New Day at ABA

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been very preoccupied for the last three months by the current situation at the American Birding Association. (In fact, I’ve been so preoccupied that the blog hasn’t been updated since the end of August.)

In early July, I was asked to be on the search committee for a new president / executive director for the ABA. This fine organization had just gone through some tough times, owing to a few bad decisions and a lot of bad luck. The previous president had been fired, the staff was upset about a variety of issues, membership had been declining, and the financial situation was going from bad to worse. Things were looking shaky for the ABA. But because this organization had done so much for me in the past, I agreed to try to help.

It has been a time-consuming and complicated process, as you might guess if you read the previous entries on this subject. But ultimately we had over a dozen serious applicants for the position, and four finalists who were all eminently qualified. At that point things got really difficult, because all four of the finalists were friends of mine, people I had known and respected for a long time. But after extensive interviews and discussions, the search committee came up with recommendations, and the ABA board of directors voted at the end of last week. As of today, they’re ready to announce the decision, and it’s just going up on the ABA website.

Ladies and gentlemen: Mr. Jeffrey A. Gordon, currently of Lewes, Delaware, soon to be in Colorado Springs at the ABA offices. I first met Jeff in the early 1990s, when he was a young naturalist and tour leader new on the scene, and we worked together teaching some intensive bird I.D. workshops set up through Victor Emanuel Nature Tours. A couple of years later, Jeff and I took a group of teenaged birders to Mexico, on the VENT / ABA sponsored Camp Cielo. Whether we were scoping sandpipers on the Texas coast or pursuing parrots in Mexican mountain forests, Jeff displayed a remarkable set of skills as a birder, organizer, teacher, and leader, and he had such a warm and engaging personality that everyone was drawn to him. I figured at the time that he was destined for great things.

In the years since, Jeff Gordon has become a popular speaker on the bird festival circuit, has written a very popular blog, has written many articles for Bird Watcher’s Digest and other publications, has been a major consultant to the Peterson Field Guide Series, has done innovative things with ecotourism and with new media such as podcasts and video, and has generally established himself as one of the leaders of the birding community in North America. And now he’s going to be the President of the American Birding Association. For more information you can go to the ABA’s website.

Congratulations, Jeff, and thanks to all of the fine people who helped with this process! There are still challenges to be met, but I'm confident that the birders will rally and that Jeff Gordon will lead ABA into a bright future.

ABA: Let's Look Forward

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Six weeks have passed since Dick Ashford, chair of the board of the American Birding Association (ABA), contacted me out of the blue and asked me to be on the search committee for ABA’s next Executive Director (or President, as the position is currently called). Being part of the search has been far more time-consuming than I had expected initially, but it has given me some rewarding insights as well.

Shortly after getting involved, I wrote about the ABA’s situation on this blog, and the outpouring of comments was remarkable -- highly detailed comments came in from more than 40 people, including no fewer than seven former ABA board members and other well-known leaders of the North American birding community. During the same time period, I had conversations with most of the current ABA staff, dedicated long-term members of the organization, and many others.

After the first couple of weeks my outlook on ABA’s future was not very positive, for three reasons:

1. Many of the comments -- including some from birders with detailed knowledge of ABA’s history -- were very negative.

2. Some aspects of the current situation were worse than I had realized.

3. At first there were very few applicants for the President position, leading me to wonder if the best candidates had been scared off by the situation or by the rhetoric about it.

But as I said, that was just my initial outlook. As things have developed, I’m now seeing a much more positive picture and a much brighter future for the American Birding Association. These are the things that have changed my perspective:

1. Even in the midst of intense outside criticism, the ABA board of directors has continued to do its job. While some harsh critics were calling for the resignation of the entire board, several board members continued to work behind the scenes to deal with current problems and move the organization forward.

2. Although there have been few official responses, the ABA board of directors has been paying close attention to the ongoing discussion. Case in point: several people raised questions about the ABA bylaws, so board chair Dick Ashford established a committee to review these bylaws. The committee, chaired by Lynn Barber, includes staff and board representatives, plus outside individuals -- such as Rick Wright, who had criticized the bylaws in the first place. This is clearly a case of listening to the concerns of critics rather than shutting them out.

