My Adventures with birds

by Fred Schaeffer, OFS

© 2019-2023 Fred Schaeffer. Except for Images, those are public domain.

Florida Scrub Jay

Florida Scrub Jay

Aphelocoma coerulescens

This beautiful image of a banded Florida Scrub Jay is in the Public Domain via Wikipedia.org. A Scrub Jay measures 23 to 28 cm (9.1 to 11.0 in) in length, and weighs from 66 to 92 g (2.3 to 3.2 oz), with an average 80.2 g (2.83 oz). The wingspan of the jay is 33–36 cm (13–14 in). It has a strong black bill, blue head and nape without a crest, a whitish forehead and supercilium, blue bib, blue wings, grayish underparts, gray back, long blue tail, black legs and feet.

This is a protected species, special licenses are required to capture and band them. When I worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, I was able to obtain these permits and as such I have personal experience with this species. Generally, each banded bird gets an aluminum, numbered band, and one or more color bands so they can be recognized as individuals when perched. Most Florida Scrub Jay banding is done as part of a study.   /Fred S.

Throughout my Spiritual Reflections, I've alluded to the fact that there is another side of me - for 25 years, I've been banding and tagging birds in various states. Here are some notes from those unpublished files about that work. I've devoted much time and effort to Ornithological pursuits, that brought me friends and pleasure. I think, that work also brought me closer to the Lord.

Tobay and Fire Island, on Long Island, New York

I don't know what I liked first, planes or birds, but ever since Dad took me out to the dunes, north of The Hague in the early fifties, I liked things that flew, planes, birds, and speedy things of all nature. Even during my time in the U.S. Army near Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, I was involved in studying birds. During my Wall Street years, I started a bird banding station at Tobay (Town of Oyster Bay)  John F. Kennedy Wildlife Refuge, near the beach, which as far as I know, is still in operation but now by other people. That was in 1964 (before I turned 24) and each weekend I headed east to the Sanctuary, driving a Chevy Nova station wagon with real problems: it burned oil at an alarming speed. In 1966 I traded it in for a sparkling new red Volkswagen Beetle which was to give me six years of hard service during which it was stolen and recovered twice. For $1878 it was a bargain, it used little gas, and car insurance was palatable. 

When I started to work at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, I worked various shifts, usually four to midnight. Going home by subway, slowly moving along behind the garbage scow, a string of freight cars being pulled through the underground collecting filth. A half hour ride would often become one hour or more. I must have read all of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason mysteries during those hours all the while imagining the horrors of subway crime that are now an everyday occurrence. It was fairly common to get solicited by the "ladies of the evening" on Lexington Avenue near the 53rd Street subway entrance, and sometimes the lines were so long you had to elbow your way through... business must have been bad. 

My boss was a Surinamer, who spoke Dutch fluently and he was a kind soul who treated me with respect, the respect of one business professional to another. His assistant was a German­-American who had fought on the Russian front (for Germany) during World War II, a precise record­keeper as all Germans are, who work in administrative positions, and he also was always most polite and solicitous. KLM's communications department was unionized and there came a day that a layoff was imminent. My boss knew some communication types at SAS, the airline of Scandinavia, and though I took a salary cut initially, I got a part time job with them. I took it because their office was practically across the street where I lived at that time. Walking to work in New York... a luxury shared by few. This job soon became permanent and full time. 

During these years, bird banding at Tobay was in full swing. During the first five days at that bird banding station, we encountered a Lark Sparrow, the first and only of that species, an auspicious beginning. The station continued to grow by leaps and bounds in birds, bird banders and visitors. A bird banding station is a place where dedicated, licensed people catch birds in a lawful and safe manner, usually with nylon mist nets (often 40 feet long and 6 feet high), to apply a numbered aluminum band on one of the legs of a bird. There are different sized bands depending on the thickness of the bird's leg and overall size. I did this mostly as a serious avocation in New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Florida. I engaged in this work in Florida while employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on a professional basis. It was due to declining health that I was forced to stop banding in 1989.

