Shorebirds!
Of all the fruits: cherries. Of all the months: October. Of all of the holidays: Thanksgiving. Of all of the birds: Rusty Blackbird. But--of all the groups of birds: shorebirds.
All birders have his or her favorite group or family of birds: the raptors in migration or the sparrows in a field. For many it’s easy: warblers in spring. For me, it’s shorebirds. Perhaps because I do associate them with water, the shore. Perhaps because I have spent so little time with them, the birds here in the Hudson Valley uncommon except in migration and even then there are few. Perhaps this group of birds retains a certain mystery because they are so elusive to me. And so when my friend Peter started reporting big numbers of shorebirds—a dozen Pectoral Sandpipers, a White-rumped Sandpiper, plus over forty Snipe at the Vly, a swamp in the northern edge of Ulster County, I had to go.
Of all the fruits: cherries. Of all the months: October. Of all of the holidays: Thanksgiving. Of all of the birds: Rusty Blackbird. But--of all the groups of birds: shorebirds.
All birders have his or her favorite group or family of birds: the raptors in migration or the sparrows in a field. For many it’s easy: warblers in spring. For me, it’s shorebirds. Perhaps because I do associate them with water, the shore. Perhaps because I have spent so little time with them, the birds here in the Hudson Valley uncommon except in migration and even then there are few. Perhaps this group of birds retains a certain mystery because they are so elusive to me. And so when my friend Peter started reporting big numbers of shorebirds—a dozen Pectoral Sandpipers, a White-rumped Sandpiper, plus over forty Snipe at the Vly, a swamp in the northern edge of Ulster County, I had to go.
The wind funnels through the Vly like a natural wind tube, making paddling a challenging event. For the past few days white caps flecked the Hudson River and trees knocked back and forth, leaves in gold and red splashing to the ground. Peter explained that the Vly would be even rougher. Still: I wanted to go. Early in the day Peter texted “If you went out today we’d have to put you in an institution.” I laughed and hoped the wind would settle. It didn’t. The idea of paddling into that wind alone I could face, but I knew that the wind would make identifying the shorebirds that much more difficult, if not impossible. I didn’t want to attempt that alone. “Ok, let’s go, but be prepared,” Peter conceded.
Usually in fall the place you find Peter is in a field, searching for sparrows migrating south. His persistence pays off: every year he finds good sparrows. But this year he decided to focus as well on the Vly, a forgotten bit of swamp and woods where he and his wife recently bought a piece of land. Early in the season he saw good shorebirds, at first the usual then some amazing finds like a Stilt and a Bairds. After a lull a rush of birds once again. The birding community buzzed with excitement over his finds.
As I slid my kayak into the shallow muddy water, Peter pointed to the far shore where it looked like the land itself was moving. Birds! This is one of the great delights of shorebirds, the way they animate a seemingly empty landscape. The place was alive with birds, four Pectoral Sandpipers, a Dunlin and a Lesser Yellowlegs pulled worms and danced through the muddy flats. “If you take a few strokes, you’ll coast up on the flats and can get close,” Peter said. This too is one of the joys of shorebirds: they are often less skittish than other birds, so intent on a meal they trot in front of you, careless of danger.White-rumped Sandpiper
The sun rained down and white clouds scudded across the sky along with Crows on a mission. We pushed out of the sheltered cove where we had launched and through a patch of phragmites. On the other side: the wind tunnel. The wind plowed in broadside, knocking me in the face, freezing my hands that gripped too tight around the paddles I feared might sail off.
We both hunkered down, shoving out into the water, past muddy flats that emerged to ground my slim boat. I looked up to scan for birds from time to time, squinting into the sun that reflected off of the water, the water lilies turning brown. And thought: there’s no placed I’d rather be then there, pummeled by wind looking for shorebirds. “What we won’t do for love,” Peter called into the wind and I laughed: indeed.
Peter stopped paddling, his kayak skidding south with the wind as he put his binoculars to his eyes. “There!” Peter called, his face lit up, “A Black-bellied Plover!” A new bird in his long list of shorebirds found at the Vly. A bird never recorded before in this odd, special spot.
