Marian Sole is one of the field trip coordinators for the Alan Devoe Bird Club in Columbia County. Her exceptional community-building skills are a great driving force in fostering a sense of connection for bird lovers in the county and beyond, and creating a supportive space for all who are interested in birding. Building meaningful bonds in real life is more important than ever in today’s social media age. Marian shares how birds make it easy for us to connect with each other regardless of our differences, how you can support the citizen science projects happening in our area, and what actions you can take right in your own backyard to help local birds.
This interview was recorded on January 22nd 2025, and broadcasted on January 25th 2025 on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7 FM. The transcripts have been edited for accuracy and clarity, with minor additions made in collaboration with the interviewee.
Interview Transcript
Mayuko Fujino: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
Marian Sole: Yes. I'm Marian Sole. I live in Ancram in southeastern part of Columbia County.
MF: You are one of the field trip coordinators for the Alan Devoe Bird Club, and you also coordinate community science projects. What do you enjoy about this role of coordinator, and what are the challenges?
MS: Coordination is not as interesting to me as the fact that these are citizen science projects that you’re actually contributing data and collecting it for, whether it’s for Cornell’s eBird or all the different projects that happen throughout the year. There are probably about six to eight different citizen science projects that happen throughout the year. You have the Eagle Count, you have the DEC’s raptor surveys over winter. You have the Waterfowl Count. You have the breeding bird survey in June that’s done, I think, by DEC, where you travel about 25 miles, stopping every half mile for resident birds. You’ve got the Thacher Hawk Watch in September, and then you have the Christmas Bird Count in December. Also, there’s Project Feeder Watch, a backyard project thing that Cornell does. So, there’s a lot of opportunities where you can do citizen science. But actually getting to have enough people that are interested in doing all these different projects, I think, is where the coordination of the field trips arises.
You really want to have as many people as possible helping you on these, because if I go out by myself and go down the river and look for eagles, I may find probably maybe 60% of the eagles there. But if I’ve got multiple eyes looking, we’re going to have a lot more people, we’ll find a lot more eagles, we’ll find a lot more, or we hear more birds. If we’re going on a bird walk, there’s a sort of a limit to how many people you want on the bird walk. But you do want probably about 10 to 12 people, because that’s enough pairs of eyes that you’re going to find things that you wouldn’t otherwise find. So, I enjoy doing that.
When I retired, I felt like, what do I want to do with my life? And I think citizen science projects are connected to things that I really like doing, like being outside and birding, so that seemed natural.
MF: So when you coordinate these projects, it really means that you try to get people to participate. And do you decide on dates?
MS: You want to figure out what you might be seeing. So, right now, for example, coming up in March, maybe we’ll start to see some more of the ducks coming through. Right now, there are few ducks because the ponds are frozen, and the river’s now frozen, so there’s nowhere for the ducks to go. So, as the water thaws, we’ll start seeing ducks migrating north, coming through. And then, we’ll start to see shorebirds coming through in March, April, and then warblers coming through in April and May, into June, and then we’ll get the ones who are actually breeding, (locally) that we get to see.
So every month there's something different, a different type of species that you're really looking for. We want to do walks where we can get to see a number of birds, a number of species, but we also want to have birds that are going to be attractive to non-birders. Eagles are attractive to anybody. Whether you’re a birder or a non-birder, it’s exciting to see an eagle. So we can usually get people who wouldn’t normally come to the Eagle Count. Generally speaking, it’s very hard, I think, if you’re not a birder, to go on a warbler walk. They’re so much smaller, they move so fast. They’re very hard to get people on them.
What we found is that, if we do walks at the same places with the same organizations year after year, you tend to get some of the same people coming out, and they get better at finding things. We’ve done a lot of walks at Clermont Historic Park. We tend to have some of the same birders come out each year. They don’t come to other walks, but they come to that one because they’re Friends of Clermont, and they like doing it there. And, over time, they’ve really gotten better. They’ve learned how to hold binoculars, they’ve learned how to find the bird through the binoculars, which not everybody can do starting out. People often don’t know how to set their binoculars up.
And I think we can help make it easier for people who are beginning to think about looking at birds. Maybe they’ve got bird feeders, and they’re trying to see them, but they really don’t know what they’re looking for, or what they’re looking at, or how to find the birds.
