The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Christmas Bird Count

ROBERT MacNEIL: In the sharp, early morning sunshine of a Long Island winter, five men keep an annual appointment with nature. Why are they up at dawn in this frozen landscape? They`re counting birds -- and it`s not nearly as silly as it sounds.

Good evening. Today is the last day of the annual Audubon Christmas bird count. And for those of us who know nothing of such mysteries, that means that for the past two weeks thousands of birdwatchers across the United States and adjoining countries have literally been out making a census of bird species and their numbers. This is the seventy-ninth year of the count, and apart from the simple delight it affords birdlovers, the count has an increasingly serious scientific purpose. By watching the birds, they`re also watching for subtle changes in the environment. Tonight, what we learn from watching birds.

The Audubon Society started in the United States in 1905, inspired by the naturalist John James Audubon. But five years before that, Frank Chapman, editor of Bird Lore magazine, had started the annual count. He was reacting against the practice of hunters of going out on Christmas Day and killing practically anything in fur and feathers that crossed their path. Chapman thought that barbaric, and decided it was better to count than kill. Today the count has become more than a Christmas outing. They say it`s a way of providing a kind of early warning system for changes in the environment. It`s similar to the old practice of miners, who would carry a canary in a cage into the mine. Since the bird`s more sensitive metabolism could sooner detect poisonous gases, the canary would keel over long before the gases could affect the miners. Today`s birdwatchers claim that by watching bird movements they can detect the early stages of environmental degradation.

The count began this year on December 16th. More than 30,000 people have taken part. This year appetites were whetted by a rare bird sighting in Chicago just before the formal count began. Ross` gull, which normally vanishes in the Arctic wastes this time of year, popped up on nine occasions in the Chicago area. On the first day of the official count we sent our intrepid crew to the subarctic reaches of Long Island, near Riverhead. They didn`t sight Ross` gull, but they came back with the flavor, and for some, excitement of the count.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER:This is a common wintering heron on Long Island; in fact, it`s probably the most common wintering heron.(To colleague) What`s that?

I think we`ve got them all now. We`ve got most of them. Herring gull, and the great black-backed gull. I got him, yeah.

ANNETTE MILLER, Reporter: What would make you most excited to find today, what bird?

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: Well, within reason, maybe something like a bald eagle would really excite us.

MILLER: Have you ever found one on this count?

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: Yeah, several years, but it`s always exciting to see one. I mean, of course there`s lots of things that we`d be excited to see that I don`t have any hope at all of seeing, so we sort of discount those.

SECOND BIRDWATCHER: The summer birds that remain on during the winter if the feeding is good, like an oriole, for example, we`ve gotten some orioles.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: There`s a number of small land birds that of course would be nice to find.

MILLER: You all seemed pretty excited a moment ago. There were two birds you seemed surprised about.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: Yeah, well, Bob spotted a horned grebe, and these aren`t exceptionally rare, it`s just that people who have been birding this fall have remarked on the fact that they are very scarce, so we were concerned about getting a horned grebe on the count, and we`ve seen four of them here so far; so I`m satisfied that we have horned grebe on the count.

MILLER: You were a little worried about the hunters before, that they might scare some of the ducks.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: Well, when we were coming up the road we heard gunshots, and it`s just from the Flanders Club over there where they gun all the time. We were afraid there were people right here along the beach. They have been in past years. So it`s a little bit of an annoyance, because we use this area to see the bay, and if they`re gunning out here usually we can`t see the ducks.

SECOND BIRDWATCHER: I think it`s part of the whole scene here; for me it`s not simply the birds but the whole environment. When I go out it`s a chance to really participate in what`s really going on at any given season. It`s the birds, it`s the flora at the time, it`s the flowers. We look at other things besides birds; many who are much more competent than I particularly will know the foliage around at a given time. We`re interested in what the birds feed on, for example, and how that environment changes and how it affects the birds. So really it`s just getting out into the whole scene, and luckily the birds, for me, are the thing that sort of draws it out.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: As far as seeing things, this is the worst time of the year. I mean, there are fewer birds around here now than there are at any other time of the year, practically. Especially with the duck hunting, the ducks mostly make themselves very scarce, and the land birds are certainly very scarce. So it`s the tradition more than anything else that brings large groups of people out in this weather.

