Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 8, 1995 TAG: 9505080017
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Finnel should know. He is one; a birder, that is.
But before the end of the day, which will include stops to observe everything that chirps or flies at a pond, an orchard and along the James River, Finnel promises there will be times when the newcomers will wonder if the half-dozen seasoned birders among them are aloof. That's because accomplished birders have a habit of separating themselves from everything but birds, he said. They can become immune to weather, distances, discomforts and even the people around them.
"You feel like you are being snubbed by them," he said. "It isn't that they don't want to be with beginners. They are trying to concentrate on what is around them."
Finnel is surprised at the number of people who have turned out for the Roanoke Valley Bird Club field trip, which has been designed to teach "fundamentals in the field."
Fellow bird club member Jim Ayers counts 25 participants.
"We had almost 40 people for one trip this year," said Finnel. "Of the regulars, there might have been eight or 10. Normally, it is just the regulars who show up, and you have maybe six to eight people."
Interest in birding has been growing. It has become less whacky and more mainstream. With the new faces comes the need to provide rudimentary instruction, said Finnel.
"For years, on club trips it always was the same faces,'' he said. ``Every now and then a face would drop out and you'd be one shorter."
Finnel is part of a movement in birding to make the activity more appealing and accessible to newcomers.
"There is a whole lot of talk in the birding world about new blood, about a new generation," he said. "People need to be indoctrinated. I really don't think bird clubs are that accessible to the general public. You have to communicate with people, help them over the hump."
Helping them over the hump in this instance was Finnel's frankness that the strangest bird the beginners might see would be an established birder.
But as it turned out, there were other odd birds as well.
When the group arrived at Daleville Pond, Finnel pointed out a double-crested cormorant basking on the water.
"Nice start," said Woody Middleton, one of the veteran birders on the trip.
The cormorant hardly is a thing of beauty. It has a large, elongated body and flies with a distinct crook in its neck, leaving some people to question whether nature played a practical joke when designing this creature, especially when they hear its pig-like grunt.
It isn't rare in Southwest Virginia, but it is more at home along the ocean or in the Chesapeake Bay, where fish are plentiful.
"This is an example of geographic diversity in a particular area," Finnel says of Daleville Pond. Back at the parking lot, he had told the budding birders they would find the greatest variety of birds where there is a mingling of water, woods, fields, wetlands and hedgerows.
The pond is large enough to offer a resting-feeding spot for a cormorant, and its shoreline and beyond provides a mixed habitat for other species. One side is bordered by a grove of mature trees. Nearby are open meadows, brush and even a small marsh.
Sizes, sounds and colors are keys to identifying birds, Finnel told the group.
"If you pick one particular, distinguishing characteristic, the bird can be identified right off the bat," he said. "The eastern kingbird, for example. If you said to me or to Jim [Ayers] that you saw a big bird out in the field, a gray bird that you didn't know what it was, but it had a white stripe across the end of the tail. Someone who is a little more experienced will know exactly what the bird is just because you mentioned the white stripe across the tail."
A rich series of notes in a belt of trees causes the birders to turn their attention away from the cormorant. Fingers point and binoculars go up.
"Orioles!"
The birders locate both an orchard oriole and a northern (Baltimore) oriole.
"It is real good to get a glory bird like that in a position where everyone can see it," Finnel said.
Thirty minutes had been allowed for this stop, but as the count grows time is forgotten. There is a Carolina wren, a catbird, a killdeer, a red-winged blackbird, a goldfinch, a ruby-crowned kinglet, a cowbird, a snipe. The diversity has a couple of young brothers, Joshua and Aaron Diamond, reeling with excitement as they share binoculars and a bird book.
When the sounds of nature are eroded by the roar of a leaf blower at a nearby house, the birders return to their vehicles for the journey to Woodpecker Ridge near Troutville and later to Arcadia.
Finnel is leading the convoy when he looks into his rearview mirror and no one is following him. Well back up the road the other vehicles have stopped.
Soaring above the pond with breathtaking mastery is an osprey. One of the new birders gladly adds "osprey" to her short, but growing, life list of species.
by CNB