When I was first starting to bird in Connecticut, I would bird with somebody who’d lead bird walks, and he would never tell us about birdsong. And so I thought he was just a magician, that he could find these warblers and know, before he almost put his eyes on them, what they were. But it’s because he knew the birdsong. And it wasn’t till I came here, upstate New York, and people like Larry Federman really taught me about how to find birds, that you realize there’s so many different things you need to know to really have a fun time out there. So, I think a lot of these trips are really ways of educating people about birds, but also how to make it more enjoyable. They might remember the bird, something they saw the bird doing, or they might remember something that will help them recognize that bird again when they see it.
MF: So, these community science projects are not just for people to contribute to science, but, for them, it’s a great opportunity to learn.
MS: Yeah. And it spreads the message to a lot of other people about bird conservation, and the need for it, and why, and how many we’re losing.
MF: While improving their own skills of finding birds and listening.
Do the organizers of the projects tell you where to go? Well, Christmas Bird Count, the National Audubon Society assigns us the range…
MS: With Christmas Bird Count, you just have a sector that you have to do. But when we set up our regular walks for the public — I set them up with Chris Franks (ADBC’s other field trip coordinator) — or when I set up the Tuesday walks for ADBC members, I’m trying to make sure that we cover the whole county.
’m trying to think about what birds might we see in that month, and therefore what would be a good place to go. So, for example, when we partner with the New York Ornithology Association Young Birders Club, which is a great group of incredibly excited kids, who are unbelievable in their knowledge of birds. They’re usually ranging from about age 10 to about 16. When they’re going to come join us, we have to think about, okay, if they come in May, they’d really want to see warblers. Where in our county do we have good warblers? And we know that we’ve got records that show warblers are really good at Overmountain, at Drowned Lands Swamp, or up at Hand Hollow. There are a number of different places we could take them. I wouldn’t go walking there necessarily in January, but because I’m looking at warblers in May, and that’s where I’m going to find them. That’s how we’ll arrange where we go.
MF: How about the Eagle Count, that’s organized by the Army Corps of Engineers…
MS: I think it started off with the National Wildlife Federation, then somebody else took it over, and then somehow the Army Corps of Engineers ended up with it. They’ve been running it for the last 10, 15 years, and there’s a sort of a route that’s always been done. So, that’s why we start at Stuyvesant Landing and we stop at almost every public place along the river until you get down to Clermont when you do the eagle count. They’re only now really trying to get their routes in place, but it’s a route that’s been done a long time. It’s a site that has a number to it, and they’ve assigned a record to it so they can see what was done in prior years.
MF: So, the stops that we make during our Eagle Count, it’s not so much that they, Army Corps of Engineers, tell you specific spots, but they say, from here to here by the Hudson River is the area of survey. And local birders decide which spots would be best to do that.
MS: And if we wanted, for example, if we thought, oh, well, it really could be interesting to do an eagle count somewhere else in the county, we could propose that we do that, and they would be interested. There are people doing these eagle counts up in Alaska. They have them doing it by, oh, I don’t know, heli-skiing, whatever you call it. You know, they drop people off, and off they go and they look for eagles. They have people who are kayaking to find them. I mean, there’s all sorts of different ways that people do these counts, depending on where they are.
MF: So, in Columbia County, people like you and Nancy Kern (one of the Alan Devoe Bird Club’s longest‑tenured members) and Chris Franks would be the ones who decide on specific spots.
MS: Nancy basically set that route up some time ago, or, I think, even before her. I think it was set up earlier in the 1980s. They set that route up, and we’ve pretty much followed that ever since.
MF: I see. It’s like a knowledge that’s passed down over generations.
MS: Yeah. From what I can gather from Nancy recently, the very first one was just done at Alford Docks, and they just did it in one place. I think it’s a private marina now, but it’s just north of Stockport, between Stockport and Nuttenhook, along the river.
MF: So the numbers must have been small… I mean, the population being small too, at the time.
MS: Well, yeah. And back then, the number of birds, the number of eagles, would have been very, very small. I think if you go back to, like, 1963, they were down to about 400. And now, there are like 70,000 pairs. I mean, it’s just a dramatic increase. It’s one of the really good stories. One of the only good stories. [laughs]
MF: It seems like, whenever people talk about “good stories,” Bald Eagle recovery is always the one that comes up.
MF: When you decide on where for us to go, unofficial or members-only walk, how do you decide?
MS: Our members live all over the county. So, I try to make sure that we have some bird walks in the north of the county, some in the south of the county, some in the middle. So we’re not always going somewhere, you know, somebody doesn’t have to travel an hour to get to every walk. I try to vary it. And we have enough great sites, and we are very lucky in this county. I think the Columbia Land Conservancy must have eight to ten different sites that you can go on and walk. And that’s phenomenal. We have probably about 30 miles of trail on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail. And you’ve got the Electric Trail going from Hudson all the way up to Albany. We have miles and miles of trails that we can do.
