Rusty Blitz
Yesterday I celebrated the first day of the Rusty Blackbird Blitz by walking out into the snowy Tivoli Bays to look for a Rusty. I knew full well I would not see one in the still frozen landscape of the bays. Even the Red-winged Blackbirds have not yet returned. Still, I had to go out on snowshoes to roll out the carpet for the Rusty should it decide to stop over later in the spring.
The first time I saw a Rusty Blackbird was three years ago on the muddy causeway of Cruger Island Road. It was the second spring of my bird-obsessed life, when every bird felt a miracle. My friend Peter introduced us: “Look now,” he said, “this is a bird that will be extinct in our lifetime.” What I saw was an ordinary enough bird, black overall, with a bit of brown rust at the nape, and then eyes, white as if they were bottomless. The bird had a grating song, like a squeaky hinge. At that time I doubted Peter’s pronouncement—it felt too full of doom—but research proved he might be right: Rusty populations have plummeted in the past century, with an 88% population reduction. Though scientists estimate that somewhere between 158,00 and 2 million remain, this once abundant bird is in a population free-fall.
Yesterday I celebrated the first day of the Rusty Blackbird Blitz by walking out into the snowy Tivoli Bays to look for a Rusty. I knew full well I would not see one in the still frozen landscape of the bays. Even the Red-winged Blackbirds have not yet returned. Still, I had to go out on snowshoes to roll out the carpet for the Rusty should it decide to stop over later in the spring.
The first time I saw a Rusty Blackbird was three years ago on the muddy causeway of Cruger Island Road. It was the second spring of my bird-obsessed life, when every bird felt a miracle. My friend Peter introduced us: “Look now,” he said, “this is a bird that will be extinct in our lifetime.” What I saw was an ordinary enough bird, black overall, with a bit of brown rust at the nape, and then eyes, white as if they were bottomless. The bird had a grating song, like a squeaky hinge. At that time I doubted Peter’s pronouncement—it felt too full of doom—but research proved he might be right: Rusty populations have plummeted in the past century, with an 88% population reduction. Though scientists estimate that somewhere between 158,00 and 2 million remain, this once abundant bird is in a population free-fall.
158,000 to 2 million? Let’s put this into numbers people pay most attention to: who wants 2 million dollars? $158,000? But that’s as accurate as it gets because we know little about this bird. Part of it is that the Rusty breeds in inaccessible areas: boreal bogs. Tagging and re-finding those tagged birds has proven near impossible.
A 2010 article in The Condor is titled Rusty Blackbird: Mysteries of a Species in Decline. I can like a science article that admits to the mystery. Is it not all a mystery? That the birds are here at all? That I am here to watch them? that the planet continues to spin?
But the mystery that these scientists are mulling over is why the decline. There is no one simple answer. There’s habitat destruction—that’s almost a given with any dramatic species decline. The woods the Rusty needs on their wintering grounds in the southeastern United States have been transformed into agricultural land. The boreal wetlands where they breed have been lost to peat production, timber harvests, oil and gas exploration—the list is the usual nauseating one that makes me blur over. And then there’s mercury, which the Rusty encounters on both its breeding and wintering grounds. In acidic wetlands, mercury converts to its toxic form, methylmercury. This would likely kill the embryos of the Rusty.
Yet as important as understanding the bird’s breeding and wintering grounds is information on migration. Where do these birds rest up, gather fuel? This is what the Blitz, now in its second year, is about: scientists and conservationists want to understand the challenges this bird faces during migration. So during the next two months they want birders to focus on the Rusty by logging their sightings into eBird.
On my walk, it was quiet except for the crunch of snowshoes and the stop and start conversation with my friend Kate, who is game for any outing that involves snowshoes and birds. As we walked out Cruger Island, I pretended I really could see a Rusty even though there was not a bird in sight. And that possibility, this effort at tracking such an unassuming bird, made me insanely happy. So often it seems that the birds we want to save are the charismatic ones, the ones that are half myth, like the Whooping Crane. Don’t get me wrong, I love that the Whooper is being protected, but I worry that the less exciting birds are left behind. This Blitz gives me hope that we care for all of the birds. Thousands of birders will be out, logging the Rusty’s faint pathway north. Yesterday I did not add to the data, except to say that I tried.
As we left the causeway, a fluttering in some trees caught my attention. I turned my binoculars to see small birds bobbing from the end of branches, working dried seeds pods that looked like flat tin pennies. I tromped past the brush that lines the causeway and walked closer so I could see the little red caps, the white wing bars. Common Redpolls. I watched the birds gather an afternoon meal, wondering what their story might be, then continued on my way home.