Tobay was a neat setup. This was a piece of property deeded to the Town of Oyster Bay, with a brackish­ lake on it, and salt marshes on the north side bordering the Intercoastal Waterway. We put nets at various points, but the best setup was at the widest part of the lake, where the nets took up all the available room between the lake and the beginning of the salt marshes. This constituted a funnel­-effect from the birds' view point and vast amounts of birds were captured each year. There were days we got 500­ to 800 birds, and I recall one day with 1,024 birds. The predominant species was the Myrtle Warbler, now called the Yellow-­rumped Warbler. That was, because the predominant plant species were Bayberry, Greenbrier, and Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy grew there in vast acres reaching 6­ to 8 feet heights. Fortunately, I seemed to have built up an immunity to it but Tom used to get it quite bad. That was not unexpected because he'd often thrash through the brush to motivate birds into the nets. Also, the birds carried the sap on their plumage and I did quite often get it in small dozes between my fingers. If you've never had it you're lucky, but when you do get it, you go nuts... it itches ferociously!

It was often tough to set nets at Tobay because of the narrow lanes and the wind that was ever present along the ocean. In fact, this being a public sanctuary, it was necessary to set up every morning, and to take everything down every night. This could be a time-consuming chore, but practice makes perfect, and we soon had it down to a science. The nets are anywhere from 39.5 to 42 feet long, depending on the annual shrinkage caused by heat and humidity. The trick was to mark the nets in some way with the date they were put into use and then to use only those nets that were placed into use in the same month and year. We usually marked the holes (that would immediately fill up with sand when a pole was removed) with wooden dowels or some other non­metal marker, so that we didn't have to "pace" out each net length. That worked well as long as attendance during the week was low and as long as most visitors were adults. Kids tend to pull up any stakes or for that matter just about anything that wasn't attached to something else. We used primarily 0.5-inch out­side diameter electrical conduit connected in 5 ft. lengths by means of a standard knurled ring electrical conduit connector. Some banders used connectors with setscrews, but I detested these since netting always got hung up on them. Many banders use the full 10-foot uncut lengths but with narrow lanes and small cars it makes handling and transport too precarious. The 5-foot lengths just barely fitted in my VW Beetle, or in the subsequent Volkswagen "Fastback" model that followed. The bottom section of the conduit was hammer­ed down to a sharp point and I used to put corks in the tops to prevent water from getting into them. Folding the net so that it would not tangle was always a challenge and it wasn't until years later that a friend showed me a technique in Florida using an ordinary disposable plastic grocery bag that finally did the trick better than any other makeshift methods, wooden or plastic spools, used previously. The operations center of this station was a folding aluminum table with some visqueen suspended over it to keep the wind out. You can't accurately weigh birds in the wind, even when using a self dampening scale. This set of scales served me for a long time; if handled with care they can last a lifetime. Just about that time a new technique entered the arena, or rather, I should say that it was an existing technique that became more popular. That was the art of skulling. Skulling is a method whereby the researcher parts the feathers on a bird's head, approximately between the eyes, over the crown of the head, using a small amount of water to keep the feathers matted down and out of the way. With the skin exposed, the researcher looks through a loupe at the skull layer to determine a bird's age. If the surface is diffused with red, in other words no bony structure visible under the skin, then the bird can safely be classified as a "Hatching Year" bird, or one that has hatched in the year it is banded. If, however, a bony layer is visible, and this comes in various degrees, for late in the fall, the skull bone cap begins to form and one can actually see a "window" in the bone struc­ture, we can, in some species, still determine it is a young of the year, but if the bony cap is complete, that is no windows, and one sees the bony ends of the cartilage, the birds are AHY or considered "After Hatching Year". Depending on the month of the year, we can actually determine if a bird is in its second year or older. Most researchers that use banding as a sampling technique will keep vast notes, not only directives from the Bird Banding Laboratory (then Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, later U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and subsequently a department in the National Biological Survey.) but also notes gathered from literature pertinent to determination of age and/or sex. My non­banding friends often kidded me that if I wanted lessons in determining sex, I should go on dates more often, because with all this field work, dating, even if I were so inclined, was the furthest thing from my mind, and I guess it was noticeable. 

