Bird of Passage: March 2024
February was rough. But I mean, is February ever not rough? I firmly believe that it’s the shortest month of the year because if it were any longer, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. Winter is still hanging on, but (especially now with climate change) it’s the gross, wet, muddy part of winter that we all just have to endure before spring finally begins in earnest. Plus there’s Valentine’s Day, which feels designed to set us up for disappointment; this year my spouse was in another state for work on February 14.
In theory I have a goal of getting out for a quick bird walk one morning each week, but between bad weather and busy schedules, I didn’t manage to do that once in February. I did, however, see lots and lots and lots and LOTS of Snow Geese.
Large numbers of Snow Geese overwinter at the McNary National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour from where I live. For me, winter is not complete without driving over to see them, and as an added bonus, my five-year-old son also finds them very impressive (“It’s a goose tornado! No, it’s a goose HURRICANE!”).
But of course, there’s a dark side to the awe-inspiring sight of those many, many geese.
The number of Snow Geese in North America has exploded in recent decades (from one million in 1970 to at least 13 million now, according to this 2019 story from the Washington Post). This is at least because the geese began feeding on leftover grain in agricultural fields in the winter, a much richer food source than they’d find in their natural marshland habitat. As a result, more of them make it through the winter. And when all those extra geese return to the Arctic to breed, they can have pretty severe effects on the local ecosystem, destroying and degrading vegetation across vast areas.
I know all of this. (I actually edited that blog post linked in the paragraph above, back when I worked for the American Ornithological Society!) And yet. Seeing the sky filled to the horizon with swirls and Vs of elegant white birds never fails to stir something inside me, to lift my spirits no matter how everything else in my life is going. My brain knows that there are probably more geese than there should be, more than their breeding habitat can reasonably sustain, but my heart is still moved.
I recently read the novel North Woods by Daniel Mason, and I wrote down this line from the final chapter: “The only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.” And you know what? Feeling grumpy instead of happy when I see the Snow Geese in winter isn’t going to stop ecological changes like this one; I don’t have a magic wand, after all. It’s just going to decrease the amount of joy in my life.
So for now, I’ve given myself permission to enjoy the spectacle. And I hope you’ve also found some joy, even in the face of change and loss, during this dreary time of year.
Words About Birds
For The Revelator, I wrote about the potential hidden connections between food waste, crows, and urban bird diversity. A grad student at the University of British Columbia has been surveying neighborhoods around Vancouver on trash day to determine whether crows congregate in areas with lots of available food waste (so far it looks like the answer is yes). Crows also raid the nests of other bird species and eat their eggs and chicks, so if food waste is drawing in unnaturally high concentrations of crows, this could have cascading effects on the whole bird community—yet another way we are inadvertently reshaping the ecosystems around us.
In not-by-me bird news: A new paper that came out this month that challenges our ideas about how and when birds became so diverse. The standard line of thinking is that the extinction of the (non-avian) dinosaurs cleared the way for many new bird species to evolve, diversifying to fill ecological niches suddenly left empty. But drawing on both genomics and fossil data and doing some math, the researchers behind the new study determined that birds were already quite diverse before the big dino-killing asteroid struck. Not all ornithologists agree that the results are valid, and it will be interesting to see where this goes next!
Remember Flaco, the Eurasian Eagle-owl that had been on the lam in NYC since escaping from the Central Park Zoo last year? He died a couple weeks ago after colliding with a building on the Upper West Side. The death of this celebrity bird may have a silver lining, because it’s bringing renewed attention the huge hazard that city buildings and their windows pose to birds (especially migrating birds). I wrote about this in chapter three of my book, where I talked about how scientists are using radar data to predict big migratory movements and encourage people to dim city lights on these high-traffic nights.
Finally, because I could use some good use after my bummer of a February, here are two positive bird stories. First, researchers from the University of Texas at El Paso recently captured and photographed a Yellow-crested Helmetshrike in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is notable because it’s the first time anyone has seen this bird in 20 years. The area where this species lives has been heavily impacted by war and violence, and conservationists are hoping the new photos will help kickstart an effort to protect them.
And second, I enjoyed Audubon’s recent story about a pair of Harpy Eagles that were successfully rehabilitated and released back into the wild in Bolivia after their nest trees were destroyed by loggers when they were chicks. “Rogue” and “Luna” had to practice catching live monkeys and sloths in a large flight enclosure in the rainforest to learn the skills they’d need for the wild. They were released in September, and researchers have been tracking their movements via satellite transmitter since. I’ve only been to the Neotropics once, back when I was an undergraduate, but I’d really love to go back one day and experience birds like these in person!
Book Recommendation of the Month
Ten Birds That Changed the World by Stephen Moss. I just started this one, but it’s a fun concept: Moss, a well-known British naturalist, profiles ten bird species (or groups of species, in a couple cases) that have had profound impacts on the history of humanity, beginning with ravens and the role they play in the mythology of cultures and ending with Emperor Penguins as a symbol of the climate crisis. It’s a wide-ranging book that incorporates birds from every continent, and I’m looking forward to digging in further!
Upcoming Events
March 11: Virtual book talk for the Linda Loring Nature Foundation
March 14: Virtual book talk for Pilchuck Audubon
March 26: Virtual book talk for the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia