All For the Byrd

“Get up!  Get up, you lazy son of a _____!!”  

Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd and Peregrine Falcon

Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd bolted upright, jolted from his brief unplanned snooze.  “What! What! I'm up! I'm up!”.  Luckily, he didn’t jump up and hit his head on the low ceiling of the blind.

Doug Davis, realizing the misunderstanding, roared with laughter.  “Not you, Dr. Byrd.  The Pigeon!”

Both of them were sitting in a duck blind, on the edge of a salt marsh on Fisherman Island, Virginia.  And the pigeon in question was the bait in a live trap which they had set in order to trap, band, and release birds of prey - mostly small to medium-sized hawks.  The pigeon had to move around in order to attract the hungry raptors.  Both the pigeon and Dr. Byrd had dozed off in the heat of the day.

I knew about this, because I was doing the same thing at the same time.  From 1977 to 1980, I was a Biology graduate student at William & Mary (officially, The College of William & Mary in Virginia).  I wandered all over eastern Virginia studying birds of prey, and Bald Eagles in particular.  My major professor, believe it or not, was Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd, of the Virginia Byrds (e.g. Admiral Byrd).  

Fisherman Island is located at the eastern end of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, connecting Norfolk, Virginia to the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  It’s an ideal place for finding all sorts of birds, as long as you are prepared to fight off the dreaded Eastern Shore mosquitoes.  Eastern Shore mosquitoes don’t fly.  They take taxis!  Mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks - they’re all part of the bargain if you want to study wildlife biology in eastern Virginia.

Doug was also a Biology grad student, and we were working with Dr. Byrd.  The purpose of the trapping and banding was to be able to track the movements and migration patterns of these birds. The live trap looked like a ring of metal, divided in two halves, connected by hinges and a spring.  Looped onto the rim of the trap was a green net of soft twine or plastic.  The pigeon’s feet were carefully (and gently) tethered to a metal disc in the center of the trap.  Should a hawk swoop down to take the bait, Doug would pull a cord to snap the trap shut on the unsuspecting hunter.  Generally, the pigeon remained unscathed (though not particularly sympathetic to the cause of wildlife conservation). 

Now, back to our story: I was in a similar blind not far away.  We had all started together in the same blind.  But Doug, a native of Norfolk and an experienced bird trapper, and Professor Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd, Ph.d., had ceded the blind to me because nothing was happening, and they were getting bored.  I was  the new guy, so I got to babysit the more unproductive location.  “Come and get us if you need some help!”.

So, off they went, leaving me to my own devices.  I knew the theory of how this was supposed to work, but never had experienced the operation in practice. So I cracked open a cold Coke and a bag of Fritos, and made myself as comfortable as possible, given the heat, humidity, and parasites.

In order to make this work, you have to keep an eye out for movement in the sky.  When you see something, you pull on the string that is connected to the pigeon’s foot, so that it flops around as if it was injured - a tasty morsel.  Twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour...I don’t remember how much time passed, before I thought I saw a speck circling over the marsh.  I got my pigeon moving.  The speck came closer and grew larger. It circled closer.  Long tail, wings in a shallow V, conspicuous white patch at the base of the tail...a Marsh Hawk!  Come on baby.  Come to mama.  Got a nice hot lunch for ya.

Marsh Hawk

He swooped in and landed next to the pigeon, checking it out.  Closer...a little closer...SNAP!  The trap sprang over him.  What a great feeling!  Touchdown!  Basket! Home Run!  A moment of ecstasy, followed by one of terror.  “Now, what do I do?”  OK, Norm.  You can do this.  The one thing you’ve got going for you is your willingness to humiliate yourself.

Getting the Marsh Hawk out of the netting, while simultaneously keeping him from flying away, and not getting stabbed by one of his needle sharp talons, is no small feat. Birds of prey aren’t accustomed to using their sharp beaks as weapons the way that smaller birds do.  Their weapon is their talons. The trick is to reach underneath the trap with both hands, secure his wings by holding them closely to his body with both hands, and slide him out from under the trap with his talons away from you.  Careful, careful....done!

So there I was, both hands occupied holding a very nervous Marsh Hawk - about 18 inches long from beak to tail, with a wingspan of about 45 inches.  Now what??!!

Well. I might as well go down and show my prisoner to Dr. Byrd and Doug.  They’ll know what to do.  So I trekked through the dunes to the other blind, about five minutes away.  

-  “Hey, Guys!”

-  “What?”

-  “What do I do now?”

Curiously, they came rattling out of the blind.  Their jaws dropped!

That was all we trapped that day.  The hawk was banded and released, no harm done.  And Yours Truly rode off into the sunset.  Miller Time!  

Every evening, at 5 PM, without fail, Dr. Byrd insisted it was “Happy Hour”.  Sometimes, a few of us grad students would assemble at Dr. Byrd’s home to sip on his favorite libation - Chivas Regal.  I’m sure I deserved it that day.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than 30 years since that day on Fisherman Island.   

And Dr. Mitchell A. Byrd is now Director Emeritus of the Center for Conservation Biology at William & Mary.  Doug Davis, last I heard anyway, was working for the US Army Corps of Engineers as an Environmental Biologist.  But that was a long time ago.

I completed my Bald Eagle research, and got my MA in 1980.  The only job I ever got in the field was as a volunteer, re-introducing captive-bred Peregrine Falcons into the wild, on Great Fox Island, Virginia in the Chesapeake Bay not far from Crisfield, Maryland.  

Ten months later, I came to Israel on the Sherut La’Am volunteer program.  I volunteered for a while with Dr. Yossi Leshem at Beit Sefer Sede Har Gilo.  He headed the Israel Raptor Information Center at the time, and was studying Lappet-Faced Vultures in the Negev. Then I volunteered with Misrad HaPenim for a while, working to encourage research on the upper Jordan River.  

And that, my friends, was the end of my biology career.

Now that I live in Israel, I keep talking to myself about getting over to the Kfar Etzion Field School to do some guided bird watching.  The main problem is that my Hebrew is so embarrassing.  Really have to get over that one, though.

Dr. Byrd is about 88 years old now.  I haven’t seen him since the day I left Williamsburg, Virginia in 1982.  One of the last things he said to me was “We’re going to miss your curly little head around here.”  I’ve tried to contact him several times in recent years, to let him know how grateful I am for those years I spent with him at W & M, but I have never heard back from him.  Perhaps he’s too busy, not interested, doesn’t really have anything to say, or simply doesn’t remember me.  Or maybe the Chivas Regal has taken its toll ! But it makes me happy to think about him.

What a trip I’ve had through life.  So many different goals and experiences, seemingly unrelated.  Were they all dead ends, or necessary pieces in the jigsaw puzzle?  I have tons more snapshot memories like this one, and I just don’t know how they all fit together. 

Is everyone somewhat overwhelmed by the journeys life has taken?

Or is it just me?