And then, in the winter, you figure, well, it’s going to snow. We can’t walk a trail, depending on how deep the snow is. So then we have to think about, are there roads, are there places we can park? All those kinds of considerations come into play when you’re setting a walk up.
MF: Do you also reference the previous years?
MS: I keep records of about the last five years worth of walks that we’ve done, how many birds and species we’ve managed to find on each of those walks, which ones have been absolutely no good. And if they were no good, was it because it was snowing or, was there some weather related reason? I keep records to think where we can go. One of the best walks we did last year was on Jim Tuttle’s property in Kinderhook, which we’d only done once before. But his father had been one of the early members of the bird club back in the 50s, and they’d always done a walk on his property on, I think, the January 1st.
MF: Oh, that's a nice way of starting a year.
MS: Marion Ulmer (one of the Alan Devoe Bird Club’s longest‑tenured members) had shared a historic note that showed this, and I talked to Jim about it and he said, oh, I’d love you to come over and check out the property. So we did, and we went in late April, which was just as the warblers were starting. And I think we had something like 51 species that we found on that walk, which was like the second or third highest number of species that we got on any walk last year. So whether Jim likes it or not, I’ll be asking him again this year. [laughs]
MF: I’ll make sure I’ll be there this time. I was not there for whatever reason last year.
MS: When the warblers are starting to come through, it’s a great time to get a number of species. You’re lucky if you can get 20 species at this time of year (January), because there are fewer species around. So many migrated south
MF: I’ve heard people saying the numbers are rapidly decreasing — is it about the species sighted?
MS: It's not necessarily the number of species that are decreasing, but the number of individuals that you see. I’ve only been in upstate New York since 2011 or 2012, and even I remember going on a walk at Olana in migration season, and we had — oh, it was just like warbler heaven. I mean, there were just so many warblers there, and so many of each species there. Now, when you take that same walk, we probably see five to ten fewer species, but the number of birds that we see are even less. We might only see one Nashville Warbler, but we might have seen five on previous walks. Or, we might only see one or two Black-throated Green Warbler, but we might have seen a whole ton of them before. So the actual number of individuals, I think, has generally gone down dramatically.
MF: I often feel bummed out that I came in this too late — Never too late, but…
MS: Thhere are still birds! [laughs] It’s still worth going out. And some species we’re now getting that we wouldn’t have got back then. When you started out, if you were walking here in the 1980s, you would not have seen Red-bellied Woodpecker. And that’s probably the most common one we have. But that’s because of climate change, and it started to extend its region, its range, and now you see it further north. But you wouldn’t have seen it back then. So, there’s some pluses and minuses to it.
MF: We, birders in Columbia County, are very fortunate to have your exceptional community building skills, such as organizing, networking, supporting, and maintaining connections. You’re really good at keeping in touch with people. You’re also very well connected with birders outside Columbia County — the surrounding counties, like people in Dutchess and Ulster. Do you think this skill just came from your natural personality, or a particular career or experience helped you cultivate it?
MS: I think it’s probably just the nature of the job I had for 40 or 50 years. I worked for one of the largest multinational insurance companies in the world, and I was a manager of sales people who were all wholesalers, all over the country. I traveled a lot, I had to meet new people all the time. I had to constantly introduce myself and give talks, and manage a couple of hundred people working underneath me. So, I’ve been used to trying to work with a lot of different people in a lot of different situations. I guess I’m used to doing that, and I don’t have a problem doing that.
And probably, I've managed for so long, I tend to be a bit bossy and therefore organized. And so, you know, if somebody’s not sure they will, I’ll just step in and do it because it needs to get organized. And I’m a decision maker. I can’t stand indecision. If there’s a pause, I tend to probably jump in. I don’t think it hurts when it’s just coming to organize something, which, to me, seems like it should be really easy: to organize where we go next week, or where we go the week after that. It shouldn’t be that difficult. But apparently, it is for some people to make a decision on that. So, yeah, I jump in and do it.