3. The professional staff of ABA has continued to do a superb job. The upheaval and uncertainty of recent months have affected them more than anyone, but they continue to put out wonderful publications and carry out worthwhile programs. These dedicated and talented people represent a major asset for the organization.

4. Although I’m not at liberty to discuss what I know about this, there are some positive changes in the works regarding the infrastructure of the organization, including the workings of the board of directors. The board recognizes its own problems and is quietly but actively working to correct them.

5. Finally, I am tremendously encouraged by the fact that several highly qualified individuals have applied for the ABA President position. At first I was worried that no one would apply, but fortunately that turns out not to be an issue, and ABA has the luxury of trying to make the best choice from among several very strong candidates.

And it is energizing to read the comments from the leading candidates. They’re all aware of the significant challenges in the short term, but they are all brimming with optimism as they look at the extraordinary potential of the organization. They see that there is a huge role for the American Birding Association to play, serving to promote birding, to advocate for birding, to provide a strong voice for the whole community of birders. To read their comments, the glass isn’t just half full, it’s overflowing with potential. That’s the kind of attitude that we need as we go forward.

I respect everyone’s opinions, and I recognize that some long-term ABA members have a right to be angry about some recent missteps. But as for myself, I prefer to look forward and to focus on the amazing possibilities that still lie ahead. I’m optimistic that within a few months we’ll be looking forward confidently to a bright future for the ABA.

Incidentally, I’m not alone in this attitude. When I had this piece mostly drafted, I ran across two very recent blog posts that are well worth reading. Rick Wright at Aimophila Adventures wrote about the qualities he would like to see in the next ABA President -- a consideration that wouldn’t be necessary if the organization had no future. The essay is here.

Over at The Drinking Bird blog, the ever insightful Nathan Swick has a very thoughtful essay about the online conversation that developed this summer over the ABA’s situation. Nate makes the point that this conversation was significant in several ways: not only did it prove that a lot of people were interested in the ABA, not only did a lot of ideas come out of it, but the very nature and format of the online discussion served as a demonstration of the ways that ABA can communicate and act in the modern birding community. This must-read essay is here.

The American Birding Association was very important to me when I was a kid birder -- I was an ABA member long before I had a driver’s license. I’m not a kid any more, but I’m still an eager ABA birder. Now I’m looking ahead to the ABA’s 50th-anniversary bash in the year 2019 -- it ought to be a doozy. I’ll hope to see you there!

ABA: Inclusiveness

Mallard on the park pond, Yellow-bellied Flycatcher at the migrant trap, Wandering Albatross over the Drake Passage: would you enjoy looking at any of these birds? If so, you're a good birder.

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: The intense discussions this summer regarding the future of the American Birding Association (ABA) have led some people to question just who the organization should be for. Predictably, a few have suggested that it should be a group designed for "good birders." I have strong opinions about that idea, I’ve expressed them in the past in other settings, and I want to repeat them here.

Forgive me if it seems immodest for me to quote from myself. But I wrote something a long time ago that still seems relevant:

"Birding is something that we do for enjoyment; so if you enjoy it, you’re a good birder. If you enjoy it a lot, you’re a great birder."

I wrote that back in the 1980s, and apparently it rang a bell with some people. The editors of British Birds were kind enough to quote it in their fine magazine. Roger Tory Peterson quoted it in the introduction to the 1990 edition of his Field Guide to Western Birds. (Peterson had been my lifelong role model, and you can imagine what a thrill it was to be quoted by my own hero, the man who was the world’s most influential birder at the time.) Later I used this same phrase in the introduction to my own Kaufman Field Guide to Birds of North America. So the thought has been out there for a while, but I wanted to repeat it.

Birding is something that we do for enjoyment, so if you enjoy it, you’re a good birder. If you enjoy it a lot, you’re a great birder. I think the American Birding Association will need to adopt that attitude as they go forward. Become a group for all those good birders -- for everyone who enjoys it -- and try to make them into great birders by helping them to enjoy it even more. In fact, the ABA could claim to have some initial ownership of the idea, because I first thought of it after taking part in a panel discussion at an ABA convention. I wrote it in a letter to Jim Tucker, who was then still the executive director of ABA, and he liked it enough that he printed it in Birding magazine as a letter to the editor. So it first saw the light of day in ABA’s magazine.

