,” Adam said
Carole Blaser considers herself to be a more casual birder, although she admits to being really excited when she spotted a willow flycatcher and a blue grosbeak during a recent walk at Beckenholdt Park.
Bird-watching is easier during the spring and fall when birds are easily hidden by leaves and foliage. It’s during the summer that you learn to identify birds by hearing their songs.
“You never know what you might see — or hear,” Blaser said. “It’s like a treasure hunt.”
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The birdwatching group meets the second and fourth Saturdays of the month. For more information, visit Greenfield Birders on Facebook or contact Adam Wilson at [email protected].
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