DOGGY BAGS FOR BIRDS by Roger Tory Peterson in
May/June 1991, Bird Watcher’s Digest
Caracaras and black vultures eating boiled rice? Rails and barbets gulping down leftover
spaghetti? If we ourselves find these items of food palatable, why shouldn’t they? When we are feeding birds we are so imprinted by the traditional suet, sunflower seed, and cracked com formula, designed for woodpeckers, chickadees, cardinals and finches, that we seldom try anything else. At a fish camp in the Okavango in Africa, little black crakes and two kinds of barbets came to the feeding tray to finish off the spaghetti we had not eaten. I am sure that robins would love spaghetti, so why not put it out for them?
In this short article I shall expand on that idea and would welcome any far-out observations of your own for my files.
To birds, the most important thing is food; and as an obsessed bird photographer I find that if any bird-whether a heron, shorebird, or duck-is giving all of its attention to catching things, I can cautiously approach much closer than I could otherwise. If the bird is just standing there, nervously aware of me sneaking up with a big lens that stares at it like the huge round eye of some monocular monster, off it goes. But if swarms of little fish or shrimp are commanding its attention I can shoot a whole roll.
’Tween Waters Inn at Captiva is where I stay when I am photographing at my favorite birding hotspot in Florida, the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Down by the boat dock there are four herons, each one a different species, which regard the place as their own.
The smallest and oldest heron is a little blue, an adult, which has been around the dock for at least eight years. It has never bred, and is so dependent on the leftover bait that the fishermen give it, often by hand, that it probably could not make it on its own. A bum? Not really. Its contribution is aesthetic and educational. Many of the weekend tourists would otherwise never see a little blue if they didn’t take the loop around the nearby Ding Darling. Hundreds of people have taken this bird’s picture, and Sir Peter Scott commented when I introduced him to the little darling: "How sweet!"
Next lowest on the Ardeidae family totem pole at ’Tween Waters is a snowy egret, nearly the size of the little blue but with its plumed finery a bit more of a showoff. These two little fellows in turn give pride of place to an elegant great egret that strides the rails ofthe yachts, then comes in to get bits and pieces after the cleaning board has been hosed down. But the real action occurs while the fish are being gutted; the resident great blue heron with its murderous bill dominates the squabbling pelicans. If , another great blue flies past it is quickly chased away by numero uno.
Up and down the coast, nearly every boat dock or waterside estate has its own heron or pelican that regards the place as its own. These birds claim avian rights, and if they get a handout so much the better. Why refuse? In Audubon’s day, should a pelican come within
stone’s throw of a pier it risked being hit by a rock. Today people throw fish. I recall the
immature brown pelican that walked into the fish
market on the waterfront at Venice, Florida, and stood right in front of the counter!
Is such behavior counterproductive? Will such birds ever be able to take care of themselves? Most of their kind will lead normal lives if we do not destroy their environment. On the other hand, these few human-oriented individuals give
people great pleasure and are often the first introduction many people have to the natural world.
Storks can become almost as trusting as herons, as I learned in Captiva. On one of the canals an elderly resident, a Mr. Howell, feeds some of the local wood storks. Each day as many as 20 or more walk up from the water’s edge and wait in the garden until he appears at precisely 4:30. While they gather round he tosses small fish. There is a scramble and a lot of flapping for each fish. While I watched, one bird even tried to walk into his living room.
At a fishing camp in the Pantanal, in southern Brazil, the jabirus, those strange storks with
swollen necks, sponge off the fishermen, who toss them those fish that are too small to keep. It was in the Pantanal, a horizontal landscape of swampy islands and waterways in southern Brazil, that I witnessed the caracaras eating boiled rice. I was with Victor Emanuel and his tour group.
The caracaras were not the only . birds that gorged themselves on the soggy goodies. As we left the table after lunch in the open-air dining room, Brazilian cardinals, gray with red
topknots, flew in and perched on the teacups and saucers. Birds of other sorts flocked in to eat the leftover rice that the cook dumped on the sidewalk outside. Not only did cardinals by the dozen make short work of the white stuff, but also lesser finches, blackbirds, a jay or two, and, surprisingly, kiskadee flycatchers and even guira cuckoos. One Muscovy duck, apparently a wild bird, shoveled things down with its flat bill, ignoring the half dozen black vultures that were also getting their share. But the unreal thing was to see the caracaras; I counted 19 at one time, some so close that I could get frame-filling head shots showing every wart on their naked red faces. On the Kissimmee prairie in Florida I would have been lucky to get a distant shot with my 600 millimeter lens and its 1:4 extender.
We know that caracaras are opportunistic scavengers, but why rice? My guide, young Paulo, said that until recently a great deal of poaching had gone on in the Pantanal. Many caymans, the crocodilian reptiles that swim among the lily pads, were killed illegally for their hides. Once skinned, the bloody carcasses were left for scavengers. With such a dependable supply of food, caracaras prospered, raising plenty of young. But now that restrictions on poaching have tightened and ecotourism is on the rise there are
very few cayman carcasses. A good percentage of the rice-eating caracaras are immatures,
probably inexperienced birds hard put to make a living.
In my recent column about New Zealand I reported seeing on Kapiti Island an unusual
feeding devicea slim carved trough about four feet long and several inches deep which held sweetened water. This brought in the kakas, the strange endemic parrots that were formerly more widespread in New Zealand. Noisy and incredibly tame, they even accepted prunes from us when we offered them.
Tuis, iridescent blackish birds with a strange hairdo and two white tufts dangling from the
throat, also took their turn at the trough. We should experiment with troughs like these, with sugar-laced water. I am sure orioles would patronize them as would tanagers and grosbeaks.
In the nearby woods at Kapiti, wekas, which are flightless rails, would take bits of cheese from the hand, and so would one-but only one-of the saddlebacks, an endangered New Zealand endemic. What I would suggest is that we use more imagination in our efforts to attract birds. Let’s get beyond the white-breasted nuthatch level.
BRAZIL GUIDE
To the editor: (in July/Aug 1992 Bird Watcher’s Digest)
Dr. Roger Tory Peterson sent me a copy of your May/June 1991 issue, [in which he] made mention of my guidance during his visit to the Pantanal. As he says, I am young (28), but I decided already to dedicate my life to birds. So if any of your readers are coming to the Pantanal, I will be glad to show the best places for bird watching.
Paulo Boute.
WWW.BOUTE-EXPEDITIONS.COM
BLOG: http://brazilianpioneerbirder.wordpress.com/
pauloboute@hotmail.com (Alternate)
Tel.: +55 79 32231791 / + 55 65 3686 2231