Do you enjoy birding? If your answer is "yes," it doesn’t matter whether you’re watching the finches in the back yard or trekking off to Borneo to look for Bristleheads, you’re one of us. You’re a good birder. I hope the American Birding Association will make a strong comeback and offer an enhanced experience to all of us.

Which Way for ABA?

From a state of contemplation, Kenn writes: The American Birding Association (ABA) has been an important part of my life ever since I joined, at the age of 16, back in the 1970s. The ABA was a brand-new organization then, and it served a unique role in connecting the active birders of the U.S. and Canada. Its little bimonthly magazine, Birding, was a treasure trove for me as a teenager, giving me tips on bird-finding and bird identification that I wouldn’t have known about in any other way. When I started traveling, as a hitch-hiking, teenaged birder, the ABA connected me with other enthusiasts and with prime birding hotspots, and helped to put me on a course as a professional naturalist.

In subsequent years I was involved with ABA in many ways. I taught bird I.D. workshops at many of their conventions, and later I began giving evening keynote talks at these events; for a while, I had spoken at more ABA conventions than anyone else. I wrote dozens of pieces for Birding magazine, and edited their Photo Quiz feature for ten years. I served on their checklist committee, and even served two terms on their board of directors, most recently in the mid-1990s.

But I hadn’t had any kind of leadership role at ABA for more than ten years now. So I was very surprised when Dick Ashford, current chair of the board, called me out of the blue to ask me to get involved. The ABA is looking to hire a new President, and Dick wanted me to serve (along with three current board members) on the search committee to find someone for that position.

Given my history with ABA, you might think that I would have accepted immediately. As it happened, ultimately I did agree to be on the search committee, but it was with some trepidation.

The fact is that the American Birding Association is facing a tough situation right now. Membership numbers have been declining for the last few years, there have been a number of bad management decisions, and the organization is in financial difficulties. Whoever comes in as the new president is going to have to overcome some major challenges.

Of course, a decline in numbers is something that has happened to many membership organizations and many print publications over the last decade or so. But ABA has taken a double hit from the effects of the internet and the proliferation of bird festivals. Back in the early 1990s, birders who wanted to be "in the loop" on a continentwide scale almost had to belong to ABA. The magazine and newsletter were prime sources of the latest information, and the biennial ABA convention was a really big deal, with hundreds of the most active birders in attendance. Today many birders get their information, and even their sense of community, most easily online: bits of news on listserves and social networking sites, detailed information on websites, opinion pieces and essays on blogs. And there are so many birding festivals all over the continent that it has become very hard for ABA conventions to compete. The publications-and-conventions model that worked so well in the early 1990s just doesn’t cut it in 2010.

So ABA has fallen farther and farther behind the curve during the last decade. It wasn’t inevitable -- it would have been possible for the organization to keep up, or stay ahead, with some innovative and forward-looking changes. But those changes weren’t made. I’m not going to point fingers or assign blame -- indeed, I don’t want to, as ABA’s leadership over the last decade has included various friends of mine. But no one took those bold steps that would have made ABA membership an obvious must-have for active birders. And the resulting slow decline has been accelerated by some very bad recent decisions that have put the organization in a precarious financial fix.

That being the case, why am I involved at all in trying to help out? After all, there’s nothing in it for me except risk -- I’m just one person on the search committee, so I can’t control the outcome, but I’ll get part of the blame if things go badly.

But I think it’s worth the risk because I see not just big problems, but big potential. ABA still has thousands of active members. It still has excellent programs in place -- its "Birders’ Exchange," for example, is doing wonderful things to promote research and conservation in Latin America. Its magazine, Birding, its technical journal, North American Birds, and its newsletter, Winging It, continue to be valuable. And beyond that, I can envision a future in which ABA could be a tremendously positive force. Currently there is no organization that serves effectively as an advocate for birders and birding in North America. Yes, there are bird conservation groups, and ornithological societies that promote scientific study of birds, but there is no group that really advocates for birders -- promoting birding for its own sake, providing a sense of community, working to give birders a unified voice. ABA could be that voice. But only if it survives. And that may come down to the next person hired as president of the beleagured organization.

