Autumn Delights

These images represent the sorts of pleasures to the eye available at every walk in the Halibut Point State Park.

Pond Edge

Stag

Poison Ivy

Queen Anne's Lace

Bay-breasted Warbler

Cherry leaves, Burdock seeds

New England Asters, Orange Sulphur

House Wren, Staghorn Sumac

Migrating Brant

The Gannet's Plunge Dive

 

Locking onto target

Gannets patrol the ocean high above the surface looking for fish to strike. Their excellent vision searches the horizon for signs of other birds and marine mammals on the hunt.

From soaring to diving

After spotting possible prey Gannets swiftly shift from soaring or flapping to dropping toward the water.

A winged missile

Gravity and aerodynamic skill take them to the target within a couple of seconds.

Wings folding in

Their three-foot long wings, no longer supporting lift, tuck in to reduce air resistance for the dive.

Bird becoming arrow

The Gannet uses its wings as guidance fins during the plummet toward unsuspecting fish.

The perfect conversion

Nearing the water it becomes lethally ballistic at speeds up to 60 miles per hour.

Entry

Air sacs within its special bone structures absorb the surface impact. The bird's nostrils are located protectively inside the beak.

The minimal splash

The minimal splash is a tribute to the bird's streamlined plunge. Below the surface it instantly pursues the fish by leg and wing propulsion, sometimes to considerable depths. 

Gannet with a mackerel

The Gannet swallows smaller prey before returning to the surface. Larger fish like this mackerel it has to manage at the surface, where gulls may be waiting to steal the prize.

Pursued by gull

After these maneuvers the Gannet gets itself back up into the air where it spends its days repeatedly performing one of nature's stunning routines. It comes to land only at nesting time on remote coastal sites.

Shoreline Seasons - Fall

An awakening is taking place on the shoreline at this time of year, as though the cooler days are stimulating active life. And that in a sense is literally true.

Black Scoters flocking

Coastal waters that had been relatively empty all summer are now repopulating with birds arriving from northern nesting grounds. 

Surf Scoters

Some of these will stay all winter in the open waters along Halibut Point, some will continue further south.

Common Eiders

Massive numbers of these birds form migration flocks while diving for mollusks and seaweed along the rocky coast. The male Eiders are molting from drab summer plumage to the vivid patterns that will enliven frigid days ahead. Right now they are being joined by Harlequin Ducks as principal spectacles of the cold weather surf zone.

Northern Gannet

Red-throated Loon

Also arriving are deeper diving birds with various specialties in seeking fish, whether by plunging from the air as gannets do, or by swimming down with powerful legs like the loons, Razorbills, and Long-tailed Ducks.

Herring Gull

Newborn fish are also on the move out of the nursery estuaries and rivers. When they are driven to the surface of the sea by larger predatory species, various birds try to seize them from above.

Great Black-backed Gull

The larger gulls are not very adept at the agile maneuvers necessary for these opportunities.

Cormorant and Ring-billed Gull fishing,
Herring Gulls watching.

Cormorants, the expert swimmers, and light-bodied gulls more successfully exploit the panicked fish.

Laughing Gulls

The lighter gulls are more tern-like in their aerodynamic buoyancy.

White-rumped Sandpiper

Late-departing shorebirds occasionally make a stopover at Halibut Point on their way toward winter realms. This juvenile White-rumped Sandpiper was a surprising sight foraging in velvety algae at low tide, considering its origins in muddy habitat of the High Arctic tundra.

White-rumped Sandpiper

Birds of this species on their way to the furthest tip of South America make one of the world's longest migratory  flights.

Canada Geese

The wide open skies along the coast make fine viewing for fall's seasonal wonders.

* * *

A reader sent this interesting anecdote after last week's essay.

"That photo of the female redstart reminds me of the time we were sailing off Gloucester. I was steering the sailboat with my hand on the wheel. A tired bird alit on the back of my hand. After watching it for a minute, I very carefully used my free hand to swat a fly in the cockpit. I picked up the dead fly and slowly placed it on my forearm. The tired bird hopped over, ate the fly, and departed. True story. One I’ll never forget."

Shoreline Seasons - Summer

Double-crested Cormorants at sunrise

With summer came the longest balmy mornings. Wildlife stirred early at Halibut Point. Low tide at dawn made a premier setting for companionable coastal outings.

Laughing Gull

Some of the local gulls still sported their breeding plumage into midsummer.

Ruddy Turnstone, adult male

So did some of the shorebirds passing through in August on their way back along tremendous migration routes from northern nesting grounds.

Spotted Sandpiper

These ones bypassed the more populous marshes and mudflats to specialize in foraging for tiny invertebrates in our rocky intertidal zone.

An exhausted bird

After a long night's flight that culminated with a crossing of the Ipswich Bay this songbird dropped onto the shoreline at an early hour of the morning.

Female American Redstart

It was an American Redstart, a warbler that would probably stay briefly to rest and refuel in the Park woodlands before continuing its journey to Florida and beyond.

Caspian Tern

A Caspian Tern made a rare appearance from southern coastal waters.