THIRD BIRDWATCHER: I`d like to see the bird that Jimmy Clinton saw earlier this morning, a ruffed grouse. As we were walking up he flushed it, and that`s a kind of a hard bird to see.

MILLER: How do you flush a bird?

THIRD BIRDWATCHER: Well, as you`re walking through the woods if you kind of come upon him unexpectedly, he`ll take off in a hurry; like in the case of the ruffed grouse, he kind of beats his wings pretty hard and -- we all heard him, but Jim was the fortunate one, he saw him.

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: Things have been very scarce this fall, and we`re not anticipating having a record year. I`d be very happy if we came up with a total of ninety species for the whole count for this whole Quogue to Water Mill census. In this particular area, if we see fifty species in a day I think we`ll be fortunate. We have had as much as 110 species on the whole count, that was a count record.

MILLER: Why is this such a bad year?

FIRST BIRDWATCHER: (Laughs.) There`s so little that`s really known about the comings and goings of birds. One can`t say, really. It might be weather, it might be food. We know that the last couple of winters have been exceptionally severe, and perhaps part of the explanation is that some of the birds that wintered locally expired in the past two winters.

That`s a clapper rail; this is a common bird in the summertime on the salt marsh.

MacNEIL: That may not be your idea of how to spend a cold winter Saturday, but the people who do it, as you can see, take it very seriously. Dr. Elvis Stahr is president of the National Audubon Society, after a number of other careers, including a time as Secretary of the Army in the Kennedy administration and spells as president of West Virginia and Indiana Universities. Dr. Stahr, without meaning any disrespect to birdwatchers, why would anyone really care how many birds there are?

ELVIS STAHR: One would care for a number of reasons, not perhaps quite so much how many birds there are as how many species of birds there are, but the reasons could vary all the way from worrying about how few to worrying about how many. The blackbird problem in areas of the South is an example of the latter concern, and anybody interested in that -- and it is a serious problem -- maybe should write us and we`ll at least explain it to them and what to do and not to do. But that`s an aside --I suppose quite aside from the fact that most people really like to learn and like to know more. And learning about birds is one of the most exciting things there is to learn about. The information can be put to very solid use for people.

MacNEIL: Give us some examples of that, what use your annual count has been put to.

STAHR: Well, since it`s been going so long we can really see and document changes in habitat, the environment; and remember, the environment the birds live in is really the environment that we live in, too.

The life support system of this planet is just one system, really. The fact that certain kinds of birds such as marsh hawks have been declining in numbers reflects the fact that we`ve been destroying more and more of our wetlands, our estuaries, the swamps, where birds of that kind normally live. The fact that certain other species seem to be in decline is due to the fact that, in all likelihood, we`ve been cutting down their habitat, the grasslands, the great prairies being a notable example. And you see changes in the weather, too, you know. The fact that we now have mockingbirds and cardinals in New England where none were counted, say, fifty years ago, may well be an indication of some kind of climate cycle.

MacNEIL: Has anything ever changed as a result of the count? Have people done things differently because of what you`ve found?

STAHR: We think that having these data has contributed to a number of changes. It`s undoubtedly been part of the basis for the Coastal Zone Management Act, which was passed by the Congress only about five years ago.

It`s had a great deal to do with the uprising against the big boondoggles, the great dams that are built at taxpayers` expense to benefit a relatively few people -- which, quite aside from the economic wastefulness, have great ecological destructiveness. But you have to document that, and the bird count has contributed to a number of concerns of that kind. But it`s an indirect sort of thing. Very few people, I suppose, change their behavior overnight because of some statistic in the bird count. The statistics are published each year in this publication of ours called American Birds, and this is just the one that was published this year for the count. It`s a very thick volume, as you can see, and there`s a lot of data in it; and that`s been going on now, as you said earlier, for -- this is the seventy- ninth year.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you; we`ll come back. Besides having a serious purpose, birdwatching has become big business. There are said to be ten to twenty million birdwatchers in this country, and they spend a lot of money on it -- more than $170 million a year just on birdseed to make the birds come to them; and some people will go to any lengths or expense to make the birds happy while they dine. But for the aficionado, here`s where the real dollars go: from the soles of their feet to the tops of their head, birdwatchers spend an estimated $500 million a year. On top of that is a steady income for the publishing and travel businesses. But is it all really worth it?

