David McKelvey BirdMan, article from 2008
"The Birdman" is back
David McKelvey holds his pet Muscovy duck Sonia outside his home near Ingram Texas
Thu, Mar 13, 2008
By Clint Schroeder
https://wkcurrent.com/the-birdman-is-back-p1438-71.htm
West Kerr Current
After spending the last 10 years working at the Phoenix Zoo, David McKelvey a.k.a. The Birdman has returned to West Kerr County. McKelvey, who lived here in the early ‘90s, was a familiar face. He was a regular on local television and radio shows and presented nature programs to Hunt summer campers. He also has a national presence, having appeared on late night television with Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and David Letterman, as well as Burgess Meredith’s Those Amazing Animals. If that weren’t enough, he’s saved several endangered species of birds, is the author and illustrator of three children’s books Maverick the Lucky Longhorn, Commander the Gander and Bobby the Mostly Silky, and is an accomplished wildlife artist.
And though he has traveled the world on the Amazon River, in the Brazilian rainforest, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius and Africa to name a few places he’s been and worked he said of the Hill Country, “This is the most fascinating part of the world I’ve ever lived in”. McKelvey said he was to have been working on a project with Ted Turner to restore condors on a California ranch, but it fell through when Turner disagreed with federal authorities on how many biologists would be required.
When here before, McKelvy did nature presentations for the YO Ranch and Mo-Ranch, as well as many summer camps, and would be happy to do so again. He knows reptiles, amphibians and mammals, and currently is working professionally with plants at a Boerne nursery. If it lives, I’m generally fairly knowledgeable about it, he said.
But birds are something of a specialty, he said, because of their portability. He’s been the Curator of Birds at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville and at the San Antonio Zoo. He’s held positions as a naturalist and consultant at museums and foundations all over the country, worked as a ship’s naturalist and is a speaker and lecturer.
He has seen a number of changes in bird population, and has written papers on Invaders and Erupting Populations. When he had a local call-in radio show on KERV in the 1990s, he would get calls from people saying how unusual it was to see Eurasian collared-doves, a species of bird that used to be found only in India.
After having been gone a little over a decade, the whole town is overrun with these collared-doves, he said. They’re down here at the feed store cleaning up. They’re at everybody’s bird feeders. He said you can see them on telephone wires, and when a deer feeder goes off, they’ll come down and eat the corn and then move on to the next ranch. These things have got a built-in time clock to know when everybody’s deer feeder goes off, he added. He said Texas has declared open season on them shoot as may as you want as often as your want, 365, he said. McKelvy said the species came here in two ways from India. First, they traveled across central Europe and into the Orkneys off the Scottish coast, coming down through Greenland and Labrador. Second, during a cyclone some were picked up off the coast of Africa and blown into the Caribbean, and then went on to Louisiana and Texas. These two rapidly marching armies met, and that gave them hybrid vigor and genetic diversity we’re going to be sending our kids to school with them before long, McKelvy said.
He said white-winged doves also have invaded the area.
You used to have to go down to El Cajon in Mexico to shoot white wings because their range didn’t extend into here 15 years ago, he said. Now they’re common breeding birds. When he first moved to San Antonio, he said if you saw or heard a whitewing it was considered unusual. Now they don’t even migrate, he said. They stay in a central park area right down in the very heart, very near the Alamo. Where 10 or 12 would be roosting in a tree at night, there’s 2-3,000 now.
Another recent invader is the black bellied whistling duck.
The whistling ducks have learned there’s no duck-hunting in cities, so here they are, sitting on telephone wires in people’s backyards, nesting in their martin house which they’ve dismantled a little bit of to get in. He said the black-bellied whistling-duck is a common breeding bird in Boerne and there are a few here now on Johnson Creek.
Black vultures also have invaded, and there’s a roost on a big metal tower near Ingram on Hwy. 27 that has up to 350 vultures. Those numbers are halved or less now, he said, because they’re sitting on eggs under large cedar piles that haven’t been burned.
He said birds are adept at adapting to changing circumstances. He noted there are hundreds of grackles here now, who are attentive when ranch trucks come into town and park at Wal-Mart or HEB.
When the truck owners go into the store, he said, the grackles come down and clean out any corn or stock feed that’s left in the back of the truck. Here they are in a totally new niche altogether that these birds picked up in the last four or five years how to tell a pickup truck from a non-pickup truck, how to tell a familiar pickup truck from a new one. He said grackles are so bold now, he’s seen them go for groceries in the back of a pickup while a woman was looking for her keys in her purse. Birds are not terribly imaginative, he said, but they know that when you rip open the white bag, there’s goodies.
If that’s not enough to make you think of Alfred Hitchcock’s move The Birds, McKelvey has another tale. I saw a grackle walking up to the door of Wal-Mart down here and she stood aside while a woman opened the door, he said. She flew directly to the meat department and opened up a plastic bag of extra lean and filled her mouth and crop up and flew to the front door and waited patiently. Someone opened it up and she went out and fed her great big babies that were sitting up in a tree. This is pretty good adaptation for a wild bird to kind of put those two and two together, he said. And she was real smart about it. She had her great big ugly son and her both going in and out of the store. The guy in charge of store said a few others have learned that trick.
McKelvey has other stories that will make you think calling someone birdbrained is a compliment. How about this? I’ve got movies of this. A grackle with a pecan in its mouth flies down to the street and watches traffic. He jumps up, puts the pecan in the traffic pattern, jumps back, waits, maybe two or three cars go by. Grackles are patient. He takes the pecan and adjusts it just a little bit that way presto chango, crack! Lots of finely ground pecans to eat. McKelvey said he also has seen grackles in San Antonio defend corners of an intersection. When a red light stops traffic they immediately attack the grills for fried bugs. If another grackle tries to work their corner McKelvy calls them whorehouse grackles they’ll fight to defend it.
He said this behavior has been reported in Japan with crows and with grackles in San Antonio. They understand that the food is cooked and its plentiful, and it’s a lot easier to jump up on a parked car than it is to roam the woods looking for honestly-gotten bugs, he said. They’re very remarkable very, intelligent creatures.