(Note: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom, due to social distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID19 pandemic.)
At 7:00 pm, newly elected President Rochelle Thomas called the meeting of the Society to order. After introducing herself, she thanked the attendees for joining the meeting and celebrated the arrival of spring warblers.
Commencing with the business portion of the meeting, President Thomas announced the results of a new-member vote, which passed with 125 votes of approval and 0 of disapproval. She then welcomed the following 18 individuals as new members:
Name, Membership Level, Sponsor
Alexa Chabora, Active, Mary Beth Kooper
Mark Keegan, Active, Ken Chaya
Arlene Auerbach, Active, Anne Lazarus, Karen Becker
Diane Hom, Active, Gabriel Willow
Frederic Duby, Active, Amanda Bielskas
Nicole Veno, Active, Alice McInerney
Barbara Bassett, Active, Emelia Oleson
Radka Osickova, Active, Michelle Talich
Ann Murray, Supporting, Michelle Talich
Steve Auerbach, Supporting, Karen Becker
Esther Shin, Active, Michelle Talich
Ayuko Shiina, Supporting, Kathleen Matthews
Douglas Cowan, Active, Amy Simmons
Marsha Garrison, Active, Debbie Mullins
Katharine (Timmy) Wasley, Active, Amy Simmons
Donna Kennedy, Active, Amanda Bielskas
Patrick McKenzie, Associate, Rochelle Thomas
Arlene Hedlund, Active, Ruth Rosenthal & Richard Lieberman
President Thomas then announced the result of the online vote to approve the minutes of the March members’ meeting. The vote passed with 125 votes of approval and 0 of disapproval.
President Thomas next reviewed the results of a member survey regarding our current COVID-19 guidelines. Thirty members were opposed, and nine members were in favor of dropping the current vaccine requirement, resulting in a decision to keep our current protocol requiring vaccination to participate in our field trips.
President Thomas told us that LSNY would be teaming up with our colleagues at New York City Audubon and Bryant Park to provide free walks on select Tuesday mornings and Wednesday afternoons. She recommended that interested parties review the information on the NYC Audubon and Bryant Park websites. Additionally, President Thomas reminded us that on May 7th and 8th, we would hold our Great Gull Island birdathon event to raise much-needed funds for ongoing research on the island.
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At 7:15 pm, President Thomas introduced the evening’s speaker, Jonathan Meiburg, who presented “Looking for Johnny Rook: Adventures in the World of the Caracaras.”
In 1997 Jonathan Meiburg, an accomplished musician and avid birder, was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that allowed him to travel to remote communities around the world. This year-long journey sparked an enduring fascination with islands, birds, and the deep history of the living world. His first book, A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World’s Smartest Birds of Prey, published by Knopf in 2021, came from this journey. The book combines natural history, travel writing, and literary biography to tell the story of the unusual falcons called caracaras and the people who live with them. The nonfiction book is one of the most acclaimed of the year. One reviewer humorously asserts, “Calling this a bird book is like calling Moby-Dick a whaling manual.”
Along with scientific publications, Meiburg has also written on subjects from a hidden exhibit hall at the American Museum of Natural History to the last long-form interview with author Peter Matthiessen. However, he’s best known for his work with his bands Shearwater and Loma, whose albums and performances have been praised by NPR, The New York Times, the Guardian, and Pitchfork. His unique career between the sciences and the arts makes him an ideal and accessible guide on a journey through wild landscapes and deep time in the company of weird and wonderful creatures and people.
Meiburg began his presentation by speaking about the falcon family and how we think of them as lightning fast, anti-social, and single-focused birds of prey. Recent science shows that falcons are more closely related to parrots than hawks, and Meiburg noted the observable ancestral connections. He pointed out that the behaviors of caracaras are even more unusual than other falcons, including their ability to walk on the ground while searching for prey and their close bond with their mates. Unlike “true falcons,” caracaras build gigantic nests, display gregarious social behavior, demonstrate fearless interaction with humans and other animals, and exhibit a taste for a wide array of food from human trash to carrion.
