The Birdmen

There are ornithologists who spend most of the year far from their families. They rise at the crack of dawn to study birds and their habits. Why would they do this?

It is four in the morning and dreadfully cold on the Spit. I stand next to a gigantic net, about the size of a five-story building, and wait for birds to fly into it. A recording of a bird’s trill (to lure in passing birds) plays in the background – so far, at this early hour, we haven’t spotted any live specimens.

In the darkness we hear the twittering of the rare early risers. Ornithologist Arseny Tsvey and I can only just make out the shape of one another in the darkness. As the sound trap chirps away, I chase the occasional bird that flies into the net, clapping to drive it down the netting passageway, where it will be trapped.

Arseny needs to measure the levels of the hormone corticosterone in the birds. To do this, it is important to catch them quickly and take some of their blood before they grasp the danger of the situation and become nervous. In an hour, we catch just two birds, and at five o’clock we return to finish our dreams in our cold, summer-weight tents. And then, just as I have dropped off to sleep, one of the scientists starts thwacking on the walls of the tent: “Girls, get up, I caught a pretty bird for you!”

“It’s All the Same to Nature”

The Rybachy (“Fisher’s”) Biological Research Station is affiliated with the Russian Academy of Science’s Zoological Institute in St. Petersburg. The small, two-story building is situated on Curonian Spit, in the village of Rybachy. A sign hangs on one of the many doors along the long corridor: “Don’t take worms without asking.” (Червей без спроса не брать) But someone has crossed out the letter б and replaced it with a ж, changing the meaning to “Don’t eat worms without asking.”

Behind this door is where they breed the mealworms that they feed to birds in the lab. Mealworms are disgusting-looking, but the ornithologists are not bothered by them. They tell a story of how, many years ago, a visiting scientist from a German ornithological institute scooped up a handful of mealworms and ate them. When they asked, “Dieter, what are you doing?” He answered simply, “I can eat everything that the birds eat.”

That pretty well sums up everything you need to know about the love ornithologists feel for birds.

The research station is run by Director Nikita Chernetsov, a Doctor of Sciences in biology. Chernetsov is a “small-birder,” as he studies passerines (the largest order of birds, it includes all perching birds or songbirds). His father is an Asia specialist, and his mother is a philologist at St. Petersburg State University. Yet, ever since he was a boy, Nikita knew that he wanted to study birds, and so he entered the department of vertebrate zoology.

He sees nothing unusual in his passion for birds: “The vast majority of people who become interested in nature at an early age love either insects or birds, because they are easy to observe.”

The ornithologists have a strictly scientific relationship with their birds. It is not some childhood infatuation. Locals often bring injured birds to the station, in hopes that someone here can help them. But they never get past the gates.

“I forbid locals from bringing us sick birds,” Chernetsov says. “A sick bird could infect our experimental lab birds, and all of them could die. If someone brings you a bird with a broken wing, kill it quickly and painlessly. That is the most humane thing you can do. You can improve your karma by trying to save a bird, but it’s all the same to nature. The species of black swift could not care less if you feed one of its members or not.”

Chernetsov tells the story of how, in October 1974, an extremely strong Arctic wind invaded southern Germany and millions of swallows died. And so a rich, compassionate woman rented a private plane, collected up swallows, and transported them over the Alps to Milan. There she set them free, and they flew off, chirping happily.

“It is possible,” Chernetsov said, “that the angels sang something wonderful about this woman upon her death, but it did nothing at all to protect nature. Out of the millions of swallows, she saved a thousand. The whole thing was pointless.”

“Simply a Description of the World”

The Fringilla field station (named for a genus of finches) has been operating here, just 11 kilometers from Rybachy, since 1957. In 1901, when the (then German) village was called Rossitten, the German theologian and naturalist Johannes Thienemann founded the Rossitten Bird Observatory here (Vogelwarte Rossitten in German) – it was the world’s first ornithological observatory. In 1944, the station was shuttered due to the war, but in 1956 it was resurrected as the Rybachy Biological Research Station. Today, migratory birds are captured here in Rybachy’s two large nets and then banded, so that their migratory patterns can be studied.

Birds are caught during their migration period, from April to November. Throughout this entire period, scientists and volunteers live at the station, in the woods.

The living conditions in which the ornithologists spend a large part of their lives is rather unusual. And what they do is poorly understood by laypeople. To outsiders, the scientists seem eccentric. And their little homes are like nests: very small, cozy, and personal.