This banding effort often became a newsworthy event. We've been in the paper on several occasions, usually in the New York Times, but also in some of the local papers in that part of Long Island. Oftentimes we were also on TV. Relatively few birds were encountered at Tobay that were previously banded, however, a fair amount of birds which we banded at Tobay showed up somewhere else. The most long-­distance recovery was that of a Cedar Waxwing, which made it all the way to Tampico, Mexico. There it was stoned to death by some school children (imagine!) and their teacher sent me a nice letter in response for my thank you letter, which I always send to people who find my birds, even though the Bird Banding Laboratory sends them a "Certificate of Appreciation".

After the 2nd year at Tobay, we made a deal with the local beach staff so we could stay overnight in one of the stone square block houses at the edge of the parking lot, which was used for storage of beach umbrellas. There was sufficient room for a couple of guys in sleeping bags. We had to be somewhat cautious because the beach police didn't care for anyone sleeping in the area since, with the exception of the highway, the beaches were essentially closed. Fortunately, the Tobay staff finally gave us a key so we could get out the legal way. A less than legal way was to drive through the sanctuary on the fire road which ended near Jones Beach but if we were discovered there we were subject to arrest. This situation was also eased when we befriended one of the Peace Officers in the area who was nice enough to share a thermos of coffee with us in the mornings. We generally banded each weekend from September 1st to late November and or to a point that it got too cold there. Later in 1968 when I moved my operations to Fire Island National Seashore, under the lighthouse, we banded all winter and it was often brutally cold out there. We used a steel cabin set in the woods there, not unlike those used by newspaper stands, with a drop front, and used an Aladdin Stove in it, to keep warm though that wasn't always easy. The nets held up fairly well through snow and ice but there was a time that the poles were bent because of the weight of the nets with ice on them. That's when we got some fatter poles. I left the seashore in 1972 primarily due to a nasty dispute over "rights". The people of the town of Kismet (the next town east of Robert Moses State Park) were told by the Federal police that they could no longer use the fire road that went from the State Park to their town, which meant they needed to go 30­-40 miles out of their way to get to the ferry to get them to their part of the island. Well, the fact that us researchers could use the road and they couldn't led to a controversy, and there came a point that the debate got so heated that we felt it was better to leave well enough alone, and we pulled up stakes. The station was reopened on a less dramatic style in the next year, but by that time I had found a new territory to explore. 

One very interesting event, as far as birds went, occurred in 1966 when we discovered a Saw­whet Owl breeding in one of the boxes set out for a Screech Owls. There was a young man who loved to build nest and roosting boxes and these boxes were found all over the refuge. Saw­whets, by definition, aren't expected to breed near a salt marsh but rather in the woods and in any case, they usually breed in areas north of New York. I wrote a number of papers on that with photographs of the four young. When the birds fledged I thought I had seen the last of them, but in October of the same year I got a card from the Bird Banding Laboratory that the adult female had been shot (presumably by a hunter) and brought to a refuge manager of one of the Federal properties near Portland, Maine. This was very interesting because this was the fall migration and birds are expected to go south, rather than north. There was also another recovery of an American Redstart, a little colorful warbler, which decided to visit the city of Cleveland and managed to get there with­in 2 days after I released her at Tobay. Not only did this bird probably set a speed record but also, she flew to the northwest, rather than to the south. There were a number of storms in the area, but I have never been able to draw up a convincing scenario how this bird made it to Cleveland, considering temperature, winds and weather patterns. 