George Plimpton, author and amateur birdwatcher, has found out the hard way.It all seems rather elaborate, Mr. Plimpton. Is it worth all the fuss, birdwatching?

GEORGE PLIMPTON: Well, I think so; it`s enormous fun. I think if you`re a collector of anything -- stamps or paintings -- that birdwatching, collecting birds, can provide as much fun as almost anything. There`s the spirit of the search, there`s great excitement if you see a rare bird. Also I think we rather envy birds; they move, they`re free. You see one in the wild, and automatically there should be a type of excitement in that. People keep what are called life lists in which they list down the various types of birds they`ve seen, and as they get more and more and more it`s like filling a stamp album except that the bird provides, I think, more fun than the stamp. It`s wild, you can hear it`s songs, there`s always an adventure in seeing it; it`s a wonderful occupation.

MacNEIL: What exotic or unusual bird trips have you been on?

PLIMPTON: Well, the last one was to the Seychelles in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I was there doing a story for Sports Illustrated on something else, actually; but it`s a fascinating collection o islands because it`s right plunk in the middle of the Indian Ocean and there are many species there which are nowhere else. There`s a brush warbler there which is found on an island about the size of four city blocks, and that`s the only place in the world that it`s found. There`s a paradise flycatcher there -- same thing, he lives in one grove; black parrot in a forest. So if you go through the Seychelles you see these birds, and if you collect birds, as I do, well you`re pretty big business in any group of bird people because they probably haven`t seen them.

MacNEIL: How many birds have you collected in your bird stamp album so far?

PLIMPTON: (Laughing.) Well, I don`t actually keep a list. There are people who are very, very careful about keeping lists, and if they hear of the Ross` gull in Chicago and they haven`t got it on their list they`ll just take off, and they`ll go there and they`ll put it on their list. I can`t remember what the really -- for the United States around 900 is a very, very high list...

STAHR:I think much too high for the U.S.

PLIMPTON: Much too high for the U.S.

STAHR: For the continental.

PLIMPTON: For the continental it`d be about right, but people really go all over the place to get as high as that. There are 6,000 birds altogether, different species, in the world, so 900 in the continental United States doesn`t sound like a lot; but 901, 902 are probably very, very rare birds indeed, at least in the continental U.S.

MacNEIL: What is your finest moment as a birdwatcher?

PLIMPTON: Well, I caught a glimpse in southern Mexico of a bird called the horned guan, and he`s a great big turkey-sized bird with an odd sort of neon protuberance that comes out of the top of his head, and he lives in the cloud forest, way up; and he`s very rare. And if you see him you just let out a great yelp. And I didn`t see one for more than, what, two seconds, just practically a silhouette glimpse of him, but I knew it was the horned guan, and the great birder that was with me, Victor Emanuel from Texas, said it was and so I took his word for it and let out a great yell of triumph.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Let`s move from the mystical and poetic side of birdwatching to the serious part. The federal government is very interested in birds,for one thing to protect endangered species. There are 214 birds on that list; the two considered closest to extinction are the California condor -- only thirty thought to exist -- and the dusky seaside sparrow, a native of Florida. The last count showed only twenty-four males and no females surviving, although it`s assumed there`s at least one lady dusky seaside sparrow somewhere.

The government also gets involved in birds which are not only safe from extinction but a damned nuisance. Take the case of the blackbirds at Herndon, Virginia. In July 1978 vast numbers of these noisy creatures made a roost of the town, driving people crazy with the noise and raising the threat of disease from the enormous quantity of their droppings. They were finally driven away by gunshot and the sound of their own distress calls played back to them on loudspeakers.

(July 25, 1978.)

YOUNG MAN: Well, they`ve been bothering us with their noise, and the smell is the worst thing of all.

INTERVIEWER: Pretty rank.