Ornithologists have extremely low salaries and rely on grants for their research. Their salaries do not cover the costs of their equipment, supplies, scientific expeditions, or travel to conferences. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to work without grants. “If you want to go to a conference, you need a grant,” said Andrei Mukhin, a scientist at the research station. “If there is a grant, you do science. If not, you do not. But that is the vicious circle many must cope with. If there is no money, there is no scientific publication. And if there is no scientific publication, you don’t receive grants. But here, thank God, everyone is published, so somehow we manage.”

According to Mukhin, the system is designed this way because the government feels that there should be investment in science where there are “growth points.”

“Right now,” Mukhin explained, “money is distributed by FANO [the Federal Agency of Scientific Organizations]. They give grants to those who show results. There are many scientists in Russia, and so there is no point spreading the money too thin.”

While FANO is deciding who to fund and who not, the Rybachy Research Station is actively supported by a German foundation. German funding was used to renovate the main ornithology building at Fringilla, a two-story building with rooms and a dining hall. They also fixed up the Research Station building in Rybachy. German scientists and tourists visit here often.

According to Mukhin, thanks to its history, things are very good – by Russian standards – at the facility on the Curonian Spit. “At our station, research can be done on a solid, European level. We don’t feel cut off from the international community here.”

Mukhin is working on two areas of research. One is connected to malaria in birds. “Birds fly to Africa, feed on mosquitoes infected by malaria, and are themselves bitten by mosquitoes,” Mukhin explains. “Bird malaria is not dangerous for humans. But the entire mechanisms of the illness and its spread are just the same, and you can safely work with it. My second area is connected to changes in the daily rhythm of birds during their migration period. Many birds fly at night. In the summer, they are diurnal, feeding their chicks during the day. But then they become nocturnal. I study how birds reset their rhythms.”

When asked how scientists formulate the value of their research, for example when applying for a grant, Mukhin answers that, by and large, there is no specific value. “The Academy of Sciences,” he explains, “is involved in basic research, studying the natural world. Birds are a part of that world. It is simply a description of the world in which we all live.”

“And Then You’ll Go Hungry” 

We arrive at the station an hour before lunch. Lyuba the cook rules the roost in the kitchen, and in fact, the ornithologists value her more highly than their birds. It’s not just Lyuba, actually; cooks have always been highly valued here.

Nikita Chernetsov recounted an incident from the 1980s, when a scientist named Vasya could not restrain himself and bit the then cook Liza on the breast. Liza didn’t grab a frying pan and start swinging it around, but instead simply sent a complaint to the director. She described the breast incident and threatened to quit if measures were not taken. “And you then you’ll go hungry,” she added as a solemn conclusion to her complaint.

Liza was a good cook. They would not find another like her in the village. And so all the men at the station were very worried. They forced Vasya into a corner and threatened to strip him of his manhood if he ever encroached on any part of Liza, or if he asked her for anything other than a bowl of kasha. And so Liza stayed put, and she actually worked there for some time. “These days,” Chernetsov said, “they would write about this on Facebook with the #MeToo hashtag.”

During her time working at the station, Lyuba has become enthralled by the work of the ornithologists. She loves to listen to their conversations and to photograph the birds they have captured. Her smartphone is full of creatures, from common robins to a hoopoe. As she dishes up the soup, Lyuba shares some of the knowledge she has acquired: “Did you know that cuckoos lay different colored eggs, depending on the bird that raised them? A cuckoo raised by a finch will lay finch-colored eggs. It remembers its ‘parents.’ The eggs are a perfect match. Can you imagine that? I find it really interesting here, they have so many stories!”

The person who told Lyuba about the cuckoos was Leonid Sokolov, a Doctor of Sciences in biology and the station’s senior scientist.

“I believe in Darwin.”

Sokolov has been working at the station since 1973. He studies philopatry, population dynamics, the influence of climate on birds, questions of orientation and navigation, as well as migration and behavior. His favorite birds are the owl and the cuckoo.

“Owl feathers are similar to cat fur,” Sokolov says. “It’s difficult to love birds. For me, I need to touch things to love them, and it’s tough to pet birds. But you can pet an owl. And I came to respect the cuckoo when I learned that it flies 17,000 kilometers from Kamchatka to Africa.”

In a bit of a show for tourists, Sokolov walks around the station in a cowboy hat. The other ornithologists respectfully call him “Doctor.”

Apparently, Sokolov is also the only person working at the station who enjoys leading tours. Tourist pour out of buses from morning to night, ask lots of foolish questions, and are constantly trying to touch the birds. It takes hellishly strong patience to withstand the pressure of such onlookers all day.

