Biologist-pilots live their dreams flying in congested birdspace.
One day — along about the time expense accounts are due and budgets must be prepared — it occurs to you that flying is more fun than your non-aviation job. Wouldn't it be nice if someone — say, the government — paid you to fly, free as a bird over pristine wilderness filled with rock-bound lakes of deep, clear water? How about flying with the birds? The job exists. Get a degree in wildlife biology, and it's yours.
The primary task is to count birds, which sounds easy, but there's a catch: so many birds, so few pilots. Just 10 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service pilots patrol North America's four major waterfowl flyways populated by an estimated 60 million birds.
Flyway biologists, as the government calls them, help the United States comply with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 by keeping track of 26 million ducks, evaluating habitat, and estimating geese and other migratory bird populations. Based throughout the country, the biologists operate 10 floatplanes and conventional-gear aircraft, some of them modified with extra fuel tanks and turbine engines, along 40,000 miles of survey routes. Each pilot accumulates 350 hours a year flying only 150 feet above pristine wilderness in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.
Surprisingly few bird strikes have been recorded in a profession that seems at once both idyllic and dangerous. It takes three years of training before a new pilot can simultaneously count waterfowl (mostly ducks), watch for other wildlife such as wolves and bears, monitor aircraft systems, navigate with one finger on the map, avoid obstructions, and, oh yes, avoid bird strikes.
To a man, and one woman, these pilots are living a double dream. Most have wanted to work with animals or the environment since childhood. Many were also airport kids who sat on the fence to watch the airplanes land. All of them consider themselves biologists first. Flyway biologist Elizabeth Solberg is typical. The daughter and granddaughter of pilots, she also gained a love of wildlife from her mother. She now acts as mentor for two young women interested in a similar career, giving them aircraft books and calling to check on their progress. Bruce Conant, in Juneau, Alaska, considers his job a paid vacation. He is one of five additional federal biologists who survey Alaska, performing duties similar to flyway biologists.
Their limited numbers qualify them as a rare species: the "Nomex- suited, helmet-headed, American migratory bird counter."
Flyway biologists play a critical role in the management of duck hunting seasons by all levels of government. In biologist terms, the waterfowl forecast they help produce keeps the duck population from being "over-harvested" (or annihilated, in everyday terms). It is used by hunters as well, because it forecasts populations for the coming season from observations made over northern breeding grounds.
"We serve as the eyes of every waterfowl hunter in North America," said John Solberg, Elizabeth's husband and a flyway biologist based in Klamath Falls, Oregon. "Despite all the satellites and other technology available today, they put their faith in what we say and write." The pilots work hard to keep that trust on sometimes hazardous flights.
The key to low-level survival, flyway biologists say, is to master these skills: pilotage (navigation radios are turned off during training), the weather, and scanning not only for aircraft, but for low-level obstacles. They refer to sharpening their fingers (pinpointing their position on a map) and putting their heads on a swivel. Pilotage is tougher in remote areas because there are no cities, antennas, or highways for reference. Instead, they must rely on features as subtle as bends in rivers or rising terrain.
Survey flights are long, sometimes four to seven hours, more than enough time for drastic changes in the weather, as flyway biologist Art Brazda knows. Brazda, who at 70 has flown 26,000 hours, is known among fellow pilots as King of the North due to his 33 years of bush flying experience in extreme northern Canada. He has experienced the best and the worst of bush flying.
The worst came in July 1971, when Brazda was skirting a squall line in a piston-powered de Havilland Beaver to return to Canada's Cambridge Bay. The barometric pressure plunged, and visibility dropped to a mile. He found himself in the midst of a lightning storm, with bolts kicking up spurts of smoke as they drilled into the forest floor beneath his aircraft. Forced down on a lake, he ate emergency food rations for four days until the weather improved.
"Weather can be the most unforgiving bugger in the world up north," said Brazda, who now is based in Lafayette, Louisiana. Flying at low level is challenge enough, even in good weather.