YOUNG MAN: Yes; yes. On a day like this when there`s a breeze, you can`t catch it too much. But when it`s a still night and it`s warm and humid as it`s been, it`s been miserable.

WOMAN: Well, we don`t cook out in the back yard any more; and we`ve had to shut the house up. We don`t have an air conditioner, just a window unit, and we`ve had to shut all the windows in the back of the house. It`s very hot in here because we don`t have any shade, and...

INTERVIEWER: You mentioned your dog.

WOMAN: Yeah, we bring our dog in at night because they messed all over him.

MacNEIL: The agency responsible for both endangered species and problems like the one we`ve just seen is the Department of the Interior`s Fish and Wildlife Service. Its director for the past five years has been Lynn Greenwalt. Mr. Greenwalt, how does the annual bird count affect what your service does?

LYNN GREENWALT: Well, it contributes significantly, I think, in that it provides some information about the trends of birds, whether they`re going up or down, and can in fact identify those circumstances in which we should pay particular attention to the continued well-being of a species. I think perhaps a case in point might be following the progress, if you will, of the American bald eagle. And when it was finally discerned that this magnificent bird was on the decline, we and others began to look very carefully at its well-being; and as a result, not long ago it was declared to be endangered throughout most of its range except in Alaska, and threatened in other parts of its range. So I`d say that bird count is most useful to us in providing information about long-term trends up or down in bird species.

MacNEIL: We mentioned earlier the analogy with miners taking canaries in cages to detect poisonous gases before the human beings could. Are there any target birds that you specially watch as indicators of environmental changes and things?

GREENWALT: There are a few, particularly those birds that are high in the food chain, that are the consumers of higher animals. One that we are looking at very carefully now is the black-crowned night heron, which is a denizen of marshlands, estuaries, places that as habitats are particularly vulnerable to such things as chemicals and other pollutants.

MacNEIL: What does he eat that puts him high on the food chain?

GREENWALT: He`s a consumer of fish and shellfish and creatures of this kind which themselves take up large quantities of various kinds of chemicals. And the black-crowned night heron is very likely to be the terrestrial miner`s canary because it is a fairly common bird, it is easy to deal with physically and will reveal to us, hopefully before it`s too late, the nature of the environment in which that bird lives, and as Dr. Stahr suggested, in which we live as well.

MacNEIL: Are you yourself basically optimistic about the interaction of man and the bird population of this continent?

GREENWALT:I`m convinced that man will continue to interact; to what benefit I`m not certain. However, I am by nature an optimist, and I believe that the interaction of man and birds can -- indeed, must -- be a mutually beneficial one. If we can create the environment that will sustain birds, if we can maintain the kind of habitats that are necessary to

sustain birds, then our own well-being is assured. That`s easier to talk about than it is to do, but I remain fairly optimistic about the prospect.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you, sir. Another reason for carefully watching bird habits is the danger they pose to aircraft. In 1975 the engines of this Overseas National Airways DC-10 sucked in a part of a flock of gulls on takeoff from New York`s Kennedy Airport. It burst into flames. All the people aboard got off safely, but the incident caused $25 million in damage to the plane. Other so-called bird strikes have been more lethal. A total of 140 people have died in such incidents, and both civilian and Air Force experts have been studying migration patterns and bird settling habits to avoid them.

This chart shows migration routes for two of the most common birds using American skies. It`s claimed that the annual bird count can show changes in the patterns and help controllers to reroute air traffic.

Captain Mike Harrison, a former jet pilot, worked for the special Air Force Bird Strike Hazard team, called BASH, which has been working since 1975 to reduce inflight collisions and the menace of birds at airports. Captain Harrison now works in a similar effort at the Federal Aviation Administration. Captain Harrison, how bad is the problem of birds hurting aircraft at present?

Cpt. MIKE HARRISON: I think to give you a little perspective, Robin, between 1976 and 1978 on the civilian side, we`ve had a total of seven accidents with four fatalities and seventeen people injured. The dollar cost of these accidents on the civilian side runs anywhere between seventeen and forty million dollars a year to repair engine damage, damage to windscreens on aircraft. On the military side, we`ve lost a total of nine aircraft and had eight others seriously injured and we`ve lost four pilots. Now, the difference between the two, civilian and the military side, is the military problem is primarily that of high-speed, low-altitude bird strikes, where the Audubon Society data is most valuable to plan low- level routes; and on the civilian side most of our bird strikes occur on and around the airport itself.