MF: I find it funny because both you and Chris Franks are…
MS: We both had this insurance background, yes. For my job, I was traveling — and I think it’s the same for Chris — I was traveling all over the country in my job, and I would always travel with a pair of travel binoculars in my suitcase. Anytime I had a break, anytime I had an hour or two to myself, I would be off birding. I’d be the only person at the local transfer station wearing heels, pearls, a suit, with a pair of binoculars, because I’d heard that that was where you might find a particular species. So, I would be out there always, you know, dressed for work, but with the binoculars, traveling with them in the car. I met so many interesting people that way.
I remember being on business out in California, in Newport Beach we used to go to a lot. And in Back Bay — fabulous place there, an estuary — it was the first time I’d ever seen avocets and oystercatchers. And the birders who I met there were just so friendly and helpful. They were like, “What else would you like to see?” You know, I said, well, I’m staying over the weekend because I’ve got business next week. “Oh, we’ve got the club walk on in a canyon on Saturday. Come join us there.” Birders are very friendly. Birders come in all political persuasions. They come in all religious persuasions, all income persuasions. It’s a very democratic, with a small d, kind of group of people. And you meet a lot of very interesting people that way. But they tend to be incredibly helpful people. Birders like to help and share what they’ve seen, and they like to help you find the bird. I think it’s a really welcoming kind of community.
MF: Yeah. Even within our own small group, I’ve met people who I wouldn’t have if I didn’t participate in it. Because I’d been surrounded by artists my whole life.
MS: Not many insurance people, right? [laughs]
MF: I didn’t know a single insurance person, I don’t think, in my past years. [laughs]
MF: You're originally from the UK. What led you to living in Columbia county? And when did you start getting involved in Alan Devoe Bird Club?
MS: My first husband was the reason I came to America. I stayed because I had a child here. And I got into birding very briefly, because when she was growing up, I realized I didn’t know any of the birds. When I looked out the window at our bird feeder, I didn’t know what any of them were because I’d grown up in England and I knew a few birds there. Not many, but I knew a few birds there. So, I did learn some birds. She had no interest, but that’s okay. [laughs] I got obsessed with it. Then, when I retired, we were in Connecticut, and we thought Connecticut was very expensive, and we wanted to save money. She (Marian’s daughter) had moved to upstate New York, so we looked it up; we looked at Columbia County as a place to move to. When I got here, I just fell in love with birding. I thought I would do more gardening, but actually, I’ve ended up birding most of the time in retirement.
MF: Your work experience really informed your ability to be a good community builder. I was wondering if immigration also had anything to do with it. Because this is not where you’re from, you don’t necessarily have your own people already. You kind of have to cultivate it from scratch.
MS: And moving upstate, to Columbia County, we knew absolutely nobody here, and my daughter was about an hour away. You’re there and you’re like, well, I might as well make friends. I mean, I’m gonna have to have friends. I’m not gonna be able to live without friends. So, it was just forced. And the natural way to do it was to go out hiking and run into people. Or, look at Columbia Land Conservancy calendars if they would have a walk. I would go on that, and I’d meet a few people. And I actually ran into at least two other Brits up there in Valatie who became close friends. I think birding was a way of connecting with people that I needed to connect with, because you can’t live alone.
MF: Right. A lot of people have a hard time finding new connections when moving to a completely new place.
MS: But I think you have to put yourself forward — I mean, you’ve done that, you’ve joined all sorts of different groups. I think it’s the same thing, and maybe, having been an immigrant from the beginning, you always felt like you were the odd person out, that you were a little bit different. You know, you spoke with a different accent, you said things in a funny way to other people.
MF: Right.
MS: So maybe part of that was I just got used to having to put myself forward and see what happens.
MF: Yeah. That was my experience too. I was never that kind of person before immigration, but you have to when you’re in a new place.
MS: Yeah. I mean, I’m not saying that I love having to do that. [laughs] But, on the other hand, what else am I going to do? I’m not going to sit back and just bemoan the fact that I don’t have anyone to go do birding with. Things like birding, you could actually ask people. You don’t have to wait for a bird walk. You can just ask people if they’d like to go birding on Thursday, or whatever date you come up with, you can go and find someone to go do something with. And I think, when you have something like that to do, it’s an easier way of making friends because it’s not as personal. When you first meet somebody, it’s somewhat objective. It’s a safe space, I think. Safe way to meet people, to connect with them.
MF: You don't necessarily have to even talk to each other because you're trying to find birds.
MS: That's right. But you can still have a good time. I will say that I, when I do go out birding by myself, like I’m going down to Florida in the next two weeks. Most of the days I’m down there, I’ll be birding totally alone. But I will probably talk to any number of people while I’m out there, because there’ll be other people out there birding, and I’ll be talking to them to see what they’ve found. They’ll be asking me what I found. We’ll be helping each other find things. People are just going to be really friendly. And I am doing something I like at the same time.
