BIG HUNT WITHOUT KILLS

FROM the deep-frozen midriff of Canada to the near-tropical bottoms of the Rio Grande, an unusual army of 8,000 or more hunters scoured the continent last week. Theirs was a gentle but rugged sport: they were afield from dawn till dark, slogging "Over hill, over dale,/ Thorough bush, thorough brier/Over park, over pale,/Thorough flood, thorough fire . . ." in pursuit of their quarry. When the chase was over, the hunters had no trophies to show, for they did their hunting with nothing more deadly than binoculars and telescopes. They were devotees of the flourishing sport of bird watching, and last week, with its annual counts for the National Audubon Society, was their World Series.

Vanishing Breeds. When the first count was run on Christmas Day in 1900, birds were getting scarcer in the U.S. The great auk and Labrador duck were gone; the umbrageous flocks of passenger pigeons were reduced to a pathetic aviary remnant; the trumpeter swan seemed likely to be silenced forever. Then came bird-protection laws and treaties. Although these are still not fully enforced, nearly all the once-threatened birds have come back, some in greater numbers than ever before. Birders, as bird watchers call themselves, have multiplied with the birds. Only a handful of the watchers are professional ornithologists. The majority are amateurs, who enjoy testing their skill in quick identification of the 700 species found in the U.S. and Canada.

In claims of what they have seen, birders work on the honor system. Two together must agree on identification. Small and manageable numbers of birds must be counted precisely; huge flocks can only be estimated. (Birders train themselves to do this with reasonable accuracy by throwing a handful of rice onto a dark tabletop, estimating the number of grains with one glance, then checking their estimate by careful count.) Artificial aids to attract birds and flush them from the underbrush are legitimate. Many birders make a succession of noises such as "Pshhh, pshhh, pshhh; psi, psi, psi; tsk, tsk, tsk." Birding virtuosos learn to give lifelike imitations of the screech owl's eerie, fluty tremolo. Others carry the Audubon Bird Call--a tiny birchwood tube in which they rotate a pewter plunger: it squeaks like crazy. Latest gadget is a 98-c- plastic "bird" with a trombone slide that can be made to chirp and whistle arpeggios like an amorous cardinal or sing the mournful minor of the white-throated sparrow.

Bug Bites Deep. Voluble as can be when arguing whether a bird is a Bohemian or a cedar waxwing, birders become strangely inarticulate when pressed to explain their sport. They have no simple motto like the Everest climbers' "Because it is there." They usually mumble something about liking birds since childhood, or about the thrill of hunting without its element of cruelty, or just the great outdoors. Whatever its origin, the birding bug bites deep. Wives picture themselves dolefully as "birding widows." A golfer trying to wave his ball into the cup for an eagle at the 18th hole when the match depends on it is no more keyed up than the birder who trains his binoculars on a soaring raptor, trying by wishful thinking to turn a turkey vulture ("buzzard") into a golden eagle.

Between the groups, numbering from two to 120 or more, who make the 500-odd area counts for the Audubon Society, there is intense competition for 1) logging great rarities, 2) the greatest number of different species, and 3) high counts df individual birds.

Last week no count was better organized than that in Cocoa, Fla. Its leader, famed Bird Photographer Allan Dudley Cruickshank (see cut}, planned it with all the precision of a beachhead landing.

Each of 17 observers studied his subsection of the circle for weeks or months ahead, on foot, by boat, and by jeep, noting where birds were concentrated, and what kinds. When the great day came, Helen Cruickshank, a topnotch birder in her own right, and Farida Wiley, of the American Museum of Natural History, walked out on a dike to count anhingas (water turkeys). Halfway out, they found two 8-ft. alligators sunning themselves and blocking the way. The determined ladies shooed the gators into the water, and kept on counting. At day's end Cocoa had shattered its 1953 record of 147 species with a sparkling 167 that might stand as the year's highest count, was certain to be in the top half dozen.* Aircraft Support. Florida and California maintain their traditional hostility in birding as in all else, .with Louisiana and Texas caught in the crossfire. Last week, in Louisiana's St. Francisville-Port Hudson area, twelve observers racked up 141 species, making their previous record of 113 look sick. California counters ran up astronomical totals of individual birds: around Gray Lodge and Butte Sink Refuges, 786,370 birds--mostly waterfowl--with two spotters in a plane contributing massive numbers to the impressive total.

In less temperate climes, the birders had different problems and had to set their sights lower on species counts. But Ocean City, Md. hit 147, nine higher than its previous best, with some observers starting at 2:30 a.m. to hoot for owls and count the answering birds (among sufficiently experienced birders, hearing is believing no less than seeing).

Big counts are by no means limited to wilderness areas. Between Manhattan's skyscrapers and around its waterfront, ten birders tallied 47 species, including the little gull, a straggler from Europe and a notable rarity. Their count of individuals was 117,700, among the nation's highest, thanks to masses of starlings that roost in the arches under Riverside Drive at 125th Street. From a smoggy, stenchful industrial area of New Jersey came a report of 175,000 red-winged blackbirds leaving a roost amid the cattail marshes. All in all, the 8,000 birders would report on 8,000,000 or more birds.

One of the most sought-after birds, especially on the Florida counts, was the cattle egret--the only species ever caught in the act of invading the U.S. without human aid. Native to Africa and Asia, it reached South America a generation ago, no man knows how. In 1952 it was found in Florida, where the burgeoning beef business insures the egret a good livelihood--it feeds on insects kicked up by grazing cattle. But the uncooperative immigrant stayed out of the watchers' winter circles, evaded all the early counts.

To the true birder, that is the kind of challenge that compensates for the long, cold hours, the waiting, the superior smile of more lethal sportsmen. There's nothing quite like the glow of inner pride when a devoted birder spots a rarity. One who glowed this season was Ben Coffey Jr. of Memphis, who saw seven pine siskins (common enough in the North, but rare in the mid-South and beyond) on his Mississippi count around a crossroads hamlet named Kara Avis.

*The mark at which all groups shoot: 172 species in 1950 around Harlingen, Texas.

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