I found it hard to breath, whether from the wind or the excitement of the birds I couldn’t say. I tucked my paddle between belly and knee and wobbled my binoculars to my eyes. Sure enough, there was the plover, long necked with that petit black bill dancing around with his shorebird cohorts. The bird, unlike us, seemed unperturbed by the wind as it went about his plover business of finding food. Had this bird or other plovers ever before visited this lonely swamp on migration? Or was it that no one had before had been silly enough to venture out and lucky enough to see it?
This is what intrigues me about birding: for all we know about birds, and migration, for all the eyes and ears out in the field recording what we see, there is infinitely more that we don’t know. That is a good enough reason to go out and get knocked around by the wind.
“We’ll never know,” Peter said in answer to my questions.
But what I’m sure of is that every fall from here on out Peter will be combing first the fields for Sparrows, then the Vly for Shorebirds. And I will continue on my quest to get to know this group of sturdy un-shy birds with long legs that pepper mud flats and shorelines carrying out their secretive, magical lives.
Housekeeping
I’d like to think that people who eat Stone Blue chips (as I do) don’t throw the packaging overboard or out the window of a speeding car. But it seems they do. I picked up the wet and silt covered bag along with an empty Gatorade bottle, a plastic coffee container and other stuff that littered the Tivoli landing. The debris washed up on shore shook me and made it near impossible to get my boat into the water. I spent twenty minutes picking up trash before I could slide my kayak into the water on my first paddle of 2017.
In spring, snow melts and the roadsides are revealed for what they are: dumping grounds for people’s stuff. Some is overt, like the trash bag tossed that then bursts or is torn apart by a hungry raccoon. But most are items casually flung from a car window. I like to undertake a thought experiment: I picture myself sailing down the road in my Subaru and I toss a Ginger Ale can from the window. I can’t do it, even in my imagination.
I’d like to think that people who eat Stone Blue chips (as I do) don’t throw the packaging overboard or out the window of a speeding car. But it seems they do. I picked up the wet and silt covered bag along with an empty Gatorade bottle, a plastic coffee container and other stuff that littered the Tivoli landing. The debris washed up on shore shook me and made it near impossible to get my boat into the water. I spent twenty minutes picking up trash before I could slide my kayak into the water on my first paddle of 2017.
In spring, snow melts and the roadsides are revealed for what they are: dumping grounds for people’s stuff. Some is overt, like the trash bag tossed that then bursts or is torn apart by a hungry raccoon. But most are items casually flung from a car window. I like to undertake a thought experiment: I picture myself sailing down the road in my Subaru and I toss a Ginger Ale can from the window. I can’t do it, even in my imagination.
In the same way that our careless ways are revealed to us in the roadside so too does the river tell our dirty story. Stuff collects under the ice, in the snow that laces the edge of the river. Released, it travels about, along with logs and sticks, stumps that have floated free from land. There’s no other way to say it: yesterday the river was a chocolate mess.
There’s something invigorating about this mess: I have something to do. It was Marjory Stoneman Douglas who wrote “It is a woman’s business to be interested in the environment,” she wrote. “It’s an extended form of housekeeping.” She wrote The Everglades: A River of Grassin the Rivers of America series, transforming the way people view this land from a treacherous miasmic swamp to a beautiful river of grass.
And I hate to say it, but in my case, she’s right: I love picking up garbage. One minute the shoreline is littered, then it is clean. My work is fast and obvious. In this political climate having that sense of small accomplishment seems essential, gives me energy to embark on the larger house cleaning issues.
As my friend Kate and I paddle the river south, past Magdalen Island, then Cruger and into the South Tivoli bay I see the Cormorants V-ing north along the river, I see the Osprey perched on the channel marker. I delight in the Green-winged Teal that flushes when we enter the Bay. But I also take note of the plastic barrel, the Styrofoam, the jugs and buckets bobbing about in the water, the logs that I must miss lest then flip me over.
I can’t wait to get out and sweep these things out of the river. And so I look forward to Riverkeeper Sweep, now in its 6th year. On May 6, thousands will take to the shoreline picking up trash. We’ll all be house keeping the earth. In Tivoli we’ll be tidying our shoreline. Come join us—surprise yourself with how satisfying a clean house is.
