Nikon and The Brevard Nature Alliance present the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival Brevard Community College, Titusville Campus 1311 North U.S. Highway 1, Titusville January 23 - 28, 2008 -- Titusville, Florida A celebration of birds and wildlife.     eMail

Jeffrey A. Gordon
How Much Can One Bird Weigh?

From a purely physical standpoint, most birds don't weigh much. A robin weighs a few ounces, and a hummingbird weighs a few grams. Even a Bald Eagle only weighs about 10 pounds. But despite their low weight, individual birds can have a huge impact on our lives.

Roger Tory Peterson, the great artist, author, naturalist, and conservationist, traced his interest in birds to a brief encounter he had with a lone Northern Flicker. That flicker, placed on a scale, might register 5 ounces. Yet that one bird was the catalyst for a life that changed the lives of millions, both human and avian. That's a powerful flicker.

Most birders have such a "spark" bird--the one that turns them from a casual observer into an aficionado, willing to endure long miles and early hours in search of new species. And over the course of a birding career, there are certain individual birds that stand out as turning points, or milestones.

They may be birds that thrill us with their rarity, their beauty, or their amazing, intricate behaviors. Some are memorable because they were so completely different than what we expected, others because they fulfilled our expectations so completely. I can point to a Cedar Waxwing, a Pine Siskin, and a Yellow-headed Blackbird that changed the course of my life, all before I learned to drive.

Often, though, a bird sighting is not just ours alone. We share it with other birders, sometimes hundreds of others. And thus we develop a kind of community life list, a collection of watershed birding events that profoundly alter the way we seek, perceive, identify, and understand birds thereafter.

In 2002, birders participating in the Space Coast Birding Festival reported a flock of Cave Swallows at Viera Wetlands. Cave Swallows are uncommon but regular in South Florida, but had never before been seen in Brevard County. When Florida birder Murray Gardler went to check out this report, he was stunned to find a swallow with a white rump. It turned out to be none other than a Mangrove Swallow, a tropical species never before recorded anywhere in the United States.

That tiny bird caused a sensation. Many of us will never look at a flock of common Tree Swallows quite the same way again--we'll always be watching for one with a white rump, even though we know the chances are still slim.

Moreover, Viera Wetlands, which is at base a wastewater treatment plant, has become hallowed ground, in a way. A visit there, always interesting, takes on an extra dimension--the place has history. A track record.

Sometimes a bird need not be rare at all to cause a sensation. Witness Pale Male, the Red-tailed Hawk that took up residence in Manhattan's Central Park in 1991. Merely by positioning himself in a place where millions of people would see him, this one bird became a true celebrity, even inspiring a tidal wave of protest against the condo board that tried to remove his nest.

Conservationists often decry the tendency of people to place too much emphasis on the lives of individual animals, while caring less than they should about entire species, even whole ecosystems. But I think this phenomenon of "spark" birds shows that there can be a positive side to this type of personal, individual attachment.

Because Roger Tory Peterson saw that one flicker, millions of flickers and other birds have had their habitats conserved. Because of a wayward swallow in Florida, a sewage pond has become a tourist destination. And who knows what ripples may spread from the thousands of people who went to visit the Boat Pond in Central Park and wound up peering into the eye of wildness.

Of course, one never knows in advance when a bird is going to be someone's spark, or an entire community's. And this is a major reason I think it's so important that we keep planting our yards with native plants that feed and house local wildlife, and that we do everything we can to preserve the habitat we have left. And why we need birding events ranging in scale from the Space Coast Birding & Wildlife Festival on down to elementary school field trips.

In these ways, we set the stage for people and birds to encounter each other in a way that can truly change the course of lives. Pretty heavy stuff, for such featherweight creatures.

Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge

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