RICH KANE
“This is the voice of New Jersey Audubon for Thursday, November…with reports of…”
Long before e-mail and the Internet, before voice mail, before instant messages,
bird blogs, listserves, Blackberries, and DeLorme maps; before cell phones,
satellite phones, phone chains, site guides, and GPS units; before, for that
matter, most rare bird alerts of any kind (the New Jersey Audubon Rare Bird
Alert was started in 1978), Rich Kane was informing us by magnetic-tape recorded
messages of the good birds and good birding places of the week. Mostly in New
Jersey, unless something exceptional—a Ross’s Gull, a Smew, a Boreal or Hawk
Owl—called for the rare “extralimital report.” Have some free time for birding?
Before grabbing the bino
culars and scope, before thinking of what food or which
clothes to bring, the absolutely first ritual was to call the NJAS Rare Bird
Alert (number in one of my dirty old disintegrating field guides: 201-766-2661)
and hear Rich’s message of hope—sometimes later denied, but more often
not—usually taped on a Thursday, ready for those of us who couldn’t dash off
instantly at word of something tantalizing.
For the last third of the twentieth century, Rich Kane was that voice of New Jersey Audubon, both literally and figuratively. For almost thirty years Rich attended countless meetings, bent thousands of ears, testified at endless hearings, wrote hundreds of reports and policy documents, tirelessly voiced N.J. Audubon’s opinion in print, on the radio, and on television, and worked ceaselessly for the preservation of the state’s natural heritage. During those years, starting in 1973 as director of Scherman Sanctuary (later it grew to Scherman-Hoffman, with the addition of the adjacent Hoffman Estate), he led thousands of field trips and introduced myriads to the wonders of birds and natural history of New Jersey. He was for many years a familiar trip leader and trip coordinator (“field marshal”) at the annual NJAS Cape Fall Weekend and later the Spring Weekend. Rich retired as NJAS’s vice-president of conservation in 2002.
Of the many things he helped accomplish in those decades of service was New Jersey’s landmark Wetlands Act, still the strongest in the nation; the N.J. Endangered Species Act, which created a ground-breaking council on which he served for many years; and the preservation of large areas in the Hackensack Meadowlands, once an enormous garbage dump, now a magnet for birders and nature lovers. A 587-acre expanse of the Meadowlands—home to shorebirds, Clapper Rails, both night-herons, Peregrine Falcons, and, in season, Rough-legged Hawks and Short-eared Owls—is now named the Richard P. Kane Natural Area. Go there sometime.
I interviewed Rich one bright morning last May as we walked along the banks of the Delaware River south of Phillipsburg in Warren County, one of the new birding spots he’d developed since retiring and moving to nearby Stewartsville. We’d had some warblers, and many Baltimore Orioles; and Common Mergansers, which have been nesting on this stretch of the Delaware River since the 1970s, flew by occasionally.
I liked your talking about your early days in the Bronx and birding with Paul Buckley and other friends, people who later became well-known in the birding world and whom I got to know much later.
RK: I started birding in 1949. The first bird I saw in Van Cortland Park was a Golden-crowned Kinglet; I couldn’t believe anything was that small. And then in the spring I saw my first Wood Duck. It was caught with one leg in a trap, and the warden came along and let it out of the trap. That was about the time that (Robert) Moses was building the golf course, so naturally we hated Moses…he filled in the horseshoe around the marsh where you could easily get Virginia Rail and Sora…
So you had the marsh down below and the ridge on top, and you had marsh birds down below and warblers on the top…Bronx was good. The (Bronx Botanical) Gardens were good for warblers and owls in the winter. We lived in the west Bronx around 254th Street, north of Manhattan College. I could get out of my house, and walk on the West Side Highway highway shoulder and across Broadway, and then into Van Cortland Park. It didn’t take all that long. Pelham Bay Park was a good place, but that was a bus ride. In the winter, a good owl place, and you could do all three parks in a day.
I actually started birding at our county place in Rockland County when I was about seven. As soon as I could climb trees I got interested in birds. I grew up with Red-shouldered Hawk, American Woodcock, Nashville Warbler, Whip-poor-will, Ruffed Grouse, Yellow-throated Vireo; they all bred on the property. Rockland County was a rural place then, and now it’s a suburb.
Where in Rockland County?
RK: Pomona, about 4 miles from Spring Valley, 7 miles from Suffern.
Did you bird actively from the age of 7?
RK: I started to bird actively from the age of 12. In 1949 in the fall, I made trips down there to bird and I met John Kieran in 1950, Mr. “Information Please,” and John was an active birder. If we had any bird questions, he was the man. And we went on Linnaean Society field trips.
So Paul Buckley was in your class?
RK: Saint Margaret’s Elementary School in the Bronx; we lived on the same road, a few blocks apart…we had a coterie of people from Riverdale; a fellow named Joe Phelan…and Bob Scully from the same neighborhood, who was a couple of years younger, who’s now in the Urner Club.
When did you go to the National Audubon Camp?
RK: In 1954 at Hog Island in Maine. Allan Cruickshank and Joe Cadbury were the
leaders, and Frank Frazier was a member for the summer staff for the camp, and I
was a camper.
[Editors Note: For a schedule of Audubon Camp in Maine sessions visit
http://www.maineaudubon.org/explore/camp/hi_overview.shtml]
Did you go to the local high school?
