What a seabird finds in southern Illinois
The pelagic wonders of an artificial lake, preparing for Tuesday, and flower of the week
I think perhaps some people think ecologists are being cute when they say that wildlife depend on habitats in metro areas. Perhaps it sounds like we’re giving squirrels and robins the aspirational label of wildlife, that we’re being encouraged to see our common species as magnificent. And while squirrels and robins are indeed magnificent, saying that many species use habitats in developed landscapes means much more than that.
Here’s one example that’s not from my current neck of the woods but my previous neck of the woods. In Illinois’ Carlyle Lake, an artificial reservoir/motorboat/bass paradise a little east of St. Louis, three open-ocean species of birds came to look for food last weekend.
On Saturday morning, birders near the marina at the southwest end of the lake located a Magnificent Frigatebird—by name alone, something that sounds out of place in Illinois. Their typical habitat would be the shallows of a coral island in the Caribbean rather than an inland lake. The bird was an adult female, as it had a white chest rather than an inflatable red pouch. While trying to relocate the frigatebird, a group of birders found a Surf Scoter, a sea-duck that winters along both coasts. Following that, a Long-tailed Jaeger appeared—an arctic-breeding species on a big detour from its winter destination in the southern oceans. The jaeger chased gulls, attempting to steal food, just like jaegers do everywhere else.
Besides the scoter, the birds didn’t stick around past the weekend. However, odd gulls, jaegers, and sea ducks appear in Carlyle Lake with enough regularity to allow birders to make plans around them. There are regularly-scheduled “pelagic” boat tours (a term that usually refers to trips out to open-ocean spots) on that noblest of vessels of our Midwestern fleet, the pontoon boat. This allows birders to reach open water and get a better look at species they’d otherwise have to travel much further to see. Illinois: Come for our pelagic wildlife.
A Black-tailed Gull at Carlyle Lake in 2016—an even more wayward bird that came to Illinois from the eastern Asian coast. Credit: Andy Reago and Chrissy McLarren (CC BY 2.0)
Why are these birds here? In short, when big storms in the ocean blow seabirds off course, they’ll cruise on the prevailing winds until they spot the next reasonable place to find food. Carlyle is the biggest body of water in Illinois—besides Lake Michigan, I guess, which can’t really be said to be in Illinois, and is a few hundred miles north.
A quick look on the map shows that while parts of Carlyle’s surroundings are farms or parks, there are also several towns and developments on the shore. And in fact, the unusual oceanic species were spotted on the southwest side of the lake, near Clinton, the largest town, and the dam. Perhaps the schooling fish they sought were found in the deep water near the dam.
If seabirds are just making short stops in this lake, should we treat their presence as a funny quirk or part of a pattern? Arguably, it’s a pattern, and something that should factor into how the lake is managed. Small numbers of jaegers, gulls, and others use Carlyle to refuel before traveling hundreds or even thousands more miles back to their ordinary wintering grounds, and the pattern repeats itself year after year. If the seabirds can’t find what they’re looking for inland, they may not survive the trip back to the ocean. And with storms increasing in frequency with climate change, we’d probably expect seabirds to appear inland more often. While Carlyle is artificial, it’s unlikely we’ll drain it at this point, and it’s not without value to many species.
In recognition of the remarkable diversity of Carlyle Lake, the Audubon Society named it an Important Bird Area (IBA). IBAs identify the sites of highest value to birds, whether or not the full area is protected as wildlife habitat. Often, IBAs face threats to the quality of the habitat or changes in land use—or, as in the case of Carlyle, they’re a patchwork of private land, conserved public land, and other land uses.
Places like Carlyle Lake speak to how we have to see the world through a bird’s eyes when attempting to conserve habitat for them. Our cultural values about what constitutes a “natural” or beautiful place may not line up with the essentials that a particular bird species needs. We aren’t exempt from considering our cities, recreational lakes, and farms as habitat—it’s all fair game to a bird.
Vote and follow through
The 2016 election acted as a wake-up call for me that limiting the harm of the new administration’s policies in the next few years would mean going beyond voting to other means of influencing the powers-that-be: calling elected officials, protesting, going on strike, and building up equitable institutions elsewhere—locally, nationally, and internationally. But that’s also no less true when one’s preferred party controls the executive branch. Politicians follow through on policies because their constituencies demand it, not simply out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s true of Democrats as well as Republicans. You don’t have to be cynical about human nature to reach that point of view: elected leaders rely on what people tell them through polls, comments, and protests to decide on their policy priorities. If no one speaks out about an issue, then it becomes to appear less and less pressing. And while voting comes down to how ballots are counted in a heavily gerrymandered electoral system, public pressure outside of election season can circumvent that challenge.
The climate podcast How to Save a Planet endorsed Joe Biden for president—and the reasons they did so are based on policy rather than, say, preferred personality traits in leaders. It’s specifically because the Biden-Harris ticket put out a $2 trillion climate plan adopting policies from the Green New Deal, legislation that came about from climate activists and progressive politicians, that the podcast became vocal about endorsing Biden’s presidency. And if a Biden administration falters on achieving its currently stated climate plans, I suspect the podcast would be among the first to raise that alarm. The science tells us that we don’t have time to wait. In a parallel way, thinking about how the election affects anti-racism, Angela Davis phrased her guidance to vote for Biden this way: “It will be about choosing a candidate who can be most effectively pressured into allowing more space for the evolving anti-racist movement.” Considered that way, elections in the U.S. right now are more about choosing your ideal adversary than anointing a saintly leader entrusted with all decisions. Reaching our climate goals takes not just a vote but follow through. So that’s my mantra to help me get through the next week: we’re going to follow through and get it done.
Flower of the week: Hawkweed
And a cabbage white butterfly as a bonus.
Continuing a theme from last week, I’m continuing to offer praise to flower species that have brought us color for essentially the entire growing season. Hawkweed (Hieracium) is another such relentless flower. It’s an adaptable genus: there are over 10,000 species and subspecies of hawkweed worldwide. While I’m pretty sure this is the introduced species common hawkweed (Hieracium lachenalii), there are many similar native species of hawkweed found throughout North America. Around our neighborhood, hawkweeds continue to put out more than a few blooms in places that haven’t been mowed or whacked—and there was a lot of fall weed-whacking and leaf-blowing in the last week or two (a reminder that using a leafblower for 30 minutes creates as much pollution as driving a pickup for nearly 4,000 miles.)
Hawkweeds are closely related to other roadside flowers like chicory and prickly lettuce. The smooth, digestible qualities of garden lettuce (Lactuca sativa) stand out more after seeing its many prickly, spiny, hairy relatives.
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Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.