MF: Yeah. You already have something to talk about.
MS: And chances are, I might run into them the next day at a different site. If you’re there for a week, you see some of the same people. And that’s kind of funny. What always cracks me up is, I’ll be listening to somebody’s accent who’s birding around me and realize, you come from upstate New York as well, don’t you? They’re down there because it’s February. If they’re out birding in February, they probably are from the north, because Floridians think it’s too cold, even though it’s only 60 degrees.
MF: You said you can find somebody to go bird with. I guess the easiest way to do it is to join the club.
MS: Absolutely. You should join the club. There are great clubs around here. You’ve got the Alan Devoe Bird Club in Columbia County. You’ve got the Ralph T. Waterman Club in Dutchess County, the Hudson Mohawk Bird Club for the Capital Region and above. There’s also the Audubon Society of the Capital Region Club. And there’s the John Burroughs Natural History Society in Ulster County. The interesting thing is that they’re all filled with people who are really, really good on birds. They may not be ornithologists per se, by background, but they've become really, really good at identifying birds and knowing bird behavior. I mean, in our club, we're really lucky. We've got two or three people I can think of, off the top of my head, who actually have degrees in ornithology. You know, from Bill Cook to Will Yandik to Kathy Schneider. And so you've got people who really, really know what they're doing.
We’ve also got a lot of other people in the club who are good at identifying birds. They can help you do a bird walk as easily as somebody who’s got a PhD in ornithology. So, yeah, there’s a lot of backup. There’s a lot of support. There’s a lot of places, and it’s really easy. We, as a club in Columbia County, have a walk, at least one walk, almost every month. We go through July, I think we only have one in August, but then again, we’ll have two or three in September and a couple in October.
So, the prime migration months will always have about two, at least a month. And, anybody’s welcome. I mean, we’ve had people who’ve come out with only children’s toy binoculars, you know, the plastic ones that really don’t see anything. And then we’ll have people who’ve got expensive ones but don’t know how to use them. And all levels of birding ability, and they’re all welcome. We can, especially on our weekend walks, we can really help people find more birds and get comfortable.
MF: Do you have any suggestions for people who are maybe not into birding yet, is there any actions that they can take to help local birds?
MS: Join the bird clubs and go on the bird walks. Put up your feeders, particularly, you can have them up now (winter), depending on where you live. You probably don’t want to have them up necessarily from April to September because of bears. And learn what birds are in your feeder and watch them. There are some people who really, really are good at watching birds. They don’t just say, oh look, there’s a titmouse. They look at it and say, well, what’s that tufted titmouse doing? And you’ll get more pleasure. If you’re only going to be birding in your backyard, you’re going to get more pleasure if you really watch what they’re doing and how they're interacting. Why is this one kicking the others off the bird feeder? Who’s actually in charge of that bird feeder? Is it the Red-bellied Woodpecker or is it the Blue Jay? How do the Blue Jays get the Red-bellied Woodpecker off the feeder? You can get quite intense watching how they’re interacting, and it’s a lot of fun.
You’ll also realize, then, when you’re watching them in your own backyard, different birds like different seeds. And there are some birds that will never go to your feeder. Like, you’re not going to get American Robin sitting on your feeder. They’re ground feeders. They’re going to be looking for grubs in your grass.
When you get interested, you want to put the plants in your yard that are going to attract birds that either will do so because of the grubs and things, or because of the nectar, if it’s a hummingbird, or because of flowers and seeds that they’re going to like. Some birds are just seed eaters, some are fruit and seed eaters. Some of them will change as the winter comes along. They’ll have to switch over to seed. Most birds only eat insects when they’re feeding their young. So, insect population is really critical to conserving birds, actually. You can avoid spraying things like Roundup in your yard that are going to kill the insects. Because you won’t get birds if there are no insects. You’re not going to get birds in the summer because they’ve got to feed their young, and their young will just die because there are no insects. We all know that we used to have our windshields covered in insects as we drove 20 years ago. They’re not anymore. We don’t have that problem anymore. There aren’t as many insects around.
MF: And that lack of insects reinforces the bird population decreases.
MS: Absolutely. There’d be fewer birds. But you can help. You can also put up bird boxes for bluebirds or for tree swallows or house sparrows, providing places that they’ll nest. We don’t have as many fence posts and things that bluebirds might have nested in once. Now, we need to provide bird boxes for them.
Don’t get rid of all the dead trees that fall down in your yard because there’s a lot of grubs and insects in those dead trees. They’ll feed. It’ll be a habitat for them. Getting rid of brush at the end of the fall is not great for birds. A lot of animals and insects will actually hibernate in that brush, and there’ll be food for when the new ones come back, when the birds come migrate back in the spring. So, you know, don’t always clear up your yard. That’s probably not what gardeners like to hear. But not cleaning up your yard will really help bird populations.
MF: Woodpeckers are often on the dead tree on the ground.
MS: They love dead trees on the ground. If you’ve got a brush pile, you’ll find it full of White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos. So, yeah, there’s a lot of things that you can have in your yard that will attract birds. So that’s a good way to get started.
MF: It's really nice to be able to support wildlife right at your own house.
MS: Yeah. And I think people need to be more observant as they’re walking around. I’m always amazed how, you know, I’ll be walking along one of, say the Harlem Valley Rail Trail, someone will say, “So, what have you seen?” And you’ll say, “We’ve seen probably about 30 different species.” And they’ll go, “Really? That many?” They’ve maybe noticed two birds on their whole trail. I think people have to be more cognizant, more aware, when they’re walking. What are they walking past, what are they actually seeing? It’s not that hard.
n most backyards, if you’ve got a bit of garden and you’ve got some plants and things, you probably can have the backyard species list, easily, of about 20 to 30 species, even if you just have a very small backyard. I probably have had over 100 species coming through my property at this point. But that’s because I pay a lot of attention to whatI’m seeing around, and I’m recognizing things that fly over, etc. Most people don’t know they could have anywhere near that number of species. In the summer, or in May, probably just off the bird feeders and around the bird feeders, there could be easily 20, 25, different species around in the garden. I think people need to be aware of that. People don’t always notice what’s right outside.
MF: And if they know there's this much wealth — if you don't know there's wealth, you have no way of protecting it either.
MS: That's right. I remember one of the first times I traveled to Florida, my friend down there had a dental hygienist who was a birder. And she lived right in the middle of a subdivision, in the middle of the really, really busy concrete jungle of Florida. But she had completely turned her very, very small backyard over to birds. And she knew that at 4 o’clock, the Painted Buntings would come flying into her yard and be on her bird feeders. So, you know, quarter to four, we sit down on chairs in her backyard, and, sure enough, in come the Painted Buntings. She had a species list in her backyard of something like 78 birds. 78 species in a little area in the middle of a completely built up area. It was clear she created this haven for birds flying through. There’s all sorts of things you can do to actually create and really help with the conservation.
MF: That's really great.
MF: Is there anything you look forward in the coming months, bird wise?
MS: Yes, the ducks will be coming back in much greater numbers in February, once the water starts thawing. So, you really need to get out on all the lakes, ponds, and rivers. And look and see what kind of different ducks there are out there. Different species of duck, or grebe, or loon. You might well see a Common Loon, as they’re starting to migrate north. We often have them on Copake Lake, for example. And then, come April, there’ll be the shorebirds; the little waders will start to come back. You’ll start to maybe hear Killdeer, and to hear and see Solitary Sandpipers, Spotted Sandpipers. They’re passing through, they’re going north. Most of the ducks that we see around here breed all the way up in northern Canada and up in the Arctic. So, they’ve got to get there. And they’ll be coming through in breeding plumage, usually, which is nice to see.
MF: You know, that's what I was a little confused about.
MS: Yeah. The breeding plumage is always different in different species. Even amongst ducks, it’s not always the same.
MF: And the timing that they change to breeding plumage.
MS: Yeah. As we start seeing them in February, March, they should be — more of them will be in breeding plumage.
MF: So we get to see them in their fanciest attire.
MS: Or, at least in their transitional, on their way to the new attire. If you start seeing Wood Ducks right now, they may be a bit drab, but you’ll start seeing that transition. And then you’ll start to see the real, fancy Wood Duck. But they’re south at the moment. They’re probably in New Jersey having a good time. We’ll probably see Wood Ducks in about another month.
MF: Okay, well, I look forward to that, too.
MS: Hopefully you and me both see them.
MF: Yes! Thank you.
Bird-inspired music of the month
A turkey track from Come Around to the Backdoor : Blues, Country, Jazz & Gospel from 1924, a compilation released by Tompkins Square on January 17, 2025, and field recording piece by Abby Lee Tee, released by Falt on January 21, 2025.
