DEREK LOVITCH
Derek Lovitch has one of those stories older birders love to hear. I first saw him about seventeen years ago on a New Jersey Audubon field trip led by Rich Kane. He seemed bright and highly enthused then, and now, at 30, he still seems so. Still a passionate and now an expert birder, he has gone on to become a biologist and field researcher, educator, writer, trip leader, devoted “patch” lister, and local activist. He and his wife Jeannette now live in Pownal, Maine, and they own the Wild Bird Center in nearby Yarmouth.
Derek is the “Tools of the Trade” department editor for Birding magazine. You can read about his birding and other adventures on his “Field Notes” blog on Mainetoday.com.
I rendezvoused with Derek one morning last September at a parking area on Portland’s Back Cove, a tidal basin where, years ago, I once watched a Pomarine Jaeger catch and eat a Semipalmated Plover. He’d been out since before dawn at a nearby migrant trap at Sandy Point Beach, on Cousin’s Island in Yarmouth, and although he said it hadn’t been a particularly good morning so far, he was clearly excited to be birding, even though it is something he does nearly every day, year ‘round.
We drove down to Scarborough Marsh, the largest saltmarsh north of Massachusetts, where a Sandhill Crane had been reported earlier that morning. We stopped at a spot in nearby Pine Point, and Derek pointed out a small flock of “eastern” and “western” Willets, giving me a short lecture on the fine points of this now-popular subject. It was a warm sunny morning just past Labor Day, but the streets were nearly deserted and many of the houses appeared to be closed up for the season, something that doesn’t happen until winter nowadays in Cape May, if it ever does.
RR: How many years have you been in Maine?
DL: We’re in our sixth year here. You have to remember that we’ve done so many things in a short amount of time, and we did so many things fairly recently, from leaving Michigan to moving to Maine and finding a place, to getting engaged to getting married, to opening a store in Yarmouth, to buying a house, within a two-year period…its all been sort of a blur.
RR: Are you a Jersey guy originally?
DL: Born and raised in East Brunswick, where I lived with my mother…I stayed with my dad on and off afterwards in Bridgewater, when I’d periodically come back to the state; he passed away last year.
RR: And school?
DL: Cook College, Rutgers, where I studied environmental policy with a minor in wildlife management. If I could do it over again I’d do it the other way around…I’d now rather get the data and give it to someone else to make policy…
…I had done some field work on the New Jersey Breeding Bird Atlas when I was younger, I didn’t have a license, I’d ride my bike to the areas in East Brunswick, Old Bridge, South River area.
RR: You worked in Cape May for New Jersey Audubon didn’t you?
DL: Well, before that I worked in Owl Haven for a year as a volunteer while I was in college. I also volunteered at Chimney Rock Hawk Watch. Both places opened up opportunities for me. Now I’m running a store in Maine, and I recently started a hawkwatch here. Back at the time I was volunteering I had no idea how much those two jobs would help me in the future. N.J. Audubon meant a lot to me.
I got interested in birds fairly young. I don’t have an initiator bird, but I remember climbing a mulberry tree in the backyard and there were waxwings up there in the leaves eating mulberries with me. My parents facilitated my interests to the best of their abilities. My dad would read something about a New Jersey Audubon walk or trip and he would drop me off, and I’d meet people and learn things.
RR: Before you got to Cape May to work as an interpretive naturalist in 2001, what did you do?
DL: After my sophomore and junior years at Rutgers I did internships doing fieldwork. The first one was in eastern West Virginia studying pesticides and birds in orchards…and I was in Connecticut at a sanctuary where I did all sorts of jobs, including breeding bird surveys.
After graduating in 1999 I started taking seasonal field jobs…first in Hawaii; then at the Sandy Hook hawkwatch in the spring of 2000; then I spent my first three summers on the Pribilof Islands in Alaska…after that the Florida Keys, watching hawks outside of Marathon for Hawkwatch International; and at a hawkwatch in Pennsylvania.
Then I went to Whitefish Point Bird Observatory (on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula), and that’s when I met Jeannette (Morss), who was the director. She had earlier worked as a bander in Cape May for a number of seasons. New Jersey keeps reappearing in my life.
RR: So you and Jeannette left the Upper Peninsula and moved to Portland, Maine. Did you have any connections here?
DL: Not really. We were looking for jobs, or schools; master’s program for me and PhD for Jeannette. We wanted a backup plan, which was to just find jobs and a place to live for a short time…She had gone to Colby and had a friend in Portland and I had birded up here. ..There is great birding very close, the ocean and Casco Bay, and real mountains and boreal birds within two or three hours…And after the cultural wasteland of the Upper Peninsula, Portland looked pretty good…
RR: Did you discover Sandy Point as a fall migrant trap?
DL: It’s a morning flight location, scrubby edge of a parking lot with trees. It was discovered by a very good birder, Lysle Brinker, and he told me about it. He’s a friend of Paul Lehman, apparently from the same town in Westchester. Paul put me in touch with him when we moved here. Lysle is one of the state’s top birders, definitely.
RR: And you’ve recently moved outside Portland?
DL: We had a noisy neighbor in our building in Portland’s East End, and Jeannette said she never wanted to share a wall with anyone ever again. We liked Portland and living in a city, but we wanted a single family home, and we found Pownal…a rural town…mostly small farms and small houses, and a small population. It’s only a half hour from Portland, and 8.6 miles to our store. We have five acres, four in mature woods with a lot of white pine.