Actually, at Fire Island we had been testing birds flight activities by setting up two netting areas about 3/4 of a mile apart. Sometimes we would catch birds in both net areas but to the best of my recollection this was usually not the case. Of course, a result is always biased by the supposition that a bird is somewhat alarmed after having been handled by humans and thus makes all possible speed to get as far away from the area as possible. But, we all know birds do things by instinct rather than by emotion, so it should have followed that this possible bias made no difference. I've never been able to prove this supposition one way or another. 

Roughly in 1972-­3, I learned of a property in northwestern New Jersey, adjacent to the Wawayanda State Park, where a gentleman whose name I've forgotten, owned some 100 acres of forested land. The chap was the heir, I believe, to the Eversharp Ballpoint Pen fortune and he had a magnificent villa in those woods. This villa in all its splendor was open to all the animals that dared to enter. I visited there often, and there were always some rather tame raccoons around that loved to play all over a person sitting on the white couch. They were lovable creatures as long as they were not encouraged to get too rowdy. He also kept some caged animals, notably a pair of brown bears. I don't know if he let them out, but I was fortunately not about when he might have done so. In any case, after much reconnoitering, I found a semi­-open corner in the woods and I caught a few sparrows, but I soon learned that if you wanted to net birds in the forest you needed to set out canopy nets. Since I had to hike in, it was too difficult to drag in large poles, and after a couple more trips to that gorgeous area, I finally gave up.

Meanwhile, since 1969, I had become editor (in my spare time) of a bi­monthly publication called "EBBA News". EBBA stood for Eastern Bird Banding Association, and at that time there were about 650 members. This effort started before computers (in my life there was b.c. [before computers] and a.c. [after computers]), and in those days, I would edit the many articles that were submitted, have them refereed if necessary, and ultimately, I would type them by hand on my trusty Sears electric typewriter. To do one 48­ to 52-page issue would generally take every waking hour on a weekend. This effort also created much paperwork, because correspondence was voluminous. I made some very good friends, and one morning, the Treasurer called me and asked if I was interested to do some banding at the Hopewell-­Pennington Watershed Association's property, a fallow farmland with a deep tree border, located about halfway between Princeton and Pennington on New Jersey's coastal plain. I had some initial trepidation for it was a fairly long ride down there, from Queens, around Brooklyn, over the Verrazano Narrows bridge, across Staten Island, along a piece of the New Jersey Turnpike, U.S. Highway 1 and then a bunch of hard to locate country roads. The whole ride would take 1+ hours under optimum conditions, but anyone who has ever driven in the greater New York area knows that conditions are usually far from optimum. Finally, I did go and although I stuck it out for a spring and a fall season and part of the following spring, what ultimately drove me away from this wonderful location was hay fever and ticks. All this milkweed and clover, miles of it, not to mention other weeds, drove my nose crazy, and it got so bad that when I came within 10 minutes of the place I'd start to sneeze and wheeze. That was one of the problems, the other was ticks, deer ticks in great profusion. We had some tents sitting at the wood's edge, in which we often overnighted for this was a very remote area, and one day when I came back in spring after a few days absence, I found what looked like a black tent, where I distinctly recall having placed a blue tent. Upon closer examination, I discovered the tent was black because it was covered with ticks, millions of them. I got out of there as fast as I could, but nevertheless, when I reached the nearest restroom I plucked some 35 ticks off me. It was very scary because we used to remove ticks from birds and send them in to the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana for analysis, and although those were different ticks, reports reached me that the ticks vectored some bad diseases, such as Turelemia, Q­Fever and the dreaded Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a virulent form of encephalitis, which has been known to be fatal to humans. 

