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 What Better Way To Learn About Your Environment Than To Study The Critters Who Live There? By Kevin Franklin LIKE TOO MANY other outdoor enthusiasts, I'm bird illiterate. Fortunately there are groups like the Tucson Audubon Society that will take the ignorant masses under their collective wing. So when Roseann and Jonathan Hanson invited me along for a two-day Audubon Society birding workshop, I jumped at the chance.
Both of the Hansons hold degrees in ecology and work as natural history writers. For more than two years, they lived in Brown Canyon, working as caretakers and ecological interpreters. So they're ideally suited to teach these classes. This is an intermediate class, but the Hansons also coordinate beginning and advanced classes through the Tucson Audubon Society. In the beginning classes, the Hansons teach people how to identify general bird types and how to use field guides and binoculars. In the intermediate class, they discuss how to identify birds by sound, behavior and habitat. The idea is to be able identify birds without seeing them, or with just a glance. One of the central elements to identifying birds in the field and on the wing is "giz," says Jonathan. Giz refers to the general impression you get from a bird as it disappears into the bush or over the hill. It's knowing a bird without exactly pinpointing the precise identifying elements. It's much the same way you recognize a friend from a distance without seeing the details of her face, Jonathan says. There are certain markers that you notice, maybe even subconsciously. It might be a general shape or a flash of an unusual color. By knowing the ecology of the different birds, you already have some notion of what you're likely to find in a certain habitat or time of year. Piecing that together with a sound, silhouette or fleeting glimpse can often let you identify a bird. Where the term "giz" came from, no one is exactly sure, Jonathan says. It might be an abbreviation for gist, or it might allude to Gestalt, or maybe some long-ago birder just made it up. But learning good giz is at the heart of every birding class. Many folks might scoff at the notion of wandering around the forest with binoculars and book in hand, and continually looking up at the sky and tree canopy like tourists in a skyscraper city. But learning a new field of natural history is like learning to speak the language of the creatures surrounding you. Once you've recognized a bird by name, you can learn about its ecology: where it lives, what it eats and if it's common or rare. Then the next time you're hiking in the woods and see a bird you know, you begin to understand more about what's going on around you.
"Learning the names of things helps us understand them and ultimately want to protect them," she says. Besides, it makes outings all the more fun. It's one more element to look for and enjoy; and some birds are truly thrilling to see. "We used to make fun of people running around the forest with binoculars and searching for birds," says Stan Penny during the hike up Brown Canyon. "Then we took a quiet and reserved friend of ours on a hike and she saw her first vermilion flycatcher. Watching it hover through a pair of binoculars, this demure little woman shouted out, 'Holy shit!' All of a sudden we realized there was something more here than we ever knew existed. That's how we got started--someone else's excitement just bubbled over." "That's why we do it," Roseann says. "Seeing someone get excited about birds is a lot of fun. We really get a kick out of introducing people to all sorts of things, from birding to plant identification."
Getting There
The Tucson Audubon Society will run a flock of birding
classes this spring, including: Intermediate Birding, January
11; Beginning Birding, February 7-8; Advanced Birding, February
8; and Intermediate Birding again, March 28-29. Call 624-4745
for more information.
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This informal instruction takes place at the Brown Canyon Environmental
Education Center. Brown Canyon sits at the foot of Baboquivari
Peak in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, just south
of Three Points.
It's like learning the names of your neighbors, Roseann says.
Once you do so, they cease to be strangers. This is the foundation
for a neighborhood, and possibly a friendship.