Dead Bird
The river was windy last night. Both current and wind were against me as I shoved south in my kayak on the Hudson River. To the side, I saw a lump in the water. I assumed it was a fish, and was hesitant to pull near—marinating fish is not a smell I enjoy. But the shape was not entirely fish-like, so curiosity won out. What I found floating in the water was a gull, its bill hooked through the slit-like nares, by a fishing lure, and the web of its feet hooked by the other end of the lure. It was clear what had happened: the bird had come down to the shiny object expecting a fish meal, was caught through its bill and, in trying to liberate itself with is feet, entangled itself further. The lure hooked the bird to itself, bill and feet joined to shape the bird into a circle. It then plunged into the water and drowned. Not too long ago. The body was soft in my hands, and the feathers intact.
The river was windy last night. Both current and wind were against me as I shoved south in my kayak on the Hudson River. To the side, I saw a lump in the water. I assumed it was a fish, and was hesitant to pull near—marinating fish is not a smell I enjoy. But the shape was not entirely fish-like, so curiosity won out. What I found floating in the water was a gull, its bill hooked through the slit-like nares, by a fishing lure, and the web of its feet hooked by the other end of the lure. It was clear what had happened: the bird had come down to the shiny object expecting a fish meal, was caught through its bill and, in trying to liberate itself with is feet, entangled itself further. The lure hooked the bird to itself, bill and feet joined to shape the bird into a circle. It then plunged into the water and drowned. Not too long ago. The body was soft in my hands, and the feathers intact.
As I held the bird, I said out loud: I hate people. I don’t actually. But I hate the carelessness of people, how someone had let this lure go. I transported the bird to a place where I could liberate it from the lure, then I unceremoniously dumped it in the water—a meal for a snapping turtle, perhaps. I watched the limp bird float off and let the mixture of sadness and outrage play through me.
This hook was just one of the ways that we make life for birds an obstacle course. Four of the top killers are these:
Glass. The Toronto-based organization FLAP—Fatal Light Awareness Program—estimates that every year 100 million to 1 billion birds are killed colliding with windows.
Wind turbines. Wind farms kill about 572,000 birds a year.
Cats. A 2013 study estimates that cats, both domestic and feral, kill 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds a year.
Planes. “Avian ingestion” or BASH—Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard—forces one plane a day to land; the cost to the industry is in the millions. But the cost to the birds? It’s hard not to fall into a feathered hopelessness.
When a bird is killed by a window strike, a feral cat, a wind turbine or an airplane it is absurd. Their natural lives—finding a meal, and staying safe from natural predators—are challenging enough. And perhaps the greatest challenge for a bird is migration. Many end up with tattered wings, and bodies that weigh half as much as when the bird started out.
The ludicrousness of a bird dying by colliding with a window, or electrocuted on a wire, or snagged on a fishing lure is hard to describe. But since I have been reading pages of Arctic and Antarctic literature this summer, this is the analogy I can make. Let’s take the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen who was the first man to sledge his way to the South Pole, most likely the first to fly over the North Pole (in a dirigible), the first through the Northwest Passage, and the second through the Northeast Passage. He is the Arctic Tern of polar explorers. Now, imagine that he has just returned from the South Pole and he stops at the local grocery store to buy some food—perhaps the lettuce he missed after three years of polar mush. And as he walks back to his car, he is crushed and killed by a car backing out of the parking lot. It is that absurd for this bird to have been killed by a fishing line.
August 24, 2014 in Birds, Environmental Issues, Hudson River, Kayaking
Kayaking the Arctic
On my last day in Longyearbyen, in the Arctic, I wanted to kayak. In a kayak you sit close to the water, and I hoped to feel more inside of this landscape that we had been floating through on a sailboat for the past two weeks. But also, at home in the Hudson Valley I kayak every day, so to be in a little boat on the water for me is to feel home.
In 1896 Nansen with his traveling companion Johansen end their three year expedition in the Arctic crossing open water in kayaks made of skins stretched over a wooden frame. The kayaks were boxy and stable and could carry a large load. At one point, walrus surround their boats, and a walrus “shot up beside [Nansen], threw itself onto the edge of the kayak, took hold farther over the deck with one fore-flipper and, as it tried to upset [him], aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks.” At another point, a walrus punches a hole through his boat.