Under less scary conditions, I spent nice weekends with my banding buddies and their friends, and I vividly recall that one day we found a young doe in the area which was lost. It shared our campsite for a night and I believe it perished, but it was a most gentle animal. I feel very much at home with many animals. In my childhood my parents often remarked how well I got along with the most vicious dogs which were known to bite adults. As long as you treat animals with love and kindness, I believe they will not harm you. Sudden movements and showing apprehension, however, is an open invitation to get bitten, and that holds with raptors as well as mammals. It also helps not to stare an animal in the face, particularly in their eyes. Averting a direct gaze shows submission to the animal, and the animal will instinctively become less defensive. Animals are wonderful friends if you let them be. In my younger years I have had a number of dogs. In the years before I went to the boarding school, I had a short­haired Dachshund, a dog I loved, and a dog I cried big tears over when it had to be destroyed because it suffered from tapeworm. There was also a German shepherd in my life, that bit both my parents but would make like a lapdog when he was near me. Then there was Rex, the Airedale terrier belonging to dad's sister Josephine who lived in Amsterdam, and good old Rex and I were pals too. If there is such a thing as a dog heaven, he certainly belongs there! Josephine's husband Henry once told a story how Rex in his younger years got out of the house at the point that Henry drove off to go to work. He had to cross a bridge, and as he got across, he saw Rex galloping behind the car, still a fair distance away. Unfortunately, a boat, one of many, as Amsterdam is the Venice of the North, needed to get across and the bridge was raised. This bothered Henry some because he knew Rex did crazy things. Henry parked the car and looking back toward the now opened bridge saw Rex perched at the very edge of the opened bridge! Everything turned out well.

These banding buddies had another great passion besides bird banding, and that was short­wave (HAM) radio. They had licenses and behind the house in which they lived there was a gigantic mast with the familiar "double H" antenna. However, when in the field they used portables and usually were also able to receive citizen band. I have used citizen band radios (in the car and hand held) with banding and at some point (they had nets set at one end of the field and mine were at the other end, not in shouting distance) they called me on the CB to please come over to share some coffee with them, when a totally strange voice answered: 'Sure, but where?' ­ turned out this gentleman was in Puerto Rico, an excellent example of "skip", a condition where radios with a 4­5 mile range can actually be heard many hundreds of miles distant when the occurrence of sunspots are high. 

Not far from this fallow farmland, I would get to befriend a gentle and dedicated woman, who lived in Hopewell and she helped me considerably when I was editing "EBBA News". Around that time, also, I started a smaller local organization known as "Gateway Bird Banding Group" as an effort for local bird banders to meet and discuss techniques and other concerns that needed further exploration. We often met at Roseland, New Jersey, at the Essex County Environmental Center, and sometimes in other places. I recall a memorable experience there when a local chap, a raptor bander, brought a Vulture to one of these meetings. Though I no longer recall if it was a Turkey or a Black Vulture, it was a large beast, somewhat tame (Vultures aren't the least bit amenable in the wild), who made many big messes on the meeting hall floor. Bird banders eventually become totally oblivious to bird excrement, but the Vulture outdid the normal quota. 

The Eastern Bird Banding Association held annual meetings all over the Northeast and at some other places as well. I almost never missed a meeting, except after I moved to Florida: it was just too expensive then. I recall fondly some of the meetings held at YMCA or YWCA campgrounds. They were usually better than convention style meetings with fancy hotels. During my stay at KLM, I also did considerable traveling and of course we all took advantage of the travel opportunities throughout our airline careers. Many trips for pleasure as well as business took me to Europe: Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Scandinavia. I'm only sorry I never felt motivated to visit Rome or Assisi at that time ... a missed opportunity!

In 1973, I visited the British Trust for Ornithology in Tring (Hertfordshire) England, which is the "Bird Banding Laboratory" for Great Britain. This was a 2-hour train ride north of London in a very pleasant rural area, somewhat hilly. My host was Kevin, a young man who worked at the Trust, and we had a few beers at a typical English pub after he explained how the Trust organized their research efforts. Since that was only part of my trip, I went on to Scandinavia afterwards.