In his seminal book The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin wrote about caracaras more than any other bird he encountered. He was struck by their fearlessness, alertness, and sociability, finding the birds a fascinating nuisance. Darwin marveled as they repeatedly stole items from the ship’s crew, ultimately earning the unflattering nickname “flying monkeys.”
The birds were mainly isolated throughout their existence and did not regularly encounter humans until the European settlers attempted to set up sheep farming on the islands. The caracara’s innate curiosity quickly became a problem for the farmers, who worked to eradicate the birds by putting a bounty on their beaks. However, caracaras have been protected in recent years and are rebounding in population.
The Striated Caracaras, or Johnny rooks, live in the archipelago of the Falklands on the island of Steeple Jason. They cohabitate with gentoo penguins and black-browed albatrosses in the summer months, eating their chicks and eggs. In the winter, the caracaras are forced to dig in the ground for worms or grubs. Meiburg suggested that the long winter without a good food source has made them especially curious to examine anything they haven’t seen before.
Meiburg next introduced William Henry Hudson. Hudson was born on a ranch in the Argentine Pampas, where he spent his youth studying the local flora and fauna. His favorite birds were the Striated Caracara and the Chimango Caracara, which is the size of a crow, quite common, annoying, and very smart. He ultimately emigrated to England in search of other like-minded naturalists. Hudson became a wildlife advocate and an early founder of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
Social learning is an essential part of a caracara’s life. Laura Biondi led a study of the Chimango Caracara, demonstrating that caracaras who watch others learn to open a food box can perform the task much more quickly than the first group. Similarly, Tina, a resident Striated Caracara at a falconry center in England, can sort objects by shape and color and retrieve stuffed toys on request, and maintains a close relationship with Geoff, the falconer in charge.
Meiburg noted the historical and current significance of the caracara in Amerindian culture. For example, there are historical drawings of the Inca wearing headpieces adorned with caracara feathers. In addition, Ecuadorians celebrate the esteemed bird in an Inca solstice dance, dressing as caracaras and mimicking their motions. Today the Mexican flag proudly displays a Golden Eagle eating a snake, but Meiburg noted that the image is likely a misinterpretation of an Aztec story, and that the legend was far more likely about the Crested Caracara. More recently, in La Paz, Bolivia, a family started feeding a Mountain Caracara from the window ledge of their high-rise downtown apartment. The bird was so thrilled with the easy meal that it flew away and brought back two more caracaras. The three birds built a nest and bred right there on the apartment building ledge.
Meiburg traveled to the Guiana Shield, a rainforest stretching from Guyana to Suriname, Venezuela, and parts of Columbia and Brazil, where he studied Red-throated Caracaras that nest high up in the trees inside bromeliads. These birds live in family groups, raise chicks together, and display unusual behaviors, such as eating wasp larva and dropping beheaded millipedes into nests with baby chicks. Meiburg theorizes that the millipedes provide a natural repellent to the dangerous wasp venom and assures us we will learn the fascinating truth when we read his book.
Today there are nine species of caracara, and only the Striated Caracara is endangered. Unfortunately, the Guadalupe Caracara was driven to extinction by humans who moved onto their endemic habitat on Mexico’s Guadalupe Island in 1859. The new residents killed off the seals, the bird’s primary food source, and intentionally killed the birds to further their goat-farming ambitions.
The Crested Caracara is the only caracara commonly found in the US, living primarily near the border region of Mexico. However, on occasion they have been seen much farther north; they have been sighted at Bear Mountain and as far north as Nova Scotia, traveling with their friends the Black Vultures. It has been theorized that the caracaras are moving farther north because of the abundance of food found in the carcasses of deer killed along our nation’s highways.
At 7:42 pm Vice President Gabriel Willow thanked Jonathan Meiburg and facilitated the Q&A portion of the meeting. After Gabriel relayed his failed attempt to see the Red-throated Caracara, Meiburg noted that although there are quite a few of them, they are difficult to find, as they live in locations that are not in easy to access.
Next month’s meeting will be held on Tuesday, May 10, 2022, and will feature a lecture by Melanie Stiassny, Ph.D., on “Evolution in a Vortex—Fish Diversity in the Lower Congo River.”
The meeting was adjourned at 8:09 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Kristin Ellington, Recording Secretary