So ... anyone interested? ABA is seeking a highly motivated person to serve as President (analogous to what would be called the Executive Director in many other nonprofits). This person should have a good knowledge of active field birding, and should have relevant experience in running a nonprofit, running a small business, or both. This person had better have a lot of energy, and had better be committed to the vision of helping the birding community at large. You can read the whole job description here.

For more independent background on ABA’s current situation and future prospects, written by the perceptive and articulate Nate over at "The Drinking Bird," click here.

Whitewater

From the far side of the rapids, Kenn writes: We screen the comments that come in before they’re posted on the blog. Most of the comments are wonderful, all are appreciated, and we post almost all of them. One that we didn’t post came in from "Anonymous" a couple of weeks ago -- taking us to task for the fact that we hadn’t updated the blog since April 10th. "Why bother to have a blog, there in the ‘warbler capital of the world,’ if you never post to it?" It went on to imply that we must be pretty lazy, or worse, to fail to keep the blog rolling.

Gee, "Anonymous," we’re glad that you missed us. A lot has been going on here. The best analogy that comes to mind is that being here in northwestern Ohio in May is like a modified version of whitewater rafting. But instead of roaring down the river, the raft is tethered to one spot, bucking and pitching wildly while the whitewater rapids of spring migration come pouring around and under and over those of us who are clinging to the raft.

The Lake Erie shoreline in northwest Ohio -- specifically the area centered on Magee Marsh Wildlife Area and Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge -- is one of the best spots in North America to see concentrations of spring migrant songbirds, especially warblers. I wrote about this area in Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association, earlier this year; you can read the article here. Every spring, hundreds of thousands of birds, and tens of thousands of birders, come pouring through this region.

Numbers of visiting birders had been growing in recent years, so this year we decided to hold an event to engage with them and try to enhance their experience. Wild brainstorming about it a year ago led to the formation of the BIGGEST WEEK IN AMERICAN BIRDING -- and it was big! For starters, it was a week that was eleven days long, May 6 through 16. It was hosted by five different organizations: Black Swamp Bird Observatory, Tropical Birding tours, Kaufman Field Guides, Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, and Magee Marsh Wildlife Area (a unique partnership of a nonprofit, two for-profit companies, a federal agency, and a state agency). Of course, Kimberly and I represented two of the five partners, so we were kept busy! It was sponsored by a wide variety of organizations and companies, from Leica Sport Optics (Leica's Jeff Bouton gave many digiscoping demonstrations) to the American Birding Association. Sean Logan, the director of Ohio's Department of Natural Resources, came up from Columbus to speak at the opening ceremony, and U.S. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (in whose district the event took place) sent a letter and sent a top-ranking member of her staff to the opening ceremony as well.

Throughout the event, there were multiple field trips and birdwalks every day, many of them free of charge, led by skilled guides from Tropical Birding. Throughout the event, there were daytime workshops and evening programs held at multiple sites. I personally gave evening keynote talks on nine different nights! Throughout the event, we were doing constant updates on bird sightings via Twitter, making this the first bird festival to use this new opportunity. Throughout the event, and for weeks before and after, Kimberly was working 14 to 17 hour days, since Black Swamp Bird Observatory was the center for organization and registration for the event. Throughout the event, we had to stay on our toes, since Kimberly and I both wound up on radio or television or in the newspapers multiple times, talking about birding. And throughout the event (and before and after), I was keeping up almost-daily updates on weather, migration, and latest bird sightings, by way of another blog that "Anonymous" apparently didn’t know about (you can read it here) -- I wrote no fewer than 30 posts on that blog between mid-April and the end of May.

The whole 11-day event was a fabulous time, with lots of birds, lots of great friends to share the birds with, and lots of opportunity to introduce brand-new people to birding. My very favorite day, however, was Day 9 of our long week. I’ll describe that in a separate post.

Holiday Gift Guide: Binoculars the day after

Second sight: binoculars from your past might be able to see into the future.