"There is tremendous stress just from trying to keep alive at 100 feet," said flyway biologist Jim Goldsberry. "Trainees are totally exhausted after an hour until they learn all the intricacies." They must memorize emergency check lists because a low-level engine failure leaves only seconds to act. Even higher altitudes are of little help over rough terrain.
Jim Walter, based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and then-observer Carl Ferguson are living proof of that. They had a crankshaft failure while flying a Cessna 185 floatplane in northern Alberta, Canada, in 1990. The two had just finished flying a survey route and pulled up to 1,500 feet to return to High Level Airport (yes, that's a real name). After the crankshaft failed, the engine continued to run for 90 seconds, but the cockpit began to fill with oil fumes. Walter was planning to land on a highway until, gliding closer, he spotted children in one of the cars.
"When I saw the kids, I diverted to a soft field. I didn't even think," Walter said. Because the wheels could have caused the aircraft to flip, he landed on the floats. The aircraft tilted forward 60 degrees, Walter estimates, plowing the field with its float tips for 450 feet. Other than back and neck pains, the two were uninjured, and the aircraft was hardly damaged. The Fish and Wildlife Service and its parent agency, the Department of Interior, later honored him for his actions.
Fate played a role in the incident. Walter was supposed to have been over swamps and rugged tundra that day, but the failure of the audio tape recorder used to count ducks required him to repeat a route closer to High Level Airport. Ferguson went on to get his pilot certificate in 1989 and is now a full-fledged flyway biologist. Such moments of terror are infrequent, although there have been others.
Flyway biologist boss Jim Voelzer, based in Portland, Oregon, popped over a ridge one cloudless day at 150 feet to find himself under a wing-shaped shadow. "I was afraid to move the airplane," he recalls. He heard but never saw the aircraft. The shadow's distinctive shape was easily recognized, however: a Boeing B-52 bomber.
Feathered birds pose as great a threat as aluminum ones, of course. The biologists have learned secrets of duck behavior useful to those of us worried that there's a bird out there with our N number on it. Especially skittish are snow geese, which leap into the air by the thousands at the sound of a light airplane engine 3 miles away.
Ducks generally migrate at altitudes below 10,000 feet, which, unfortunately, are light-airplane cruising altitudes. They are by no means limited to 10,000 feet, however. Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper recalls hitting one 20 years ago while flying at 20,000 feet in a Beech Duke. The upper portion of the vertical stabilizer was decapitated; so was the duck. There is even a report of a duck, obviously an overachiever, flying at 37,000 feet (wearing a tiny oxygen bottle, perhaps?). But they pose the greatest threat at lower altitudes, especially on foggy days.
Flyway biologist Jim Bredy, based in Laurel, Maryland, recalls seeing hundreds of ducks skimming a 2,000-foot-thick layer of fog that covered their feeding area. Then they discovered a hole in the mist and poured through. Bredy said it looked as though someone had pulled the plug on a bathtub full of ducks.
There are flying hazards to be sure, but the actual job of counting isn't all that easy, either. When nesting in northern Canada, the birds are widely spaced, and counting them is simplified. After migrating south, they congregate in flocks, or gaggles, of 20,000 birds (a few have reached 70,000). How does one count to 20,000 in the two minutes it takes to pass overhead? Practice, practice, practice.
Bredy first counts 10 ducks, then counts 10 spots the size of the one containing 10 ducks. Now he knows the approximate size of a spot containing 100 ducks. He can then quickly count the entire population by hundreds. Tests show the biologists are rarely off by more than 5 percent.
The job entails more than counting ducks, of course. Other tasks involve sea duck surveys from the Gulf of Mexico to Nova Scotia, tracking eagles and whooping cranes with radio transmitters, banding young ducks at wilderness campsites for several weeks, and aiding in enforcement of game laws.
Radio transmitters have played a role in some of the biologists' more unusual adventures. Doug Benning, based in Denver, was assigned in the 1980s to track movements of whooping cranes during their migration from Alberta to the Texas coast. Transmitters were attached to two families in a flock, allowing Benning to circle a half-mile away through the birds' 30-day, 2,500-mile journey. The cranes preferred day VFR flying until one night when they seemed to sense they had a 50-knot tailwind. They held a magnetic heading of 130 degrees throughout the night and were blown off course. The next day, they appeared to use visual cues to return to their route.
