by Traci Hukill
Sept. 12, 2013—On September 28, 2012, a group of five local birders on an outing led by Steve Gerow saw a bird in the Watsonville wetlands that didn't compute. "They saw this kestrel-looking bird acting very much like a land bird—acting towhee-like in terms of being near the trees and the ground," says Scott Smithson. Birder Lois Goldfrank was the first to suggest they might be looking at a common cuckoo—an Asian bird spotted only a handful of times on the North American continent, and then almost exclusively in Alaska. The group put the word out on the Monterey Bay Birders listserv that they'd found a rarity.
Five minutes away, on the campus of Monte Vista Christian School, Smithson's phone chirped. Reading the news, he high-tailed it over to the birders' location on a desolate section of Ford Street next to Watsonville Slough. The original five birders left, and Smithson got an unprecedented 10 minutes alone watching the white-and-chestnut–banded bird among the copse of willows. The others had reported their find locally, but Smithson, a birder since the age of 5 and now a biology teacher, figured he was looking at a bird of at least statewide importance—a bird the lordly Calbirds listserv would want to know about.
"So I made the call," he says. "Within an hour, people started peppering this roadside. By nightfall the Ventura people and some Santa Barbara people had arrived. Some of the really-well known people in field ornithology were at the [Western Field Ornithologists] conference in Petaluma, and there were some individuals who immediately stood up and walked out of the room to drive here."
This last bit draws a chuckle from the small audience attending Smithson's green birding workshop on the first day of the Monterey Bay Birding Festival. As all birders know, rarities are a very big deal. By the time the cuckoo flew the coop five days later, hundreds of birders from 35 states and two other nations had journeyed here for a glimpse of it. They lined the banks of Watsonville Slough with their scopes mounted and binocs in hand, craning their necks, stock still and silent until someone would hiss, "There it is!"
Smithson guesses at least 500 people came—some in groups but many alone in their cars, and no doubt some by air. Their enthusiasm had an unintended but common consequence: pollution. Using what he describes as a conservative approach, Smithson figures the cuckoo event generated 40 tons of CO2. He's determined to do something about that.
Change of Habit
Two years earlier, in 2010, Smithson had found himself driving back 500 miles from the Salton Sea with only an unsatisfying glimpse of a wayward taiga bean goose to show for it; the experience had caused him to question the ethics of traveling huge distances to look at a bird. "Wow, we just emitted lot of CO2 into the atmosphere to see a goose," he remembers thinking. "I thought, 'Can I be a better steward of resources but still see birds?'"
The next year Smithson launched GreenBigDay, a carbon-free birding event building on the growing popularity of Big Green Big Years (BIGBYs). Particularly popular in the U.K., these endeavors see extremely fit people cycling or walking for their Big Years, logging hundreds of birds on their own steam, without driving or flying. (Read about Scott Smithson's Green Big Day and the green birding movement.)
Read Green Birding, Adventure Birding
Read 2013 Monterey Bay Birding Festival
Now, with the cuckoo experience that had exploded in his back yard, Smithson got to thinking. Bike birding certainly isn't for everyone, and the impassioned birding subculture is unlikely to give up conventional Big Years anytime soon. So what could be done to mitigate the cost to the environment?
The cuckoo's choice of landing gave him the answer.
Restoration Junction
Fifteen years ago it's very unlikely that a bird like the common cuckoo would have chosen Watsonville Slough for a resting spot on its lonely journey. The site where the bird was first spotted, right off Ford Street, was at that time farmland, the waters of the slough funneled into a narrow ditch at the far side of the swale. There were no reedy banks or willow copses attracting the fat caterpillars the cuckoo feasted on during its stay. And behind Ramsay Park, at the site of another one of the common cuckoo's temporary hangouts, was an old dump from the 1940s. "It was a very sketchy part of Ramsay Park," says Jonathan Pilch, restoration director for Watsonville Wetlands Watch.
Working with partners like the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, Watsonville Wetlands Watch has restored hundreds of acres of wetlands in Pajaro Valley. In a unique arrangement, students at Pajaro Valley High School, where WWW is based, learn land stewardship by tending the native plant nursery that aids in restoration.
Between 2005 and 2008, the site where the cuckoo was first seen was rehabilitated. "The slough went from being channelled in a 15-foot-wide ditch to a 150-foot riparian corridor," says Pilch. "It's a great story. Not only are we doing watershed-wide restoration, but that led to habitat that brought in the cuckoo. It's a really wonderful connection."
Smithson hopes birders really get that connection, and the many others like it that have yet to be publicized. After all, birds gravitate toward healthy habitats. What if, every time a passionate birder traveled to another state or even another country, he or she made a contribution toward a group doing habitat restoration work—things like opening up wetlands and replanting native flora?
"It gives us more credibility as nature-loving people when we see the costs of our activity and do something to mitigate it," he says. Smithson also urges donating to local outfits that are actually doing hands-on restoration, as opposed to "some nameless place putting trees in who knows where."
"I don't have a list—'Where is the best place per region in the Bay Area that is actually putting plants in the ground?'—but I will someday," Smithson says.
Maybe one day he'll have a calculator to help people figure out how far their donations are going. One acre of healthy wetland habitat, for example, absorbs a half-ton of CO2 a year; getting together with friends and funding a year's worth of restoration for one acre would be a big deal. It would make a real, concrete difference.
"I hope this will be commonplace," says Smithson. "If you love birds, you kind of have to love their habitats."
Watch a bike birding video made by Scott Smithson and Alex Rinkert as they go for a Green Big Day in Santa Cruz County.
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