Northern Gannets

Gannets, which had been mostly absent during the warm months, began to reappear in late summer in their high-altitude peregrinations for fish.

Life proliferated in rhythm with the most generous sunshine of the year. 

Riding the Wind

The wind had reversed direction and picked up speed since my last report on birds flying past the tip of Halibut Point. Then, the wind was coming briskly from the northeast and a good variety of birds were getting a boost from flying directly into it.

Sanderlings

Now on a very blustery day a different set of birds, and far fewer of them, was flying with the westerly wind, toward the east.

Common Eider

In both cases the birds were flying primarily from left to right but with different approaches to harnessing the wind. I had to speculate on whether they were seizing opportunities for intentional travel or simply making the best of elements forced on them.

Ring-billed Gull bucking the wind

Gulls were the exception to the pattern of the down-wind travelers. They patrolled both up and down the shoreline using the wind to hover and maneuver adroitly in all directions. Their ability to shape their wings and tail in broad, cup-like configurations helped keep them aloft.

Herring Gulls contesting a morsel

When they were in travelling mode, however, gulls harnessed the wind with preferences similar to other maritime flyers, wings straight, narrowed and extended.

Northern Gannet

Gannets are one of the most spectacular aerialists along the Halibut Point shoreline. The proportion of their long wing length to narrow width forms what is known as a high aspect ratio that facilitates maximum lift with minimum drag and turbulence, as the moving air creates a vacuum above the wing curvature.

Seasonal range of the Northern Gannet
All About Birds website, Cornell Ornithology Lab

Gannets are able to spend most of their lives far out at sea covering tremendous distances in pursuit of fish. They are most often seen along the New England coast in fall and winter.

Cory's Shearwater

The wings of shearwaters optimize the high aspect ratio principle to control and stabilize their flight near the water surface in all kinds of winds. They spend most of their life far from land but are occasionally pushed close enough to shore to be seen from our coast in late summer or early fall. When forced in by a gale like other seabirds they follow a counterclockwise loop around the edge of the Ipswich Bay to escape back out to sea past Halibut Point. 

Migratory range of Cory's Shearwater
BirdLife International, 31 May 2021

Cory's Shearwaters come to land for breeding in the Azores and Madeira, as well as the Canary Islands. Their pelagic migration journey follows an 8-shape pattern along the African and South-American coasts pursuing small fish on the surface and schools sometimes driven up by large marine predators such as dolphins and tuna. In summer they range up the continental shelf as far north as Newfoundland. They expertly benefit from dynamic soaring, as explained by Gloucester's Chris Leahy in The Birdwatcher's Companion to North American Birdlife, 2004.

Dynamic soaring

"Dynamic stability exploits the fact that winds blowing over the surface of the sea are slowed by the waves at the surface and gradually increase in velocity with altitude. Relatively heavy birds such as albatrosses, fulmars, and shearwaters with high aspect ratios (best for control and stability) can gain speed high in the fastest air and then plunge downwind; when they reach the slower air near the seas surface they then use their momentum to head up again, simultaneously turning into the wind, which blows them back aloft. The entire sophisticated maneuver is performed without a single flap."

They Don't Ask for Much

Early in May when we were cosseting our garden plants at home, I came across this herb growing exuberantly in the gravel perimeter road at Halibut Point.

Yellow Rocket - Barbarea vulgaris

It didn't seem to be supported by what we commonly think of as soil. And yet it was achieving the full destiny of a flowering plant.

Bluets - Houstonia caerulea

About the same time Bluets were brightening crevices and waste places all over the Park.

Oxeye Daisy - Leucanthemum vulgare

They and Oxeye Daisies seemed to be setting up a sequence for blossoms in unlikely terrain.

Racemed Milkwort - Polygala polygama

Finding them was like hunting for treasure in places sometimes obscure and sometimes conspicuous.

Shad trees - Amelanchier sp.

In mid-spring shad trees enliven apparently sterile grout piles with colorful leaves and flowers.

Bigtooth Aspen - Populus grandidentata

Aspens veil themselves with shimmering foliage and flowers in the very same rocky debris cast aside by the granite quarrying industry.

Virginia rose - Rosa virginiana

Decades later botanical marvels have pioneered into the lifeless landscape.

Smooth Hawkweed - Pilosella piloselloides

They arrive as seeds prodigiously cast to the wind, or to traveling animals. A tiny portion of those seeds eventually find anchorage in water-retentive locations on Halibut Point.

Sheep Sorrel - Rumex acetosella

Drought-resistant species with advantageous structures are able to conserve moisture within their cells.

Eastern Red Cedars - Juniperus virginiana

Soil building on the bare rock proceeds through an interaction of chemistry, physics, geology and biology. The substrate is weatherized into particles, dissolved into nutrients, enriched by the carbon cycle. It could be said that the rough quarry debris constitutes the coarsest element in the soil formation matrix.

Seaside Plantain - Plantago maritima

Down on the coastal margins specialized plants overcome harsh challenges to colonize dry, windswept, salty crevices.

Seaside Goldenrod - Solidago sempervirens

All through these headlands an ineffable force pushes organic life to make opportunities for itself on the most meager, and resplendent, circumstances.