Ducks equipped with transmitters sometimes lead the flyway biologists astray, like the time one stopped in New York's Central Park, looking for bread handouts. Try explaining that to controllers at John F. Kennedy International Airport. They were not amused to hear clearance requests based on the need to count ducks, but the controllers recognized the biologists had a job to do.
The airplane has proven the only tool that can accomplish that job. Surveys were done by backpack, canoe, and horse prior to acquiring a Rearwin Sportster in 1937.
The single-engine aircraft the biologists fly are specially adapted to accomplish a variety of tasks. The workhorse is the Cessna 185 on floats, but the fleet also includes Cessna 180s, 182s, 185s on conventional landing gear, 206s, and a turbine-powered 206 on floats. Those five additional Fish and Wildlife pilots working in Alaska also fly a one-of-a-kind Garrett-powered de Havilland Beaver. (There are many Beavers powered by the PT6A, but only one powered by Garrett.) The engine, a TPE331, was chosen specifically because the engine-exhaust stacks and oddly shaped small cowl do not interfere with downward visibility during bird surveys.
Jerry Lawhorn, the now-retired mechanic who brought the Garrett and the Beaver together, said the airplane flies at 115 miles per hour for survey work or 141 mph in cruise and provides an endurance of nearly eight hours. In Alaska, the airplane is known locally as the Ant Eater or Pinnochio, due to its long snout. When it flies surveys in Mexico — as it did last month — local residents call it El Mosquito Grande.
Mexico offers its own unique hazards. John Solberg reports landing 10 minutes late on a flight plan to southern Mexico and finding his aircraft surrounded by nervous young soldiers — kids, really — with machine guns, who thought he was a drug smuggler. Other pilots have discovered equally mean four-legged hazards.
Bredy and his partner awoke one morning at their bird banding camp in northern Canada to see a black bear nudging the screen door. The bear ran off on its own when the two men got out of bed, perhaps offended by the men's language.
Flyway biologists have a tough time just telling people where they live, let alone what they do. When asked where he lives, Bredy asks, "What month?" If it's May, this must be Canada. If it's January or February, it could be Mexico (as was the case this year). September? For Bredy that means Laurel, Maryland, where he, Goldsberry, and Ferguson have an office at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. Solberg and Brazda are luckier: They fly north again, to southwest Saskatchewan and southeast Alberta to survey the white-fronted goose. The pilots spend five months away from their home base each year. Flyway biologists call all of North America home: Their friends and neighbors include Cree and Slave (pronounced Slav eh) Indians of northern Canada, who refer to the pilots as Duck Brothers.
Ask Bredy to describe a typical day, and he'll answer, "At what location?" A workday at his basement office in Laurel (the exposed heating pipes are useful for drying floatplane ropes) includes attacking piles of paperwork.
On other days, Bredy is in the air again, surveying nearby federal and state wildlife refuges. The typical day is atypical.
Those who think they would enjoy this unpredictable occupation must start with a degree in natural resources. Can you tell a mallard from a gadwall at 150 feet and 100 knots? How about an American wigeon, green- winged teal, blue-winged teal, northern shoveler, northern pintail, redhead, canvasback, and scaup? Bredy says he and his fellow pilots can identify more than 20 species of ducks instantly. Tough requirements, but they are just play for the Bredy bunch.
A sticker on Bredy's door beneath a picture of a duck proclaims life a "dashing and bold adventure." A ringing telephone is answered with a jovial "Bredy's Duck Counters." Bredy lives an adventure.
"I feel so lucky," he says. "It does seem weird to get paid to fly and count ducks. So many people can't even work in one area they love. I have two."
Fred Roetker, based in Lafayette, loves the old-time romance that bush flying in Canada still retains. He can tune in 126.7, a frequency monitored in the bush along with emergency frequency 121.5, and hear himself referred to as the "duck guy." Even in the midst of a busy duck survey, there is time to land on a wilderness lake and smell the forest.
A dream job? Bredy advises, "Pay attention to your dreams. They can come true."
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