Friday, 10 September 2021

Re: [cobirds] History - Old bird checklists

Jared et al, 

What a fascinating 1917 Denver checklist (along with his preface) by W.H. Bergtold! Thank you so much for sharing it, Jared. He notes in the preface or intro notes how different a (barren) place Denver had been on his first visit in 1881, from what it had become by 1917, enriched by all the irrigation and planted trees--with the resulting increase in bird diversity and numbers. An observation applicable to cities/communities all along the Front Range and eastern plains obviously--and what if he could see our bird lists now?!! 

I once owned a copy of Elliott Coues' Birds of the Colorado River Valley, Part First, published in 1878 [https://archive.org/details/birdsofcoloradov00coue], which had been discarded by Princeton University (and sent to me after moving to CO in 1974 by my brother back east)--but this copy had been re-bound in Princeton (sometime in the late 19th century) with once-blank journal pages interspersed that had been mostly all filled out by one Walter Scott, who had travelled west to Colorado from Princeton for a couple birding trips sometime in the 1880's. So this was his annotated, handwritten & original checklist bound inside the birding guidebook he used during his trips. Very fascinating reading, especially alongside Coues' text!** Unfortunately that book was one of so many other items (including my own yet-digitized checklists from 1966-2012 that perished when our house turned to ash in the Waldo Canyon fire. So yes, of course and PLEASE all you fellow "old" longtime birders, do get your invaluable & truly priceless checklists digitized asap, by someone, whether in ebird or other formats, so they stand a better chance of being part of a (maybe) lasting public database, for both the research and pleasure of future others!

     **As far as I can tell Coues never did any Part Second or Third, tho' he lived until 1899 and was prolific in his ornithologist/naturalist/and other writings to the end. [https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Coues%2C+Elliott%22&sort=-date&page=4] Part       First of his CO River Valley bird guide includes only many of the passerines--only 140 species not including the doves, hummingbirds, owls, hawks & other raptors, kingfishers, swifts, woodpeckers, icterids, corvids, grosbeaks, sparrows or finches. 

Elliott Coues, by the way, was a co-founder of the AOU, and like Bergtold was also vocally (and in writing) adamantly opposed to the recently imported and "cultivated" European House Sparrows. See his monograph "The Ineligibility of the European House Sparrow in America," 1878 [https://archive.org/details/jstor-2447786/mode/2up]. His gloves are off and his cultural biases flaring ("so far as I am aware, there is not a scientific ornithologist in America, among those who have expressed any decided opinion, who are in favor of the wretched interlopers which we have so thoughtlessly introduced, and played with, and cuddled, like a parcel of hysterical, slate- pencil-eating school-girls."). Fun reading.

Interestingly, he also wrote a short monograph in late 1876, "The Destruction of Birds by Telegraph Wire," foreshadowing our similar modern-day concerns with tall buildings, glass windows, and poorly situated wind turbines. He was on an October horseback trip between Denver and Cheyenne WY, and recorded over several miles the number & type of dead birds (mostly horned larks) found underneath the recently strung telegraph wires stretching along much of his route, and from that projected a rough estimate that "...many hundred thousand birds are yearly killed by the telegraph..." [https://archive.org/details/jstor-2448602/page/n1/mode/2up]

Anyways... Ornithological history is great stuff and will only be enriched by having the records of Hugh and other local & travelling birders preserved. And as Ted Floyd recommends (as far as ebird entries) be SURE to include context & comments from those original checklists/journals! It's not just the species & numbers.

Good birding, researching & data-entering.

Marty Wolf
NW CO Springs

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 3:13 PM Jared Del Rosso <jared.delrosso@gmail.com> wrote:
I want to just agree with everything said already about Hugh's checklists.

And also, while we've been on the subject of historical checklists, I want to add this -- if anyone would like a bit of fun, check out the below article from 1917 by W.H. Bergtold, in which he describes his sightings around Denver (mainly Cheesman Park, where he resided). I encountered this essay several years ago, when I was also birding Cheesman. I particularly appreciated his note that Poorwills are "Infrequent migrants" to Cheesman Park, a fact several of us relearned about a full century after Bergtold documented it. But most tantalizing is his note that Long-eared Owls are "Frequent visitors to all the parks." 