My stint as editor for the Eastern Bird Banding Association, from 1969 to 1976, to be precise, was the love of my life. I had found a niche in which I could excel although things didn't always go peacefully because a lot of people feel they have to have the last word on their paper, which they feel is the best as submitted. Unfortunately for them, I had my own ideas on the subject what I felt was best for the Association. These opinions seldom coincided with their enthusiasm for their paper. I've since concluded that a little more humility would have been better. By and large, however, I came away from these years with more friends than I had lost, and while the work was totally voluntary, although hard work, it was enjoyable for me. Prior to my involvement with EBBA News as it was then called, a father and son team were editors; great people for whom I had enormous respect and admiration. The magazine introduced me to four other people who in turn introduced me to the Boy Scouts of America movement. 

In 1975, my travels on behalf of EBBA took me to California where I met some of the officers of the Western Bird Banding Association who were interested in joining in publishing with us and the current magazine, North American Bird Bander, was born. That magazine by and large has been very successful, and it is an important adjunct to the library of some 2000 bird banders in the United States, Canada and abroad. Later on, the Inland Bird Banding Association also joined in this publishing consortium. Although I had intended to edit the issues of the new publication it turned out too much work and after a search for a new editor, the late Nadia Mutchler took over from me in mid ­1976. Mickie, as she preferred to be called, and her husband Tom who was a raptor bander were warm people and I've spent some time at their place near Forestburg, New York and we also corresponded now and then. 

Since then, I've been Vice ­President of EBBA for 6 years after a year as a Councillor (member of Board of Directors) and after two years as President I felt enough was enough. Eventually I gave up membership to all of the banding associations when I gave up banding in 1993. 

Oakland and Scouting

In those days, a friend suggested to me to look into combining banding or birding with Scouting, and in 1974, I think it was, I motored up to Camp Glen Gray some miles north of Oakland, New Jersey, and generally volunteered my services as an adult leader. This was a beautiful camp nestled in the Ramapos, an extension of the Bear Mountain range that starts in New York, follows along Harriman State Park, and then enters New Jersey adjacent to a winding road that ends at Oakland. Camp Tamarack was to the south of Glen Gray and there was another camp to the north and Campgaw, I believe a county area, to the northeast. This was a giant 200 acres area of old trees, little secondary growth, very hilly with swales and lakes dotted in between. It was my intention to study the movement of passerines through the hills and the only thing it proved was that the birds forage in the dales but during migration they move from hilltop to hilltop so the hills in themselves seemed to have no distinct influence on the birds' movements. Most of the observations were visual with some banding to try tie down the species. However, scouting sort of took over. On weekends my services were needed as assistant to the "Charge of Quarters" usually, and that duty gave me both meals and a roof over my head at night, a welcome exchange. Cabins were wooden affairs, well designed although mice were plentiful. Along the lake there was a modern building serving as a "hospital" behind which were a few large old oaks where a Great Horned Owl made its home. A mess hall where meals were served, and other activities were held, was located near the parking area. Among many, there was also another adult leader, a seminarian (now ordained priest), with whom I had many philosophical and theological debates that went late into the night. We had a regular visitor to the camp, Bill, who was known as the "snake man" as opposed to yours truly who was of course the "bird man". He collected snakes, and there were both Copperheads and beautiful Diamond­back Rattlers on the property much to the chagrin of the administration. The fear of a huge lawsuit always loomed when kids were roaming, especially unsupervised, all over the camp. Bill is now curator of a zoo somewhere in the Midwest.

In 1975, I was introduced to a venerable institution, the Order of the Arrow, laced in Native American lore, particularly of the Leni Lenape tribe which was supposed to have been resident in these parts many years ago. To qualify for this honor, and an honor it was, I had to tough it out on a hillside in March with a shelter half, a tin can, and three self-strike matches. I never forget that night, it was 27 degrees, a strong 15 m.p.h. North wind, with wind­chill to match, and I admit I didn't get much sleep. I was extremely cold in the morning, when I was relieved from my mountaintop vigil. However, the night was not without its benefits. The owls, the Great Horned and some Screech Owls kept me company with their plaintive calls, and there was other animal life about too. A raccoon sniffed at my toes, probably didn't like the ambiance, and departed, thank God. Soon thereafter, I was accepted in the "Old Guard" another venerable tradition that allegedly went back to Baden Powell, the Englishman that started it all. Actually, for a short time in Holland I was in the cub scouts, so all this wasn't new to me. I stayed active in scouting till 1979 or so, when Mom became ill and I could no longer get away. 

