FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- When the golden-winged warbler begins its 2,000- to 3,000-mile flight up from South America in a few weeks, a flock of the petite yellow-crowned songbirds will make a beeline for Fort Drum, where they will sing, breed and forage the low tangled shrublands here under the watchful eye of Jeff Bolsinger, the installation's leading ornithologist.
Bolsinger, who has been studying and monitoring birds for 30 years, has aggressively monitored the nearly threatened golden-winged warbler since taking the migratory bird biologist position in the Natural Resources Branch in 2007.
With the bird experiencing one of the fastest declines of any songbird species in North America, Bolsinger explained that the golden-winged warbler is defenseless against two factors: disappearing habitat and the invasion of the blue-winged warbler.
"This bird is in trouble," he said. "And it is being considered for listing (under the Endangered Species Act) because it requires (shrubby) young forests -- a habitat that is slowly disappearing in the Northeast in general."
Such habitats happen to be plentiful on Fort Drum, making it somewhat of a sanctuary for the golden-winged warbler. But crossbreeding with its domineering and outcompeting cousin, the blue-winged warbler, continues to shrink golden-winged numbers.
"They are getting harder and harder to find," Bolsinger said. "We probably have around 500 golden-winged warblers and maybe close to 1,000 blue-winged warblers.
"When the blue-winged warbler invades a habitat," he added, "the golden-winged warbler is completely gone within 50 years or so."
'Serious birder'
Bolsinger, whose vision registers better than 20/20, describes himself and others like him as "serious birders," a term that partly distinguishes the casual bird watcher from those who can identify birds without even seeing them.
"Many small birds are very hard to see," said Bolsinger, who is able to classify hundreds of songbirds by song alone. "In fact, about 95 percent of the songbirds I identify are by ear."
Serious birders are captivated with the story of birds. They take the time to learn each bird's unique sound or song, while also discovering where it came from, where it's going, where it breeds, what it eats, what are its behaviors, and which traits are idiosyncratic.
While most people who watch birds do it for recreational or social reasons, Bolsinger said serious birders spend at least one day a week birding.
"It's not just a hobby," he said. "No matter what you are doing, you are looking or listening to what's around you."
Bolsinger became a "bird geek" while attending Oregon State University. Although he always loved mammals, he said he didn't even consider birds worth the time of day until he spotted a then-endangered bald eagle during a biology class field trip to a local National Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis.
After earning his degree in zoology, he worked seasonal jobs. Like starving artists, Bolsinger said most people who want to work with birds take short-term, low-paying jobs with universities or the federal government to make a living.
"There's this whole group of people roaming around out there looking for jobs," he said. "But you can only do that for so long. You usually end up either going to graduate school or finding a different line of work."
But a different line of work was never in the cards for Bolsinger. After meeting fellow biologist Carol Cady, sampling birds in apple orchards near Gettysburg, Pa., the two were married, and Bolsinger took a job in Fort Hood, Texas. It was while recording the songs of another warbler, the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, there that he enrolled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in the early 1990s.
After earning his master's degree, he began working with birds as a Colorado State University contractor at Fort Drum, where his wife also worked at the time in geographic information systems.
Nearly 20 years later now, one of Bolsinger's main responsibilities at Fort Drum is to inventory and monitor a wide variety of bird species across the installation while developing management plans and projects balancing the needs of birds with Soldiers.
Bird's-eye view
Last summer, Bolsinger was working near Fort Drum Training Area 5 when he spotted a Kirtland's warbler, a small federally endangered songbird that typically breeds in Michigan and Ontario and winters in the Bahamas.
Most songbirds are site-specific. Bolsinger said a bird breeding in a field on post will go to South America and return to that same field next year.
"This one just got lost," he said. "Birds do make mistakes. When you are migrating from Canada to the Bahamas and back, you don't always get it right -- a lot of things can go wrong."
Exactly how birds navigate over great distances is an aggressive area of scientific research, Bolsinger explained. Some researchers suggest that birds determine their position by detecting the Earth's magnetic field. Others believe birds use the stars at night.
"Whether celestial cues or something else, we don't know for sure," he said.
Bolsinger said that in addition to the 20 or so species of warblers that are found on Fort Drum, many other species of insectivores -- like flycatchers, swifts and swallows -- fly thousands of miles south each fall.
One long-distance migrant, the upland sandpiper, recently was listed in New York state as a threatened species. Fort Drum even conducted a large-scale timber harvest operation last winter near Training Area 7 to restore vital sand-plains grasslands for the dove-like shorebird that winters in Argentina.
Although the North Country is more of a breeding ground than a winter destination, Bolsinger said one bird that regularly winters here keeps even the most casual of bird watchers scanning the frozen fields for a glimpse of its beautiful luminous white plumage.