From Oak Harbor, Ohio, Kenn writes: Holiday gift-giving this year may have been less splendiferous than usual, but it’s a safe bet that some birders received high-quality binoculars. Maybe these were gifts from partners or parents or friends, or some birders may have decided to splurge on gifts for themselves. One way or another, right now some birders will be looking at birds through brand-new lenses.

Kim and I have some important advice for you. It’s not about what kind of binoculars you should have bought; we have our favorites, of course, but there are many great optics available today. No, this is advice about what to do AFTER you’ve tried out your new binoculars, gotten used to them, fallen in love with them. At that point, ask yourself: What are you going to do with your old binoculars?

That’s assuming that you had old ones. If these are your first, congratulations! Just file this advice away for future reference. But if your new optics represent an upgrade, then they’re replacing old ones that served you to some extent. If your old bins were just awful, you should throw them away. But if they’re in good shape, those old optics could be a tremendous help to someone who has no binoculars at all.

Maybe you know some local nature center with a limited budget that could really use "loaner" binoculars for field trips. Or a camp or a school where the nature programs would benefit from having optics available. But if not, there’s an organization that can help deliver used optics directly to the people who need them most.

The Birders' Exchange is an ingenious program that gathers used (but still useful) binoculars, telescopes, and other items of field equipment and delivers them to people who can least afford them but who can make the best use of them: biologists, naturalist guides, park rangers, students, and others in the developing countries of Latin America. Deserving individuals in no fewer than 29 countries have already received the benefit of such donations. It’s safe to say that the program is making such workers more effective throughout the American tropics, thus contributing to education and research and bird conservation in a huge way.

The Birders' Exchange was started in 1990 by the Manomet Bird Observatory (now Manomet Center for Conservation Science) and is now administered by the American Birding Association. Sharp birder and all-around wonderful person Betty Petersen has managed the program for years and has made it into a terrific success. She and her colleagues run a very economical and efficient operation, and they don’t have time to deal with repairs or replacement parts -- so we shouldn’t ever send them junk. But if you’ve got some good-quality used optics to donate, go to their website and check it out. Your old favorite bins could have a second life looking at tropical birds and helping to make a difference.

Bird Photo Quiz Quiz

From Birding Central, Kenn writes: Back when "publishing" always involved ink and paper, a Photo Quiz was popular in various bird magazines. A challenging photo (or two or three) would be presented in one issue of the magazine, with the answer(s) to be revealed in the next issue. Birders would study the photos and their field guides, discuss the quiz with their pals, then wait a month or two or three for the next issue to see if they’d gotten the answer right.

Today, in the age of online publishing, photo quizzes are legion. There are literally dozens of "mystery bird" photos posted every week on websites and blogs. Followers of these quizzes wait only days for the answers, not weeks or months. Other things have changed as well: birders researching a tricky photo today are more likely to look for pictures on the internet, and a fair percentage of those online photos will be misidentified or mislabelled. And when the online quiz posts its answer, there’s a chance that the answer will be wrong. So there’s a new kind of edgy challenge to the game.

Quizzes in print have a longer history. In the 1970s (when I was a rabid kid birder) we got our photo-quiz fix by looking at British Birds, a fine monthly that was then publishing more on identification than all the North American periodicals put together. A few of us crazed American and Canadian birders pored over every issue of British Birds, tried to work out the photo quiz, and then eagerly read the detailed answer to the previous month’s quiz. It was such an educational feature that we wondered why North American bird journals didn’t follow suit. But not until 1980 did Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association, begin to run a regular photo quiz feature (a feature that continues today, by the way). I have warm feelings about the Birding photo quiz because I was in charge of it, writing the answers for almost every issue, for ten years, starting in the mid-1980s. But that wasn’t my first experience with writing photo quiz answers.

We’re not going to add one more online mystery photo to this week’s crop. Instead, we have a different kind of challenge, one that will test your knowledge of photography, publications, and the history of the birding community.

Here’s the question: What was the first publication in North America to run a regular bird photo identification quiz?

If you think you know the answer, or if you want to guess, send us a comment. If no one gets it, we’ll post the answer in a week. (Of course, a week from now is the 24th, and the guys will all be out doing their last-minute Christmas shopping, but ... ) The answer is sort of surprising. To entice you to enter, we’ll offer a prize (perhaps an autographed copy of a rare historical birding publication!).