In 1976 or so there was a big Conservation Conference held at Schiff Scouting School a bit southwest of Morristown and later that year our Council had some exhibits set up at the National Scouting Office in New Brunswick before the Headquarters were moved to Irvine, Texas. Another bander and I set up an exhibit on bird banding. Lots of people came to see it.

Quite some time was spent on preparing scouts for out-of-town summer camps and jamborees. In fact, while I was on the group desk at SAS one of the large world­wide jamborees took place in Lillehammer, Norway, a great challenge for the company since two or more planeloads of scouts were involved. That wasn't so bad transatlantic, but the connections between Oslo and Lillehammer used much smaller equipment such as DC­9's or Boeing 737's and that was quite a nightmare to schedule so that everyone would arrive more or less at the same time. 

During that time I vacationed in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, a memorable trip. Flew from New York to Denver and from there to Idaho Falls. Then drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where I stayed overnight and did some birding along the base of the Grand Teton range, to see Trumpeter Swans and Rosy Finches. After a few days, I motored north, through the Yellowstone National Park, and stayed for a few days at the northern entrance in Montana. What a beautiful area with moose and wapiti elk freely roaming and highly visible from the roads. The waterfalls are impressive. Then I returned back to the airport, I believe in Pocatello, driving back through Idaho, in pouring rain, where I took in some of the local sights. 

Another vacation the following year took me to Hawaii. This is rather a long trip, some 12 hours in the air with stopovers from New York. Since I flew space available wherever I flew, getting seats on connecting flights wasn't always easy and I had to run like the dickens in Los Angeles to make another connection than the one I had originally intended to catch. It's a wonder my checked baggage got to Honolulu at the same time I did! The following day I took a puddle­jumper to the island of Hawaii where I stayed principally at Kaanapali and made various side trips from there particularly to the volcanic region. This area of the world is particularly beautiful! 

On the way back, this time to San Francisco, I rented a car and drove down to Los Angeles making stops for 1­2 days here and there. Visited the big trees (Muir), stayed a few days in Carmel/Monterey area and visited the Hearst Castle on the way south. In Los Angeles I overnighted at the apartment of a chap I had worked with at SAS New York before he moved west. 

Staten Island 

In 1978, I was earnestly looking for another place to start a more serious banding operation but wanted habitat akin to Camp Glen Gray. I found the new banding area in Staten Island, where on the southern end of the escarpment known as the "terminal moraine" is the land of the "Old Woods" a term coined in some article about the area. This area, part of the Staten Island Greenbelt, is known as High Rock Conservation Area, then administered by the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences with a tie in to the New York City education system. There I teamed up with Howie Fischer, who became another long­term loyal friend. Actually, I had several things going at that time. I spent some weekends just before that time banding at Fort Tilden, a part of the National Park Service's holdings on both sides of New York Bay. As a VIP or "Volunteer in Parks", I spent most of the breeding season, summer and early fall of 1978 there, a time fairly well spent. 

My introduction to raptors had been a year or two earlier, as each fall I spent a week at Kiptopeke Banding Station between Cape Charles (Virginia) and the northern terminus of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel system on the bay side. With 40+ nets in operation, some of them for raptors, we caught copious amounts of Sharp­-shinned Hawks, some Cooper's Hawks and even a Broad­winged Hawk which normally does not frequent the woods. The nets were in an old Loblolly pine stand with much secondary growth. How these Sharp-­shinned Hawks maneuvered through dense woods without disturbing even a leaf was always a mystery to me, but hawks have exceptional eyesight with a resolution many times that of humans and they are exceptional fliers with sharply-­honed reflexes. The station was run by members of the Virginia Society of Ornithology, and the comradery was quite unique among the participants. Memorable occasions included dining at Paul's, a Greyhound Bus Station in one of the small burgs, Sherriton, indirectly on the main road, where the Crab Imperial was legendary. I met many people at Kiptopeke for it was not uncommon to have many assistants and great number of visitors.

