Alewives and People

Note: This program first aired on June 6, 2015. 

It’s not often you find your self in the presence of something overtly holy, and by holy I mean elm seedling sprouting out of cracks in stream side rocks. I mean young royal ferns unfurling in the rain. I mean flowing water crowded with the gray and silver bodies of fish, fat with fecundity and virility. If you go way way back the word holy derives from words in Old English meaning “uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete….things that must be preserved intact, that should not be transgressed or violated”. And that is what I felt when I went to the outlet of Patten Stream in Surry Maine and saw the pools and eddys fill with alewives as the tide came in.

If you haven’t yet been to the outlet of Patten Stream, it is a good place to see the alewives make their migration inland in the spring. It is also a good place to see community in action. You see, the alewives that have been breeding in Patten Pond hundreds, maybe even thousands of years haven’t had an easy time of it in the last few decades. The rebuild of a large road culvert over Patten stream changed the way the water flowes over a ledge, creating a steep high energy waterfall that makes it virtually impassable for all but a few alewives. Alewives are small sea run herring and while they can swim well, they don’t have the gymnastic jumping ability of some other sea run fish like salmon, so even small ledges can stop them. The Department of Marine Resources noticed a decline in the number of alewives in Patten Stream and Pond and tried to solve it by stocking the pond with hatchery raised baby alewives. A group of citizens took a different approach, understanding that the issue wasn’t population, but barriers to reproduction. And the barrier was the road culvert. So what do you do if you are a small group of concerned citizens that sees a problem that will take a huge amount of money and infrastructure and beurocracy to fix, money that will take years to secure, plans that will take years to develop? You purse all of that, but in the mean time you do what you can with your own two hands. At Patten Stream not only did I see the pools and eddys full of plump alewives, but I also watched as a group of volunteers stood in the stream on a cool rainy day and transfered fish up and over the offending ledge by hand. In a team of 4 to 5 people they would pass a long handled dip net containing 10 to 20 fish fire brigade style, over and over again, as the crowd of fish in the pool below thickened and waited patiently. It was inspiration and heart break in equal measure. The fish way that has been years in the making should be built later this summer, so hopefully next spring those volunteers will be out of a job.

What I learned that day, was that I am not the only one who sees those fish and that stream, as holy. The community members who saw the problem and put their hands to work solving it, the crowd of people like myself who came to watch, the loon swimming in the harbor just off shore, the seals lolling about patiently at the surface just behind her, the osprey and eagles that fly above the harbor and wait in the trees above the stream, the bears and raccoons and other forest animals that feed on the fat fish on their way up stream or the spent ones on the way back down, the cod and haddock that eat the young alewives at sea, we are all connected by something “that must be preserved intact, that should not be transgressed or violated”, something holy. Those fish are a unifying force, you can feel it when you stand there and watch them. It is a force that is feeling more and more unstoppable.

Margaret Mead said “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” Sometimes all that group of citizens has to do is give nature a little help, and she’ll do the rest. Those alewives know what do to. And if you’re not sure what to do, go watch them; they’ll tell you.

You can find a transcript of this program, as well as contact information and references on our website, look for the Show Notes link at weru.org, where you can also download the show as a podcast or listen to it on demand. Our music is from Stanley Watson’s Portrait of Don Potter, performed by MDI guitarist Kevin Morse. Thanks for listening, and as always, join us next week for another look at the world around us.

References:

Here’s what the internet told me about the etymology of holy: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holy?s=t

From the Ellsworth American: http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/maine-news/waterfront/alewives-return-to-patten-pond-to-get-a-boost

Spring Bird Migration

Note: This program first aired on May 16, 2015.

 

Spring in Maine is such a delight. Every day brings a new sound, a new smell, a new sensation to be experienced. As I write this, yesterday I heard my first Black and White Warbler of the season, and today my first Black Throated Green Warbler. Each one of these little birds migrates to Maine from geographies further south. Black and Whites winter from Florida, through Mexico and Central America to Columbia and Ecuador. The Black Throated Greens winter in Cuba and the island of Hispanola, along the Yucataan peninsula and Honduran highlands,  and in the northern most part of South America. Both of these birds, like so many others, make their way from their warm wintering grounds to mid and high latitude forests, for the express purpose of breeding. The mid and high latitude forests, just awakening from winter’s dormancy, offer a bonanza of resources to these migrants, from an explosion of nutritious insects, to nesting sites and lowered nest predation pressure. So these little birds arrive as ready for spring as you or I.  

The difficulties of migration are many. These birds oxidize their body fat, muscles and internal organs for energy, and breathe so rapidly that they easily dehydrate, something that can become the limiting factor in length of migratory flight. The means by which birds navigate are complex, numerous and not entirely understood. What we know for certain is that human infrastructure confuses some migrating birds; bright lights and tall buildings have killed thousands of them.  Migration is hard and dangerous and birds can suffer high mortality if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which brings me to my main point. When I am roused from sleep by the sound of a new bird song coming in my window on a spring morning I have to remember not just the excitement of hearing a new bird, but also deep humility in the face of that bird’s accomplishment. That new warbler I hear flew all night to get here. All of these song birds are nocturnal migrants, so not only did they fly all the way from Florida or further, they did so at night, while I was sleeping. During the day they rest and forage, and follow environmental cues as to whether it is warm enough to keep going (the cold gray period of a couple of weeks ago surely slowed down the East coast migration into New England, now that the sun is out and the weather warm, the birds have started showing up again). They fly at night for a number of good physical reasons; they get all day to eat before they have to fly again which can shorten their overall migration time. There is less wind and turbulence at night, so the flying is easier. The air is cooler so the birds lose less water, and because it is cooler, the relative humidity is higher which leads to higher density air. The higher the air density the easier it is to generate lift, a key component of flight. Night flight has many benefits going for it.