Whoop!
In January of 2007, my father and I drove west from Pennsylvania to Arizona together, stopping in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas. He ate oysters, while I took walks, and together we marveled over our vast country by reading aloud billboards, commenting on the mesquite, the ugliness of strip malls, the trash by the side of the road. The one place he wanted to stop was Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the upper Texas Coast. Why? To see Whooping Cranes on the bird’s wintering grounds. My father was a novelist, a bookish man, not a naturalist. But the Cranes captured his imagination and he wanted to see them. Aransas, established in 1937 to protect migrating birds and especially the Whooping Crane, is a reliable place to see the birds in winter.
In January of 2007, my father and I drove west from Pennsylvania to Arizona together, stopping in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas. He ate oysters, while I took walks, and together we marveled over our vast country by reading aloud billboards, commenting on the mesquite, the ugliness of strip malls, the trash by the side of the road. The one place he wanted to stop was Aransas National Wildlife Refuge on the upper Texas Coast. Why? To see Whooping Cranes on the bird’s wintering grounds. My father was a novelist, a bookish man, not a naturalist. But the Cranes captured his imagination and he wanted to see them. Aransas, established in 1937 to protect migrating birds and especially the Whooping Crane, is a reliable place to see the birds in winter.
So we stopped in Aransas. And we walked one trail, giddy over the alligators that lazed so close to the trail and marveled over the Roseate Spoonbills. We drove a beautiful 15 mile loop through grasslands and there I saw something take off, something large and white, like a sheet moving through the air. I knew little about birds at the time so I called it a Whooper, but I knew I was lying. Could easily have been a Pelican or a Great Egret. I needed to go back to see those elegant white birds.
This trip of 2015 started in San Antonia in rain, in gray, and well, it pretty much stayed that way through the week. Texas was supposed to be warmer than New York in January and it was—but just barely. My friend Teri and I started by driving the loop at Anahuac, which was like a bird safari, the Coots on every bit of open water, but also Reddish Egrets, White Ibis, and every species of duck that I know. A few days later we were further along the coast. We had passed some of the prettiest and some of the ugliest landscapes we had ever seen. Don’t mess with Texas? The beaches were loaded with garbage. And the views from our rental car roller-coasted from protected refuges to blazing, otherworldly oil refineries.
Just before Aransas we decided to drive south along a sand-dirt road near Collegeville. The land there was extraordinary, salt marshes with grasses in shades of red, orange and yellow. We were alone on that isolated road, seeing Crested Caracara, those dignified looking raptors with flat heads and orange face masks perched on fence posts, and Long-billed Curlews shy in the grasses. And then I heard them: Sandhill Cranes. It’s a call you never forget. I pulled over and we looked at the gray long-legged birds through the scope as they moved in a flock through the grasses.
We continued down the road, both of us pointing left, then right at one bird after the next, a bit dizzy from it all. “Egret,” Teri said pointing left. They were the standard long-necked white bird of the trip. “Wait,” I said, noting the birds were bigger, holding themselves not Egret-like. I stopped, pulled out the scope, saw the dark heads of the Whooper and started to tear up.
The Whooping Crane is one of the rarest birds in the United States. In the 1940s populations dropped to 15. From that tenuous number we have climbed to around 600, some in captivity. The return of the Whooper is one of the celebrated acts of conservation: if we put our money, time, and imagination to the task we can do this. The most imaginative part of this is raising chicks using Crane puppets and then teaching the birds to migrate using an ultra light craft.
If only we gave all bird species that are endangered this kind of attention, this much love (and money and dedicated researchers). But rather than lamenting that, I stood there on that lonely dirt road grateful we have done this one extraordinary act of protection. The big white birds in the distance grazed about, unaware of my awed excitement. Because they were such a surprise sighting, they felt like my birds. And this, I realize is one of the great joys of birding: finding the unexpected. Or rather in this case, finding the expected in an unexpected place. That it was such a special bird added to the thrill. This all combined to give me a keen sense of discovery, such a rare experience in a world so fully discovered.