We’re not mowing a lawn, just letting it go to weeds, reducing grass to habitat, trying to be good stewards to the land. Six warblers breed in the yard: Pine, Yellow-rumped, Black-throated Green, the most common, Ovenbird; we had an over-summering Magnolia (replacing Blackburnian on this year’s breeding bird survey), and a Black-and-white that probably bred. Plus breeding Hermit Thrush, Brown Creeper, Pileated Woodpecker, and a Barred Owl in the neighborhood.
RR: Tell me about solar heat and photovoltaics you’re planning.
DL: The current house is open…and not particularly energy efficient. We wanted to minimize our carbon footprint, and invested in solar hot water, photovoltaics, a more efficient furnace…and we need an energy audit…Not cheap but a good investment financially and ethically.
RR: Why did you open the Wild Bird Center in Yarmouth?
DL: We never had an ideal that we wanted to open a store. But we fell in love with southern Maine, and didn’t want to do seasonal work; we wanted to make our own opportunities…
But it wasn’t until we did the Freeport/Brunswick Christmas Count and were given an area with no open water, just woodlands and suburbs. We walked the entire day, leapfrogging with the car, and noted how many backyard feeder operations were inadequate, with junky feeders, poor-quality seed, or just plain badly set up. And we thought, “Why don’t we open a store that would sell proper equipment and supplies?” It wasn’t an instantaneous thing but this makes a long story short! We needed training from Wild Bird Center, and meanwhile did other things…I went back for my third season in the Pribilofs, my last hurrah of seasonal field work. We decided to open the store in August 2003.
The majority of our customers aren’t necessarily birders—they’re simply people who like to feed birds in their backyards…We also sell optics and a variety of books and backyard habitat supplies, and we’re always available for advice, local birding tips, and other services. And people use our Web site, www.yarmouthbirds.com/ .
RR: I’ve heard that you’ve been working as a guide and trips’ leader.
DL: Most of my guiding is local; we’ll do Scarborough Marsh for Nelson’s and Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrows, and general migration hotspots…I like guiding, but I don’t advertise much so as not to be away from the store TOO often. I’ve led trips to Rangeley and Monhegan Island, and I will take anyone around south-coastal Maine…
I like to lead trips for Bicknell’s Thrush, but don’t take people to Mount Washington for the birds. There is no place in Maine that you can drive to for Bicknell’s, so I do an overnight camping trip; I make you hike for it…You go to sleep hearing the thrushes sing…
This year we led five pelagic boat trips with Paul Guris’s Sea Life Paulagics; I got to know him from the winter Belmar trips, when Scott Barnes was one of the spotters. We also had two trips to Outer Green Island in Casco Bay for terns aboard a local lobster boat, Captain Tom Martin’s Lucky Catch, and also did a six-day windjammer tour this summer. And, I was recently hired to co-lead a trip or two a year with WINGS.
RR: Do you have any favorite stories from Cape May and people you became friends with?
DL: I got to know Paul Lehman from my time in the Pribilofs, when he would lead trips over from Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, and I know most of the Cape May regulars from when I was younger. I lived and worked in Cape May for one fall season, at the Hawk Watch as an interpretive naturalist in 2001. I had insomnia that whole season; I had never experienced insomnia before and never since; perhaps it was just the excitement of living and working in Cape May.
We’ve driven over from Pine Point to a new trail at the west end of Scarborough Marsh, but there is no Sandhill Crane and few shorebirds, probably because a local drought has dried up the salt pans the birds often favor.
RR: So what projects are currently in-hand?
DL: A shorebird survey of Scarborough Marsh, though that’s mostly Jeannette. We started the Bradbury Mt. Hawk Watch this spring and hired an intern using some money left me by my dad, a way to give back and to show my appreciation for my Dad’s support of my fledgling birding interest.
RR: Did you ever do World Series of Birding?
DL: I have, several times; the only reason I didn’t do it more is that the event fell right around final exam time when I was at RU. I’m competitive by nature, but I have zero interest in winning the WSB, because I like to spend time looking at the birds, rather than just counting them…you don’t win the event by doing that.
The first time I’d really did the whole state on a Level 1 team was three years ago, for the Boreal Songbird Initiative, with Jeff Wells, who had been on the winning Cornell Lab of Ornithology team…
Last year I did WSB as a leader for a youth team; it was the idea of a local golden boy in Falmouth, a prodigy who is now 13. So I went down and spent four days in a van looking for birds with a mother and bunch of teenagers.
RR: Did you feel old?
DL: I felt really old; but it was a rewarding experience, and a chance to give back, though I don’t know if I’ll do it again.
We’ve left Scarborough Marsh and are entering Portland and an area of abandoned buildings, old railroad tracks, and an expanse of scraggly trees and shrubs along the harbor. Derek tells me it’s often a good birding spot that has unfortunately become a little uncomfortable of late, due to homeless people who live there during the milder seasons.
Coming into downtown Portland I began to suggest a number of seafood restaurants I know, and Derek mentions that he didn’t eat most seafood.
RR: You don’t eat commercial seafood?
DL: (Jokingly) I’d rather not get into that, being from Maine…I don’t tend to eat commercial seafood because the fisheries are so mismanaged—or not even managed—and are so badly overfished.
RR: But the Maine lobster fishery is one of the best managed fisheries of all.
DL: Even lobsters are a problem, because herring is being used as bait a lot in Maine and herring is very overfished…and seabirds—puffins and terns, part of my livelihood—eat herring; ask the whale boat captains…the whales and birds disappear after the trawlers have been through an area in the Gulf of Maine.
I eat lobster when I am on Monhegan Island, for example, because it’s a local food there and that’s what you should be doing, eating locally, which is very important to me.
We find a parking place and go into Duckfat, a place Derek knows, “with the best fries you’ve ever had.” He’s right, they are, and the restaurant’s name has everything to do with it…