The most important reason for birds to migrate at night though, at least in my mind, is because they are trying to avoid predation. And what preys on little birds flying thousands of feet up in the sky you might ask? Other birds. Yes, the dirty secret of the avian world is that big birds eat small birds, and not just occasionally. The Accipiters, a group of hawks that includes Copper’s Hawks, Sharp Shinned hawks and Goshawks, and the Falcons a group that includes Merlins, Kestrels and peregrine falcons, are all birds that prey primarily on other birds. This predation pressure was strong enough, that when combined with the all the other positive attributes of night migration, yielded enough selective pressure to cause songbirds to evolve to migrate in the dark. Perhaps this impresses me because I can’t imagine running the Appalachian Trail twice a year, only at night, trying to avoid a man eating Bigfoot. If we all had to do that every year, it would quickly sort out the wheat from the chaff, if you know what I mean. And that means that the birds you hear at sunrise, the new voices that join the chorus each day, those aren’t just any birds, those are the survivors. So yes, winter was hard for us, I won’t deny it, but with each new warbler that arrives on a spring wind, take a moment to appreciate just how arduous and therefore amazing their journey to this season of plenty is. 

References:

Black and White Warblers: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-and-white_Warbler/id

Black Throated Green Warblers: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-throated_Green_Warbler/lifehistory

About Migration from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/migration/

From the Eastern Kentucky University, a marvelously in depth and referenced website about birds: http://people.eku.edu/ritchisong/avian_biology.htm

Migration altitude from Cornell: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/studying/migration/pathways

                                                                               

A Visit from the Grackles

Note: This program first aired on October 26, 2013.

Just last week, my neighborhood was taken over; from high up in the tree tops came a sound like the rusty hinged doors in a creepy haunted house, opening and closing over and over again. Interspersed with the creaking came squacks and knocks, it was a noisy crew of interlopers up there. The tops of the trees in my home territory were full, at least for a fleeting moment, of grackles.

Grackles are icterids, a family of songbirds that includes blackbirds, cowbirds, meadowlarks, bobolinks and orioles. They are an entirely new world group that encompasses about 100 different species between North and South America. The grackles in my woods were common grackles, Quiscalus quiscula, and if you look in the bird books you will find that there are several different races of this species, geographically distributed around the eastern half of North America, though they are making their way west as well. Grackles are birds of edges, they thrive in patchy habitat, open areas interspersed with wooded cover. Before European settlement they were not especially common, because much of North America was thickly wooded, too thickly wooded for grackles to proliferate. The subsequent development of the landscape here has been a boon for them, and their population has increased right alongside ours, as we clear more land for our homes and farms, and they respond in kind. In a sense, their population is tied to ours.

Which is interesting and a little ironic, because many people don’t like grackles all that much. Bird books describe them as boisterous and noisy and they are noted agricultural pests.  Online bird forums are loaded with irate posts from backyard bird watchers, all desperate for ways to keep grackles out of their feeders, as the grackles are thought to bully the other birds and prevent them from accessing food. While they are in the Passerine order, the song birds, grackles are not likely to sing you to sleep, their chorus sounds more like this: (play chorus from ebird). People like sweetly singing, little rare birds; common, loud, indistinct markings? Grackles have all the chips stacked against them.

That being said, I have nothing against grackles, and in fact, walking out into the yard and having my attention drawn to the cacophony in the trees was a magical moment. It was the end of a gray day, and suddenly there was new life in the air. These gatherings are their good byes, they are massing in preparation for leaving, or perhaps are already on their way, using my oak trees as a rest stop to eat acorns as they make their way south. And eat acorns they do. Have you ever tried to bite into an acorn? Its not easy, yet acorns are a favorite winter and migration prep food for grackles. They actually have a sharp keel in their mouth on their upper pallet that allows them to cut open the acorn. They are smart too, they are among the birds that practice “anting”, a behavior in which they land on the ground and allow ants to crawl up into their feathers. The presumed function of this behavior is to rid themselves of parasites. And they are beautiful. From a distance or in flat light they appear black, but when the sunlight hits them just right, their feathers reflect a gorgeous array of irridescent purples and greens.

So I was sad to see them go. One moment they were there and the next it was just silent empty trees. The briefness of their presence made it all the more special. Perhaps, had the whole flock taken up residence for the summer, I would have grown tired of the squeaks and scratches. But that isn’t what happened. Instead they were here just long enough to draw my attention, and then before I got a really good look, they left, leaving me wanting more. It is a reminder to not take anything in nature for granted, regardless of how common place it may seem to those around you. One person’s mundane is always another’s magic.

References:

From the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (the definitive online resource):
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Grackle/id

Nice info from a local North Carolina Audubon chapter newsletter http://www.meckbirds.org/idbehavior/pdfs/grackles.pdf