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
Fishing and Hunting the Arctic
Walrus, protected since 1952Reading polar literature for someone who loves the natural world is a challenge. Every journey involves a fair amount of brutality, of killing. On most expeditions the dogs are at once loved and needed but also overworked, often killed, sometimes eaten. That was the case with Amundsen heading to the South Pole. He feeds the dogs to the remaining dogs, but he also eats them: “we have now had three splendid dinners out of our good Greenland dogs,” writes one of his shipmates. Yet Amundsen loved his dogs (at times it seems more than the men) and in writing about them is at his most philosophical. Killing the dogs is a horror: “It is my only dark memory from down there, that my lovely animals were destroyed.” The treatment of the dogs is also something that Nansen feels keenly “It was undeniable cruelty to the poor animals from first to last, and one must often look back on it with horror. It is the sad part of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better feelings, until only hard-hearted egoism remains.”Walrus, protected since 1952
Reading polar literature for someone who loves the natural world is a challenge. Every journey involves a fair amount of brutality, of killing. On most expeditions the dogs are at once loved and needed but also overworked, often killed, sometimes eaten. That was the case with Amundsen heading to the South Pole. He feeds the dogs to the remaining dogs, but he also eats them: “we have now had three splendid dinners out of our good Greenland dogs,” writes one of his shipmates. Yet Amundsen loved his dogs (at times it seems more than the men) and in writing about them is at his most philosophical. Killing the dogs is a horror: “It is my only dark memory from down there, that my lovely animals were destroyed.” The treatment of the dogs is also something that Nansen feels keenly “It was undeniable cruelty to the poor animals from first to last, and one must often look back on it with horror. It is the sad part of expeditions of this kind that one systematically kills all better feelings, until only hard-hearted egoism remains.”
Young reindeer, protected since 1925
The dogs are one story; the killing of wildlife another. South polar literature has less bloodshed, mostly because once the explorers are moving across the continent there’s nothing to kill (near the coast there are, of course, penguins and seals to be killed). In the north, living by ones rifle is part of the game and the fresh meat helped to keep away scurvy. And though Nansen does kill a lot, and describes it in agonizing detail at times, he takes no pleasure in this. Neither did Amundsen who was never a sport hunter. Nansen’s thoughtfulness comes through even as the trigger is pulled on a walrus: “It was a touching sight to see her bend over her dead young one [which he had shot] before she was shot, and even in death she lay holding it with one fore-leg.” And then he soon turns to what matters to him: “the side of young walrus tastes like loin of mutton.”
It is looking into the eyes of a dying animal that is the test of the hunter. Nansen again, writing about a walrus: “There was something so gently supplicating and helpless in its round eyes as it lay there that its goblin exterior and one’s own need were forgotten in pity for it. It almost seemed like murder. I put an end to its sufferings by a bullet behind the ear, but those eyes haunt me yet; it seemed as if in them lay the prayer for existence of the whole helpless walrus race.”
Arctic Fox, with limited protection
Now, of course, all of these walrus on Spitsbergen are protected and have been since 1952. The Svalbard reindeer was protected as early as 1925, and the polar bear in 1972. The Arctic Fox has limited protection (that is, it can be trapped during certain periods), and populations are stable in Svalbard. But what isn’t protected are the oceans around this archipelago. The US proposed at a meeting in February of 2014 to put a moratorium on fishing in the central Arctic ocean, the region of the Arctic that has until now been covered in ice. Melting polar ice is opening up new territory, and that region needs to be studied before commercial fishing moves in. But the Arctic waters we floated off Spitsbergen are open to commercial fishing.
One morning we woke in front of the Recherche glacier in the Belsund Fjord. The Antigua had traveled all night, south from our highest point. What we had left behind was ice, a snow-covered landscape. It felt like we had awakened in a new world. Not only was there less snow and ice, but near us two ships rafted up. Other humans felt odd when we had been so isolated in the ice. Now here we were, rubbing elbows with Russian fishing ships.
Russian fishing shipThe captain stood near me on deck and explained in his impeccable German accent how they fish. “Imagine the ship is an airplane. When they throw their net into the water, it is as if they tossed down a net from the sky. The net hauls up everything the plane flies over: trees, houses, cars, people. The only thing it wants are the horses, but it gets everything else, all piled together. Most of it is killed by the time the net comes up so even if it is protected that doesn’t matter.” He shrugged and walked away, disgusted.
All of this unwanted fish are referred to in the fishing industry as “bycatch” or “trash fish.” A net holds mostly trash fish. For instance, a shrimp trawler on the Gulf Coast pulls in 16 percent shrimp. The rest is a range of fish, all of which is dumped back into the ocean, alive or dead. Some chefs, I learn, are trying to take advantage of that bycatch by using these fish that would otherwise die. A small step. But a bigger step is needed.
I am not opposed to hunting or fishing, but throwing a net is not fishing. Hunting and fishing involve an exchange: every fisherman and every hunter should, like Nansen, look into the eye of what they kill.
August 05, 2014 in Arctic, Environmental Issues, Norway, Travel