Sokolov recounts the story of two mynahs that once lived at the station. “They brought them to us from Asia. I fed them and named them Manya and Gamanya,” Sokolov says. “They could talk: ‘Time for a bath,’ or ‘I want some kasha.’ And at some point two girls visited and went to take a look at the talking birds. They went up to them and the birds didn’t say anything at first. But then one of them said, very clearly, “Look at the bow-legged prostitutes!” The girls were so taken aback that they just quietly left.

“Who are you, Gamanay, who are you?” one of
the birds said. “A feathered bastard,” the other answered.

“When they were taken away, we were very upset.”

It’s especially difficult for the scientists to deal with Orthodox tourists. Sokolov himself grew up in a religious family, and was neither a Pioneer nor a Komsomol member – his devout parents forbade it.

“The nastiest day for me was Lenin’s birthday. That was the day everyone was inducted into the Pioneers, but my parents wouldn’t let me join. But I don’t believe in God, I believe in Darwin. I get indignant when tourists mention God during my talks on science. I’m telling them about navigational systems or genetics, and they come back at me with divine guidance. They say that’s what enables birds to know where to fly. But I try not to get into debates with them; it’s impossible to convince believers.”

Sokolov recounts how he was once tracking a pair of storks. “We fitted them up with transmitters, because we thought they would fly together to Africa, to spend the winter there. Nothing of the sort! The ‘wife’ rushed to South Africa, but the ‘husband’ flew to Spain. But then, on February 22, they both set out for home, to their nest, on the exact same day. As if they had called one another up by cellphone. The husband arrived first and waited a month for his wife, even though there were other females nearby, and he could have been unfaithful… How did they know when to return? They, apparently, have their own sort of inner clock that turns on when they need to fly.”

The Doctor is also the most radically inclined of all the scientists at the station. He is an oppositionist who says that he voted for Ksenia Sobchak, that television is evil, and that no one cares about Russian science, except for the scientists themselves.

“Our government only cares about the people who drill for gas and oil. It doesn’t give a damn about scientists. Salaries of scientists are very modest; you can’t live on them. Yes, they give us grants, but those are small. One transmitter that I attach to cuckoos costs almost five thousand dollars. I received a cuckoo grant for 450,000 rubles ($6,200). I can buy one and a half transmitters.

“We received transmitters, however, thanks to the Danes, and were able to monitor the cuckoos. Last year we flew to a congress in Japan with the grant money. The state has no money for congresses and conferences. In short, there is very little money in the country, and science is last in line to receive its share.”

What upsets Sokolov most is that young scientists are fleeing Russia. According to him, 16,000 doctors of sciences have left the country over the past 15 years. It’s generally not easy for ornithologists or zoologists to find work in the West. Physicists and chemists are in higher demand.

“But sometimes one of our brothers finds a spot,” Sokolov says. “One of our young scientists left for Germany. Here, he was getting paid R16,000 [a month, about $250], but in Germany he evaluates wind turbine construction, studying its effect on birds and migration, and he receives €2,000 [a month, about $2,300]. He’s not working as a scientist; he’s being paid as a technical worker. Scientists receive far more there.”

Previously, Sokolov studied a “patriotic subject” – meaning philopatry in birds, their love for their homeland, and why it occurs. He worked on that subject for 20 years. Then he became interested in the influence climate has on birds’ lives. And now he studies cuckoos.

When the Doctor talks about cuckoos, the rest of the world fades away for him.

“Their migration is incredibly interesting! We recorded them in Kamchatka, and they first rushed off to China, sat there for two months, then went to Myanmar and India,” Sokolov says. “They rested there and then dashed across the Indian Ocean – they flew 4000 kilometers across the sea, nonstop, without rest or water for four days. They made it to Somalia. There they rested, gassed up, and dashed to South Africa. They flew 17,000 kilometers from Kamchatka to South Africa. ‘Why the hell?’ you want to ask. Well, they have their origins in Africa, it’s recorded in their genetic memory. That’s why they go racing off there. Otherwise they would just hang out in Vietnam, where they can find the same caterpillars.”

Lord of the Rings

The most interesting story about a passion for birds came from Anatoly Shapoval. When he was little, his father brought him back a painting from China: it depicted a tree with bright birds sitting in its branches. The painting was hung over Anatoly’s bed and he looked at it every day.

“I am certain,” Shapoval says, “that I became an ornithologist precisely because of that painting.”

Shapoval is a senior scientist, a Candidate of Sciences in biology who has worked at the station since 1976. He is interested in bird morphology (biometrics, abnormal plumage coloration), and the migration of birds, butterflies, and dragonflies. He is short, with a grey beard and disheveled hair. He is the only person who almost never leaves the station. He inhabits a small home here, just four square meters, no indoor plumbing.

