A local group of birding enthusiasts – the Mad Birders – has sought out local birds together for two decades.
Each year, the group meets for a series of walks through spring and early summer, when birds are most active while breeding. At that time, “they are their most bright, beautiful, colorful selves,” group member Jeannie Elias said.
The group also meets once in December or January – gathering early in the morning, splitting up into small groups and counting all the birds they see and hear within a 15-mile radius spanning most of The Valley and parts of Northfield, Roxbury and other towns. Then, they end their day with a potluck and send their bird count to the National Audubon Society.
Waitsfield resident Pat Folsom started the Mad Birders in 2004 with Sandra Bruggerman, who has since moved to the midwest.
Folsom was a fairly new birder at that point – having started in 2000 when she moved back to Vermont, after being away since graduating from high school in 1960.
GREAT PLACE TO SPOT BIRDS
With friends, she walked the Mad River Path – a trail connecting Warren, Waitsfield and Moretown – and realized the path was a great place to spot birds. She started gathering information about who was knowledgeable about birds, “and it just kind of grew,” Folsom said.
Currently, Folsom runs the group, which has grown to over 60 members, alongside Elias and Nancy Turner.
One of Folsom’s favorite places to bird in The Valley is Knoll Farm in Fayston. The group also frequents the Mad River Path, Pony Farm in Moretown and a property in Granville. For the past few years, they’ve searched for birds while paddling around Blueberry Lake in Warren.
Elias joined the group in its first year. She moved to Vermont from San Francisco, California, in 2000 and was struck by the profusion of local bird songs. “I immediately became fascinated with bird song and my curiosity would not let me sleep until I figured out which birds were making which songs,” she said.
‘BIRDING BY EAR’
Elias checked out cassette tapes called “Birding by Ear” (Peterson Field Guides) from her local library and listened to them while driving to and from work in Montpelier. The audio guide breaks bird songs down into categories like “name sayers” – or birds who sound as if they’re speaking their names, and “sing songers” – like scarlet tanagers, who sound like a robin with a sore throat, or rose-breasted grosbeaks, who sound like robins that took singing lessons.
Elias recalled learning about the song of the goldfinch, which sounds like “potato chip, potato chip, potato chip,” she said.
Migrating birds arrive in The Valley from February through April and are easy to spot. But when trees fill in with foliage during May, they become a lot harder to see. Elias said she teaches people to listen – to “use your ears to zero in on a location, then figure out where to look.”
Folsom said she loves birding because it’s always teaching her something new – that “it’s just fun to watch birds’ behavior because they’re always up to something interesting.”
She also loves it because it’s an activity for any age group – with Mad Birder participants ranging from 14 to 91 years old – and because it’s an inexpensive hobby. All that’s needed is a pair of binoculars, a sun hat, a good pair of walking shoes, and possibly some bird books for identification. “I’m in my 80s,” Folsom said, “so I like a book I can look through. I’m just old school.”
Folsom does some digital tracking too. She started entering her bird sightings on the app eBird back in 2004, with over 2,100 sightings now logged. Others use Merlin – a free app that identifies bird species.
RARE BIRDS
Both Folsom and Elias said their most memorable experiences while birding involved encounters with rare birds.
For Elias, it was spotting a Golden-winged Warbler while on the boardwalk near Lawson’s Finest Liquids in Waitsfield – a bird hardly found in Vermont.
“That bird makes a ridiculously funny sounding call, and Pat and I both knew it,” she said. “We heard it at the exact same time, looked at each other, looked at the bird, and couldn’t believe what we were seeing. It sounds funny, but we were jumping up and down with excitement.”
The Golden-winged Warbler, Elias added, makes a very distinct sound – and not a pretty one. “Beee buzz buzz buzz,” she mimicked its call.
Rare bird sightings aside, Elias tends to make birding part of her everyday life – cracking a window open to hear bird songs early in the morning while still lying in bed, or noticing a common sparrow trapped in an airport while traveling.
“I’ve always got one eye and one ear out for the birds,” she said. “I’m basically just birding all the time.”
Mad Birders will meet next at the Pratt Refuge in Duxbury on Saturday, September 7, at 8 a.m.