"It's amazing how excited people get about snowy owls," Bolsinger said. "When they show up, I get messages from so many people, even people you would never think would care at all about anything in nature."
He said an unusual "irruption" of snowy owls in recent years has led to sightings as far south as Florida. Last year, a snowy owl was even documented off in Bermuda.
In addition to snowy owls, the rough-legged hawk, American tree sparrow and the northern shrike also breed in the Arctic and winter in areas like northern New York. Bolsinger said the northern shrike is a predatory songbird nicknamed the "butcher bird," because it likes to catch mice or other small mammals and impale them on thorns for later feeding.
But, like the warbler, most of the 250-plus birds on Fort Drum are migrants or at least short-distance migrants like American robins, blackbirds, sparrows, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, northern flickers, red-bellied woodpeckers, red-headed woodpeckers and bald eagles that may journey only a few hundred miles south of here.
Bolsinger said the red-headed woodpecker, which is nearly on the threatened list, is a migrant bird often confused for the hairy or downy woodpecker -- two red-spotted woodpeckers that like the large pileated woodpecker actually remain in the area year-round. So-called "resident" birds include many songbirds like cardinals, sparrows, blue jays, black-capped chickadees, gold finches and purple finches.
Balancing act
In general, ornithologists work in a branch of zoology that studies every aspect of birds, including song, behavior, taxonomy, physical appearance and migration patterns.
Bolsinger said he thinks of himself as more migratory bird biologist than ornithologist, only because his work with the Army is in monitoring birds and working on management plans and projects to ensure good training land exists for Soldiers while keeping bird habitats healthy.
He said balancing the Army's top priority of training Soldiers for war while doing everything he possibly can to prevent potential harm to birds and their habitats can be very challenging, which is why he works closely with Range Control personnel to look for win-win solutions.
"Actively managing (the land) means looking at construction plans and habitat management to see what ways you can minimize the potential for killing birds, which usually involves timber sales and timber-clearing operations.
"Sometimes," he added, "when possible, the quality of the training land is even enhanced."
Jason Wagner, chief of Fort Drum's Natural Resources Branch, said Bolsinger is an expert at de-conflicting wildlife obligations from military training requirements. He said such expertise helps the Natural Resources team maintain productive, healthy ecosystems on post while also keeping Fort Drum in compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a federal law that prohibits pursuing, hunting, taking, capturing, killing or selling migratory birds without a waiver.
"Fort Drum is extremely fortunate to have someone with Jeff's incredible experience and knowledge," Wagner said. "He is a true professional -- our subject-matter expert when it comes to managing migratory birds to de-conflict training impacts and keep us in compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act."
The 100-year-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, along with recent court decisions expanding the scope of the law to DOD lands, is one reason Bolsinger's job exists. The law, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, basically makes it illegal to kill any non-game species native to North America.
One big reason the USFWS protects birds and promotes biodiversity is wildlife contributions to the field of medicine.
According to the USFWS, more than a quarter of all prescriptions written each year in the U.S. contain chemicals discovered in plants and animals. Penicillin came from fungus, and many antibiotics, anti-cancer agents, painkillers and blood-thinners are derived from plants and animals.
Bolsinger said that since every living thing contains a unique reservoir of genetic material that cannot be retrieved or duplicated if lost, scientists search vigorously for chemical secrets that could benefit mankind.
Recent research even revealed the golden-winged warbler's ability to detect low-frequency sounds called infrasound, which could very well explain why the bird evacuated areas in the Midwest in droves last summer days before severe thunderstorms and deadly tornadoes struck.
'Extraordinary' ornithologist
Bolsinger's outstanding work in natural resource management is a critical component to sustaining Fort Drum training lands, said Jim Corriveau, director of Fort Drum Public Works.
"Jeff's work goes well beyond just compliance with public laws protecting wildlife," he said. "He's clearly an extraordinary Army ornithologist, advancing the Army programs to enhance habitat for species at risk and accommodate migratory bird populations."
As much as he does not like the limelight, Bolsinger admits that he loves sharing his knowledge of birds. He regularly takes calls from other military installations calling him for assistance, and he recently worked on a plan for migratory bird management within the DOD-USFWS's Integrated Natural Resources Management Plan, which is being used as a model for management at installations DODwide.
"Fort Drum does have one of the best INRMPs in the Army," he noted.
But at the end of the day, Bolsinger said keeping the dynamic and dissimilar activities of bird life and military training counterbalanced is the simple and most satisfying aspect of his work, especially when it involves species like the golden-winged warbler that are closing in on a threatened status.
"Developing projects that benefit both birds and Soldiers is particularly rewarding for me," he said.
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