On my last day in Longyearbyen, in the Arctic, I wanted to kayak. In a kayak you sit close to the water, and I hoped to feel more inside of this landscape that we had been floating through on a sailboat for the past two weeks. But also, at home in the Hudson Valley I kayak every day, so to be in a little boat on the water for me is to feel home.
In 1896 Nansen with his traveling companion Johansen end their three year expedition in the Arctic crossing open water in kayaks made of skins stretched over a wooden frame. The kayaks were boxy and stable and could carry a large load. At one point, walrus surround their boats, and a walrus “shot up beside [Nansen], threw itself onto the edge of the kayak, took hold farther over the deck with one fore-flipper and, as it tried to upset [him], aimed a blow at the kayak with its tusks.” At another point, a walrus punches a hole through his boat.
Imagine this walrus climbing onto your kayak...I think about paddling in my kayak and a walrus flopping onto the deck. I’d roll over in an instant. On our second day on board Antigua, someone thudded down the hallway and knocked on doors. “Walrus,” the call went out. Jolted from sleep, we emerged on deck to see a mother walrus with a baby lounging on a cake of ice. They both peered at the boat as we floated past. The baby lifted its head in curiosity and the mother took her large flipper and pushed it down. We were close enough to these big slug-like creatures to get a sense of the heft—and it made me dizzy to imagine such an animal sharing my kayak with me.
A few days later we saw a pile of walrus on land. They lay on their backs, tusks pointed toward the sky. They lolled on each other, and on the sand, fanning themselves with their flappers. Two remained in the water, playfully rising up in battle. The tusks are formidable, long, wide, hard. How fast it could gouge a boat!
Cold water ready with Donald FortescueThe worst kayaking moment for Nansen, however, is when the kayaks—with all of their gear—float off. Without that gear they are dead men. Swimming to retrieve the boats, he could also have died. But the later option is the one he had to chose. Nansen vaults into the water and catches up to the boats.
I’ve had a boat float off without me, but swimming out into the Hudson is not swimming the Arctic. I had made three quick plunges into the icy water while I was in the North—three strokes was about all I could manage. I emerged breathing quickly, stunned by the cold. My body soon started to tingle, to vibrate with an ice cube vigor. It takes Nansen hours to warm himself.
It is for gripping scenes like this that I read these polar narratives, thrilling at the adventures. In some ways, I have spent my life trying to recreate that sense of adventure that comes with the unknown. And so certainly that was in my mind when I rented a kayak through Svalbard Wilderness Adventures and with fellow Arctic Circler Donald Fortescue headed out at 9 in the morning in dry suits, and full of instructions on the cold. We had one young Swedish guide and three other kayaks, all doubles (Donald and I were in singles). We shoved our boats into the Inisfjorden where Longyearbyen sits. The water was black-green and wind-ruffled. We flew across the Fjord and slid onto shore on the far side within forty five minutes. There a few cabins rested. Some of these rustic cabins were built (and refurbished) when coal was mined from the mountain above. Now these are summer cabins. “Norwegians like their summer cabins,” the young guide explained. And I thought: who doesn’t?
We built a fire and, wrapped in snowmobile suits, sat around shivering and eating a lunch of cheese and sausages. The Swedish boys regaled us with tales of driving the bad roads of Norway along the coast to Tromso in their Previa van. They would be road tripping back to Stockholm, looking for adventure that would probably come when their unreliable car broke down.
We walked the shoreline, enjoying a Purple Sandpiper along the beach line and the ever-present Arctic Terns. We looked at the remains of an airplane, wrecked on this lonesome shore.
The return felt like paddling across a wind-tossed Hudson River in early April, the water still snapping cold. We had no encounters with walrus or other creatures. We had no mishaps with the boats. It was an oddly tame paddle; this is what the guides guarantee. But something in me expected an adventure in this half tamed, cold land. But what I realized as my boat slid on to shore, my shoulders and arms pleasantly sore, that my outings alone, close to home, in the tame and populated Hudson Valley, are often full of more unexpected moments, mis-haps, those moments I’d call adventure.