In the meantime, my Mom passed away. I had to curtail my banding in Virginia to return home to attend to her needs, which resulted in some months as her caretaker: a very difficult time. Ultimately, she had to be admitted to a nursing home in New York. After a long struggle during which she did not know me any more, she gave up. Following the burial, I took off for a much needed two week vacation in Europe where I vowed to do nothing strenuous. I spent some days with friends in Copenhagen, then flew to Hamburg, took the train to Wilhelmshaven where I had a bird banding friend, Hans, spent two days with him and his family, then took a train to Oldenburg to look up my cousin Sabine with her husband, Henning, and stayed a few days there, finally meeting their Mom (Reinhardt's wife), exchanged many memories and in general we did much drinking and merrymaking. Then at the beginning of the last week of vacation, I took the train from Oldenburg to Groningen (Holland) and from there to a small town near Soest where Mia lived with a friend. Then a train ride through the Dutch countryside to Amsterdam and back to New York. As an airline employee, my air travel was virtually for free and busses and trains weren't very costly then either. Friends and relatives wined and dined me and I regained my strength both mentally and in part physically though my high blood sugar condition wasn't helped by all the drinking. I was having some dizzy spells here and there and knew I had to get a thorough checkup back in New York. That showed that I was nearly diabetic and weighed a ripe 255 pounds. I knew I'd have to start a rigorous diet or else I could kill myself slowly but surely. My eyesight was bad, especially at night, things looked darker than they really were. That's a result of high blood sugar, I was told. I'm still Type II Diabetic; it has been a long struggle.

In late 1983, I scrapped the OSI computer systems and used the proceeds of the sale of part of this equipment to buy my first IBM­-compatible computer. This started another in­-depth computer adventure that lasted throughout my late seventies and turned into many computers, many friends and bigger and better programs for bird banding.

In October 1985, I got a somewhat frantic phone call from Fort Pierce, just after my new air­conditioned powder blue Ford Tempo was delivered where the caller said "Don't hang up, this is a bird bander calling" strange way to start a conversation I thought but it had peaked my interest nonetheless. It turned out to be Pete, an old banding friend from New Jersey who had left New Jersey while I still lived in New York and had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth. The next week­end I headed up the Sunshine Turnpike to Port St. Lucie and then to South Indian River Drive, which was the start of my next significant adventure.

Pete told me that one evening when he sat outdoors on his acre of land adjacent to the beautiful Indian River Lagoon, a Sharp­shinned Hawk shot by, and then there was another, and another. As an experienced raptor bander, he immediately recognized the value of his location and decided to set up a raptor station. He designed a unique blind, a sturdy wooden structure that would tower 19 feet into the air, and later, we added another section that would overlook the Savannas State Park, 25 feet above ground. It was around the time that the pilings were set and the floor was about complete that I joined his effort. Now in the hot June and July heat we completed the rest of the structure, with lumber donated by local supporters. Not long after that, it became clear that we needed a cage for the lure birds, mostly pigeons and exotic doves, and we built that, a structure measuring 8'x8'x8' with a corrugated Fiberglass roof. Lines were strung to connect the triggers for the bow nets with controls in the blind, and lure lines were hung, so that we could manipulate the lure birds and by September we had a near "state of the art" raptor station going. We decided to build a membership organization around this effort to defray the almost constant expenses that needed to be taken care of, and Ankona Raptor Research was born. The area where the house was located was once known as Ankona. That organization proved very successful over the years. Money was always in short supply but people who participated were plentiful.

Maybe I'll tell the rest of the story, but this is the greater part of it. Enjoy it!

Fred Schaeffer, OFS

(Finished 2023)

Home