In the World Series, competitors are allowed to use the iBird app – which plays back a birdcall, chip or song – in their cars, but not out in the field, to prevent other birders from making a misidentification or disturbing the birds. While Johnson said that the app is a good tool, he’s still a believer in learning birdcalls by getting out there in the field. Plus, he objects to the overuse of the iPhone by some people to attract birds, which causes the birds to expend unnecessary energy: an issue that has caused some national parks to ban the use of the devices. “I’ve also seen some bird photographers doing unethical things,” he said. “Guys like myself and Mark and other birders, we’ll confront people.”
(Photo by Brendan Lally)
On the other hand, the explosion of birding in the last few decades has definitely been good for the birds. The increase in feeders has so boosted the food supply that a few birds once uncommon in the Hudson Valley are now regulars, such as the Northern cardinal, Carolina wren and red-bellied woodpecker, he said. One of the negative trends that he has observed in his decades of birding is the fragmentation of forests from development, which is reducing the number of migratory thrushes. “They have big territories, and aren’t going to nest in people’s backyards,” he said. Loss of grasslands is another problem, causing drops in the Eastern meadowlark population.
In cases where open fields are being replaced by forest, the shift is not as bad as the building of houses or a mall, he noted. However, just because there’s a forest doesn’t mean that the habitat is healthy. Lack of an understory due to the overpopulation of deer, which eat the low-lying plants, is impacting many neo-tropical songbirds, such as warblers, he said. “You have to have a vertical structure, because there are birds that inhabit different levels.”
Some man-made activities have increased the diversity of wildlife, such as creating rights-of-way for power lines. “You have forest birds on each side and chipping sparrows and golden-wing warblers in the clearing,” he said. Unfortunately, the spraying of herbicides by the utilities since the last blackout is diminishing those birds, he noted.
Another gripe is the constant mowing of the medians along the highways, which is bad for wildlife – and actually reduces safety, since the freshly cropped grass attracts deer, which are clearly a hazard (they’re also attracted to road salt in winter). Also, it doesn’t slow down a car running off the road the way that high grass does, Johnson said. Mowing the median off the Taconic Parkway once every two or three years instead of all summer long would result in abundant masses of wildflowers, attracting butterflies, birds, honeybees and other beneficial critters. It would enhance the environment as well as save on energy, emissions (the mowing machines’ engines are a particularly bad source) and taxpayer dollars.
“As Larry [Rymon] used to say, there are conservationists out there who don’t know it, such as the cheap uncle who turns out the lights and turns down the heat to 60 degrees,” he said. For sure, being cheap is much better on the environment than the behavior of folks who “in wintertime want their building at 80 degrees and summer at 58 degrees.”
Johnson, who lives on a couple of acres in Rhinebeck near a 1,400-acre conservation district, acknowledged that his yard “is a bit extreme. I have a general wildflower book, and probably 90 percent of the species in it you can find on my property.” An “intermittent stream” on his land and a couple of nearby vernal pools attract amphibians; wearing a headlamp, Johnson carries the salamanders across the road during their breeding migrations on rainy nights in early spring. He has meadow, scrub, forest, understory and high grass.
“The funny thing about landscaping is, you just have to manage it to propagate those things,” he said, noting that he mows only very occasionally. “All important plants will naturally occur. You just need to foster their growth, not mow or weed-whack them.”
For more information about birdwatcher/shopowner Rodney Johnson, or his Grand Cru Beer and Cheese Market at 6384 Mill Street in Rhinebeck, call (845) 876-6992 or log on to grandcrurhinebeck.com.