Alongside avian migration, Shapoval studies and collects butterflies. Over the last 20 years, he has netted, counted, and studied some 200,000 butterflies. And, alongside butterflies, Shapoval collects stamps and Soviet-era postal envelopes. But his greatest hobby of all is dead birds. He collects them, cuts them open, turns them inside out, then stuffs them with cotton wool. The scientist has 10,000 such stuffed subjects, almost all of which are in university collections.

Shapoval is very protective of his stuffed birds, but he allows us to enter his home for a look. He picks up a piece of cotton inside of which are rolled four stuffed birds that he finished earlier in the year. He unfolds it with bated breath. Inside is a flattened swallow with a ring on its leg – it flew into the research center and died. Another bird, a redstart, was found dead in a trap. Shapoval says that, by all indications, an owl tried to get at it and wound up crushing it. The other two are robins that the ornithologist found in the forest.

When asked why he stuffs birds, Shapoval replies that he feels sorry for them. He wants to preserve their beauty.

Two ornithological rings hang on a chain around Shapoval’s neck. One is very large, the other small and gold. The larger one is from the 1920s.

“Once, an elderly German woman visited the station,” Shapoval recalls, “and she asked if I knew who Mr. Ulmer was. I, of course, knew that this bird lover was a good friend of Johannes Thienemann. He ringed storks and, it turned out, was the old woman’s grandfather. When she heard that I knew his name, she gave me one of her grandfather’s rings.”

But the gold ring has the more interesting story.

“In 2002, an artist from Kaliningrad came to the station. ‘I love the Curonian Spit, I want to become engaged to it,’ he said. He said he had been married many times, and that he still had all his wedding rings. He wanted to melt them down into rings for birds and work alongside the ornithologists to band birds with them, on the birds’ second legs. We allowed it. It’s harmless, and there’s no accounting for what oddities a person might have. So he ‘ringed’ about 50 birds. And we thought, this’ll be quite a surprise in Europe if they catch one of these birds! But, since we get back reports on fewer than one in a hundred banded birds, there was no chance we’d get any feedback. But then one day I found a dead titmouse with a golden ring. So I removed the ring and hung it on my neck.”

Shapoval can talk about birds and butterflies until he collapses from exhaustion. Apparently, he was born here, on the Spit, among the birds, which is why he knows and understands so much about them. He even found his wife, like a bird, in the large bird trap at Rybachy.

“In 1978, she arrived as a helper, working for a few weeks as a girl-ornithologist,” Shapoval says. “I first spied her in the trap. And I didn’t let her get away.”

His wife now works in St. Petersburg, but returns to the station every summer for a short period. That, apparently, is enough for him.

“The world would not collapse”

The sea, which is the one truly in charge on the Spit, washes lots of things up onto the shore. Once, the ornithologists found a big plastic container filled with wine on the beach. They drank it. Then a barrel of herring swam ashore. “It was so delicious,” the Doctor recalls. “Oh, how we gobbled it up.”

Then the scientists found several dead boars on the beach, lying face down in the waves. “We couldn’t figure out what could have happened, but we ate them too,” the Doctor continues. “We washed the meat down with spirits, and no one got any sort of disease.”

The ornithologists also found German bottles with letters in them. One even contained “pornographic postcards” clipped from a magazine. And on this day the sea tossed some flippers ashore. Arseny Tsvey said they will come in handy.

Tsvey is interested in the distinct features of passerine birds’ migration strategies over both long and short distances. As mentioned, he is studying the role of the hormone corticosterone in regulating the passerine’s migratory patterns.

Tsvey loves to laugh and joke, and at lunch he can down a shot or two. But when he is writing letters to students, he becomes so serious that you are afraid to approach him.

At Fringilla, he, like the other ornithologists, lives in a small wooden home: one two-meter by two-meter room littered with his personal belongings. All the amenities are outdoors. The room’s walls are plastered with drawings by children – he has two, 12 and 7. In the summer, they normally come to visit.

After three days at the station, it is time to migrate back to Moscow. Not because it is not interesting here, but because one could live here forever and every day learn something new about birds and the world around us.

Ornithologists are not simply people and not simply scientists. They are a part of nature. They are, in fact, like birds: free and incomprehensible.

Prior to my departure, I dare to ask a question I had been pondering my entire visit:

“What would happen to the world if there were no ornithology? What is the point of it?”

“If there were no ornithology, the world would not collapse,” Tsvey replies, as usual, with a smile.

“You mean that what you are doing has no practical benefit for humankind?”

“Well, yes and no. That is not how fundamental knowledge works. Yet three percent of scientific discoveries do at some point find a practical application. But what that application will be and what sort of discovery it will be, no one can predict.”