Recruits Into the Ranks of Birders Learn to Take Nature on the Wing

Ilene Markell accepted an invitation to join a group of bird watchers for a stroll through Malibu Canyon on Saturday expecting to meet “a bunch of Miss Hathaways from the Beverly Hillbillies.”

By noon Saturday, the 27-year-old bass player in a rock band called “The Swing Set” was a convert, learning the improbable names of birds spotted in treetops and along shorelines by the group, which included a tax consultant, a chemist, the owner of a public relations firm and a retired court reporter.

Names Are ‘Outrageous’

“I’m amazed about how much these people know about what’s going on here--the trees, the animals, birds, butterflies, everything,” Markell said, scanning with her binoculars the gnarled branches of a valley oak tree in Malibu Creek State Park. “But the names of these birds are outrageous. ‘Ash-throated flycatcher.’ That’s my favorite.”

It was the final day of the National Audubon Society’s 10th annual Bird-A-Thon, and group leader Chuck Bernstein was in his glory.

“It’s so nice to be with beginning bird watchers--it really turns me on,” said Bernstein, an avid birder for 40 years and author of “The Joy of Birding.” “They get exposed to a world they never knew existed.”

The eclectic Malibu crowd was one of dozens across the nation counting birds Saturday in return for donations ranging from 5 cents to $1,000 for each species they could identify. Money raised by the event, which began April 30 and included walks throughout Los Angeles County, will pay for educational materials on environmental issues to be distributed to elementary schools, Audubon spokeswoman Melanie Ingalls said.

Largest Donation

The largest donation received locally was $1,000 given to Patricia Heirs, a public relations firm owner, by Tichi Wilkerson Kassel, editor and publisher of the Hollywood Reporter.

Even without that chunk of cash, it was a bountiful day, with 70 species sighted between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m., including a Rufous-sided towee, a Lazuli bunting, a white-breasted nuthatch and a Nuttall’s woodpecker.

They also spotted some “LBJs,” a euphemism for the “little brown jobs” that dive into shrubs so swiftly they cannot be identified.

But the veteran birders in the group, Bernstein and Sandy Wohlgemuth, conservation chairman of the Audubon Society’s Los Angeles chapter, were troubled by a dearth of warblers, a colorful and diverse family of migrating birds that winter in Mexico, Central and South America but fly thousands of miles north each spring to nest in the United States.

“This is the fewest number of warblers I have seen at this time since I have been a bird watcher,” Bernstein said.

These birders theorized that massive development and pollution have reduced historical nesting and feeding haunts in Southern California to a few scattered pockets of wilderness, which are constantly shrinking. Deforestation and a population explosion in Mexico, Central and South America also are taking a toll.

“The one thing that is affecting birds locally is development--houses, malls, marinas, streets and concrete are covering acreage that was once their territory,” Bernstein said. “I think we’d better start taking notice of this and our scientists better get to work or we’re all going to be in trouble.”

Still, the budding birders in the group seemed too caught up in the thrill of the hunt to be dismayed by such concerns.

“Plain titmouse! That’s another five bucks for the cause,” said Bernstein, as his group spun on their heels in a shaded glen and turned their binoculars toward a tiny gray bird all but lost in a canopy of oak branches. “It’s like finding money in the trees.”

“Mouse? I thought mice were mammals,” muttered Gail Anderman, a retired state Employment Development Department employee.

The last bird that showed itself should have been the most common one of all, a house sparrow observed in back of a supermarket near Malibu Lagoon.

“Hell, we were looking for that house sparrow all day long,” mused Bernstein.