RK: I went to Xavier High School downtown with the Jesuits, and I was away in college and seminary. I also taught at Fordham and I spent two years in Bronx Park and in the Botanical Gardens. One summer I birded once every day when I was studying for graduate school. That was interesting because you get a chronology of early fall migration. First are the waterthrushes in the first week of July on the Bronx River, and if you wanted to see an Olive-sided Flycatcher (a tough bird anyplace in New York City) the Botanical Gardens was the place the first two weeks in August.
So you never took holy orders?
RK: I left after seven years; the Jesuits take 13 or 14 years, you get degrees and teach along the way.
When did you first go to Cape May?
RK: My father first took me to Cape May in 1949, and then he took me and Paul Buckley again in 1951. The Parkway wasn’t there then; you took Route 9. First Route 539 south to Tuckerton, and then Route 9 south; 539 is still one of my favorite roads in New Jersey.
Mine too; it cuts across amazing parts of the Pine Barrens. Any early memories of Cape May?
RK: In 1950 or ’51, I remember seeing my first Bonaparte’s Gull in Cape May, and later learned that you could see them in the Bronx on the Hudson River in winter.
In those later trips in ‘54 and ‘55 we would stay at Mrs. Schaeffer’s Boarding House, in Cape May Point. In the early fifties that’s where all the birders stayed. There are now two streets gone from Cape May Point that were still there when I was going on those early trips. That’s where all the birders stayed and the hotspot was Lighthouse Avenue, which didn’t have a lot of the houses on it that it has now. In ‘54 we had a Lark Sparrow in the parking lot at the lighthouse
Some things have changed since then. At the right time in late August, in the window, you could get multiple Loggerhead Shrikes. Also in the early 1950s, Black Terns some days were in three figures; Black Terns were easy to find.
I remember the first trips down there we went to Cape May in August, and sometimes we’d visit a marsh we used to call the Cow Pasture because it actually had cows [Editors Note: Now The Nature Conservancy’s Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge, also known as the South Cape May Meadows].
I remember that from the 1970s; I used to jolt myself all the time with the metal scope on the electrified wires. When did you start to band birds?
RK: In 1954 we did some banding and caught a Connecticut Warbler, and I became an active bander around ‘61. I banded in the seminary on the Hudson River, and then I banded on Fire Island in the summer after I got married. I did some at Baxter Creek in the Bronx, and I did some banding at Tuckerton, where I propped up a dead Ruddy Turnstone and had shorebirds coming in to the nets. I remember that when we were in Cape May we were always anxious to talk to Bill Clark, who had a banding station there. I even did some banding at Scherman in the early years, but by the 1990s things had just gotten too complicated to continue.
I first met you in 1975, in the winter in North Arlington, back when the landfills were just pretty nasty garbage dumps, and there was a Franklin’s Gull in the mud in front of us. You hadn’t been with N.J. Audubon very long then, had you?
RK: I came to New Jersey, to Newark where I taught school, in 1967, I was hired by New Jersey Audubon in ’73, first at Franklin Lakes; and Pat and I moved to Scherman Sanctuary in June of 1973.
Once you were with New Jersey Audubon, did you usually go to the annual meeting which was traditionally held every fall in Cape May?
RK: Yes, and that was always at the end of September, either the last week of September or first week in October. I can remember years before in the 60s and early 70s, before I came to Audubon, our friends from the Bronx would always argue which week was better to go for the warblers and other Neotropical migrants. It’s amazing how things have changed, with the radar studies on the Gulf showing that the Neotropicals are only about half what they used to be. Now the focus on Cape May is late October to early November. And in fact, if you look at the monster flights on New Jersey coast, they are in the October 21 to 31 period, at Cape May and Sandy Hook and elsewhere.
When there’s a big wreck it’s mostly those shorter distance migrants that pile up in that time…there’s a million birds…and most of these occur in the last week of October…spectacular flicker flights, and Blue Jays, kinglets, herons, hawks, and sparrows…and it’s a hot time, but it is true that you don’t see as many warblers as you used to.
That’s what people want to see in Cape May—the big spectacular flights—that’s the lure of the place; and of course, the rarities.
Do you have any particular memory of Cape May in that period or later?
RK: I have a lot of memories of individual birds. I remember a Hooded Warbler on the hood of a car; it was like October 2, probably one of the reverse migrants. And I remember a couple of times jaegers at South Cape May on the beach, or in the Cow Pasture sitting down…there was a dark-morph Pomarine Jaeger on the beach one year…
And one year there was an Eared Grebe at everyone’s feet in the State Park lot; you could practically bend over and pick it up…and a Chuck-will’s-widow sitting on a low tree in Higbees Beach…
And funny things; one year whole bunch of bullhorn birds.
I remember you in the parking lot with your bullhorn and calling out a Barn Owl to the crowd as it flew overhead.
RK: That was the same weekend there was a Sandwich Tern at the Concrete Ship. Gus Daniels and Alan Keith had just found this bird, and I made an announcement on the bullhorn: “Sandwich Tern at the Concrete Ship,” and the whole 200 people at the hawk watch vacated and went over there to see it.
And the next day there was a Swainson’s Hawk that we knew had come in the day before. It had been banded the day before, and everybody was waiting for the hawk to get up, which it eventually did, and that was when the Barn Owl popped up in front of everybody and I called it out.
I could go on like this all day, but I think attention spans on the Internet are shorter than on the printed page, so we should stop here. (There are some harsh squawking notes out on the river as I say this.)
RK: There go more mergs…