MacNEIL: You actually use the Audubon Society annual count for routing of flight patterns and things?

HARRISON: It`s used primarily from a historical standpoint. To give you a specific example, the F-111 fighter fleet at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico utilized some Christmas bird count data provided by Audubon to identify particular areas where the bird count showed an increasing population of birds. We also use the data routinely in planning such areas as avoiding low-level routes around colonial bird roosts, which are also provided through data from the Audubon Society and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

MacNEIL: How often is air traffic actually rerouted because of birds? Civilian and military.

HARRISON: This is kind of hard to define, primarily because in certain time periods of the year it`s a rather major effort to change flight paths. Probably the best example, if I can get away from birds to cite a specific, is in the San Antonio area we have a major problem with bats. during the summertime; and so the Air Force Office of Scientific Research developed a program through a university contractor whereby the Federal Aviation controllers can provide both military and civilian pilots warnings of the particular bat movements. We have the same situation with...

MacNEIL: I thought bats had better radar than planes had.

HARRISON: Well, unfortunately, though, the speed differential is such that we catch up with them.

MacNEIL: I see. Okay, thank you. Do you count bats, Dr. Stahr?

STAHR: (Laughs.) I don`t think the Christmas bird count has turned up many, but those that do turn up are counted, even though they are not technically birds.

MacNEIL: I see. Well, look, we`ve heard a lot about the importance of counting birds and why you do it. I`d just like to ask each of you in the few minutes we have left: all the information that is being collected from all this birdwatching that`s going on -- what are the birds telling us about what we`re doing to the society? What are we learning from this? Would you care to have a stab at that?

STAHR: We`re learning a few good things and a few bad things about our own behavior, I think. One example of our own behavior affecting bird life, and vice-versa, perhaps, is the growth in numbers of the house spar row, or the English sparrow, as it`s called, and the starling, both of which flourish close to human beings and get along just fine. But you see, the growth of suburbia, the urban sprawl and so forth has given them a great new lease on life, but they have crowded out the bluebird, and we all know that the bluebird is not seen very much any more. On the other hand, there are places where the effluent from sewage plants has actually attracted birds and provided them a good deal of nutrition. That is not, of course, what the purpose was, but it isn`t always bad.

MacNEIL: It`s a spinoff of our society. Mr. Greenwalt, what kind of message do you in the Fish and Wildlife Service think we`re getting in general terms from all these studies of birds? Are we wiping the birds out, are they coming back because of our concern for cleaning up the environment? What`s happening?

GREENWALT: Some birds are coming back, particularly those that we give special attention, and I think especially of the whooping crane, which is virtually a symbol of the conservation movement in this country, which has come back from a number of about fourteen in 1941 to a present level of nearly 100. It`s also telling us, I think, that we can have a profound impact on our fellow creatures. The loss of 300,000 acres of wetlands per year is a fairly ominous story, and the decline in certain species of birds clearly reveals that it is possible for man in his endeavors to wipe out his fellow creatures, birds included.

MacNEIL: Dr. Stahr, finally, in just a short time, why does man need birds? I mean, I know they`re beautiful and they inspire us, as Mr. Plimpton has said, but why do we need them?

STAHR: Because they play a role, and indeed a key role, in the web of life, the balance of nature, the life support system. Just a quick example, the blackbirds that are such a nuisance during the winter in some areas of the South, in the summer consume incredible quantities of insects in the North, in the cornfields and so forth; they`ve saved many crops. In the month of June alone it`s estimated that something like 75 million tons of insects are fed to the young of blackbirds in the Northern cornfields.

MacNEIL: That`s fascinating. We have to leave it there, I`m afraid. Thank you very much. Thank you in Washington for joining us tonight That`s all for tonight. In closing, on behalf of myself and Jim and Charlayne and all of us at The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, we`d like to wish each of you a Happy New Year. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.