Beyond Your Doorstep by Hal Borland

Author:Hal Borland [Borland, Hal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3237-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-10T21:39:00+00:00

Chapter 9

A Badeling of Birds

Someday someone will write a usable book on how to look for birds, a book that will tell where and when to watch for each species. Until such a book appears, perhaps some of the hints in this chapter about habits and habitats will be of help.

ACCORDING TO AN ESTIMATE by Richard H. Pough, the conservationist, between twelve and fifteen billion birds regularly spend at least part of each year in the United States and Canada. This is almost 2,000 birds to the square mile, three birds to the acre. To a countryman this figure seems low. Mathematically, we would be entitled to only 300 birds on our hundred acres, and I am sure I hear twice that many within a hundred yards of my house any May morning.

The human population of this country averages only about fifty to the square mile, so there apparently are about forty times as many birds as people. Again this figure seems low, at least in the country. But here, of course, there are fewer people than the national average per square mile, and more birds than average. However you look at it, though, there are many birds and they are distributed over all parts of the country. This is a fortunate circumstance from any viewpoint, for besides being beautiful to look at and wonderful to listen to, birds are the best natural control of insects that we have. Even from a cold-blooded economic viewpoint, birds are a tremendously valuable asset.

Birds live almost everywhere on earth, certainly wherever there is food enough to sustain them. Penguins thrive in the Antarctic, waterfowl by the millions nest each year in the Arctic, ravens live in the furnace heat of Death Valley, horned larks and road runners thrive in the Southwestern deserts, condors live in the highest Andes. And the temperate regions of the United States have a great wealth of birds, some 1,200 species and subspecies.

The latest list of bird species state by state that I can find was published in 1936 and now may be quite out of date, but I doubt that the relative standings have much changed. On that list Texas stands first with 546 species and California second with 541. Both are big states with a wide variety of bird habitats. But number three is Nebraska, an inland state with no shore birds but still recording 418 species. New York, with 412 species, stands fourth. Then comes another surprise, Colorado, with 403. After that, in order, come Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Washington, with Arizona, the biggest surprise of all to me, tenth. Massachusetts stands eleventh. And my own state, Connecticut, is number sixteen on the list. Last of all is Idaho, with 210 species.

These figures are for the states as a whole. But even the major cities have a surprising quota of birds. John Kieran notes that more than 230 species have been recorded in New York City’s Central Park, and he says that any observant person can see at least 200 species somewhere in the city in almost any year.

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