Find the article here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4154774. It should be readily available, as it's public domain...

Bergtold also published a fascinating essay, albeit a profoundly hostile one, on House Sparrows; if my memory of it is right, he celebrated the introduction of automobiles as depriving House Sparrows of their favorite food (horse droppings) and putting them at risk of accidental deaths to strikes with automobiles. 

- Jared Del Rosso
Centennial, CO
On Monday, September 6, 2021 at 11:58:03 AM UTC-6 li...@archpml.com wrote:
Hugh, if you are still listening,  i am a fairly new birder who would be happy and excited to take your hard copies and input into ebird, yours i suppose,  or another location digital format.   It would be a great learning experience for me, and in the process if you would not mind, i could pick your brain on occasion.    I know you and your wife were and are legendary in the Colorado birding community.  Anyhow, if you are interested in this,  obviously logistics would have to be worked out,  but please consider if this might be an option.  Selfishly, it would really help me improve my skills and knowledge. 
Linda purcell

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From: cob...@googlegroups.com <cob...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Charles Hundertmark <chunde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, September 6, 2021 10:40:20 AM
To: Scott Somershoe <ssome...@gmail.com>
Cc: Cobirds <cob...@googlegroups.com>; Pat O'Driscoll <pato...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [cobirds] History - Old bird checklists
 
One thing that has impressed me about Hugh is the extent to which he has entered his old field notes into eBird. Like Pat O'Driscoll, I find when I enter eBird reports that Hugh has been there many years before me.

Chuck Hundertmark
Lafayette CO

On Sep 6, 2021, at 10:05 AM, Scott Somershoe <ssome...@gmail.com> wrote:

I completely agree with Patrick. I'd add a story about a long time Tennessee birder and big time world birder who moved to Florida about 7 years ago. Before Terry Witt moved, he threw nearly 50 years of birds records in the trash. Nothing is in EBird or Avisis or archived in any way. He told me he threw everything out because he didn't think anyone would want them. Such a shame. Unfortunately he passed away about a month ago. 

Even if the records are in EBird, archiving the original field notes would be worth the effort. 

My 2 cents. 

Scott Somershoe 
Littleton CO
Green big year stands at 253 species. Zzzzzzzz. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 6, 2021, at 9:23 AM, Patrick O'Driscoll <pato...@gmail.com> wrote:


I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck.
Pre-eBird paper lists are important artifacts of our birding history, especially as so much of our recordkeeping has shifted to digital.
And Jeff, your remarks are a great reminder for all of us to archive our earlier lists on eBird.
Those of us eBirders who regularly visit Denver City Park know something about this.
Sometime after the Cornell Lab invented eBird, a prominent Colorado birder who visited City Park regularly in his youth transferred all of his written birding lists from there into the database.
Between 1947 and 1950, young Hugh Kingery recorded hundreds of visits  and sightings in the park.
eBird tells us now that Hugh was responsible for the first 80 species sightings in Denver City Park, all in that period. (More than three decades later, in 1987, he added two more first sightings.)
Hugh's 320 "Denver City Park" eBird lists far outnumber those of the rest of us.
His is a shining example of the importance of saving all of our sightings to the Cornell Lab's brilliant invention.

Good eBirding!

Patrick O'Driscoll
Denver



On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 7:48 AM Charles Hundertmark <chunde...@gmail.com> wrote:
Veteran field ornithologists like Hugh should check into archiving their old checklists at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. It's an excellent archive housing the records of several of the prominent field ornithologists from Colorado's past.

Chuck Hundertmark
Lafayette, CO

On Sep 6, 2021, at 7:41 AM, Jeff Percell <jeff.p...@gmail.com> wrote:

You should add the checklists onto eBird, so that everyone can benefit from the data.

On Sunday, September 5, 2021 at 4:58:36 PM UTC-6 ouz...@aol.com wrote:
Does anyone know of a place that might have an interest in saving old bird checklists? I have a packet several inches thick of everything from Chatfield to Rock Creek to Durango to Bonny and I'm ready to give them away or to toss them.

Hugh Kingery

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