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. 

The White Bird

The sun rising over Halibut Point bathed Folly Cove's ledges in golden light and deep shadows. It made a rich backdrop for noticing the birds gathered around a school of small fish.

Early morning, Folly Cove

The leathery tones in the granite accentuated  a singular white bird perched above the multitude like a serene icon over the feeding frenzy.

The White Bird

In its stillness the bird seemed an eerie transmogrification of a member of a usually frenetic tribe. It was an albino Herring Gull, feathers unmarked by color or pattern. At that moment the White Bird appeared aloof from the restless appetites of its species.

It's easy to sense transcendence in such a creature. It seemed to be composed of elements only partly of this world. Its lack of outward detail suggested supernatural detachment, self-contained elegance, potency in reserve. It projected a quiet knowing.

In both the Old and New Testaments a White Bird, particularly a dove, is often associated with divinity, purity, peace, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

White tern, Plum Island

This was my second recent encounter with a mysterious white bird. The one above photographed on the Plum Island safari is apparently an albino Common Tern. Without visible field markings, taxonomy can be difficult. I felt the yearnings of science weaken. Like the ancients, and like mystics of all eras, I became aware of metaphor taking hold as a force of meaning and power. Whiteness has timelessly suggested clarity, hope, and new beginnings, the removal of pain and suffering, the unity of spectral diversity into Whole Light.

White is the color chosen for bridal veils and baby's swaddling clothes, for surgical healing and naval ceremony, for Islamic pilgrims and Christian angels, for Buddhist funerals and Hindu shrouds. The Pope has worn white since 1566 as a symbol of purity and sacrifice. It is the color of glory and of the heart bled dry.

From Moby Dick to alpha wolves to Great Sharks, white has been associated with power and liminal qualities at the boundary of life and death. The White Bird flies back and forth between ultimate realms. For minds seeking the fullest experience it brings science and imagination into Oneness.

Into the Wind

 

In the blah and blustery weather earlier this week I watched birds at the shoreline succeeding not only with the marvel of flight but against a stiff wind.

Great Black-backed Gull

Gulls are the aerial masters of the environment. They shift their wings to meet varying conditions and purposes. The one pictured here has cupped its wings to emphasize buoyancy rather than forward movement,

Ring-billed Gull

This Ring-billed Gull maintains a straighter wing configuration with its intention of traveling rather than lingering.

Laughing Gull

This Laughing Gull is similarly maximizing aerodynamic lift. Air passing the longer, curving upper surface of its wings creates a vacuum above that pulls the bird up and counters gravity.

Herring Gull hovering above Common Eiders

This gull is not flapping its wings at all. It has curved them out with feathers splayed to catch the onrushing force of the wind keeping it aloft directly above the Eiders it intends to rob of food brought up from the bottom.

Turkey Vulture

A Turkey Vulture soared overhead employing both these techniques to float in the sky while spiraling over coastal terrain.

Northern Gannet

Interestingly, as I looked out into the Bay almost all the birds were flying from left to right into a stiff north east breeze.

Double-crested Cormorant

It seemed counter-intuitive that they would choose to head into the wind.

White-winged Scoters

Quite apparently the lifting energy of the moving air was helping them more than the momentum lost to the opposing force of the wind.

Surf Scoters

I changed my perspective to theirs, from flying 'against the wind' to flying 'into the wind.' 

Common Loon

Birds flying with that wind to their rear seemed jet propelled. The power assist made them considerably more of a photographic challenge than the moderately paced ones borrowing lift.

Peregrine Falcon

Along the coast came one of the fastest flyers in the world. The Peregrine Falcon artfully maintained a stationery hunting position in the sky by 'kiting' or balancing all the forces affecting its flight. It is supremely agile on long tapered wings.

Bald Eagle

Soaring downwind in the other direction this Bald Eagle stayed aloft on broad wings held consistently horizontally, scanning the coastline for a ready meal dead or alive. Perhaps its wing structure and anatomy dictated the passive flight terms. Or perhaps it lacked the dexterity and temperament to finesse the wind in a headlong merging of energies.

Plum Island Safari

Looking across the Ipswich Bay from Halibut Point a great stretch of sand marks the horizon, some of which is preserved as the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island and adjacent estuaries. I decided it was time to take a look.

Egrets, ducks, and wading birds

The inner side of the refuge offers both salt water and fresh water habitat. Its great advantage over Halibut Point as a food producer for wildlife is the prevalence of mud.

Dunes and ocean

The outer side looks back at Halibut Point's rocky shoreline and quarry ponds. The environments could scarcely be more different. Plum Island's sand dunes continuing into shallow water form another part of its distinctive ecology.

Near the entrance to the Refuge is a tribute to legendary naturalist Ludlow Griscom of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. I was gratified to read on the plaque that he played a leading role in establishing the 4,700 acre sanctuary. Eleven years ago in these Notes I reported on a conversation I had with Roland Clement, aged 101, concerning a birding trip to Halibut Point with the charismatic Griscom in 1941. Here is an excerpt: People were either awed by him, or hated him. I was a lucky protégé for a year or so....It was our aim to outdo our guru in first spotting some rare find. Or, heavenly luck, catch him in some hasty misidentification. But he almost always took a second look before speaking out, so we remained empty-handed.

Cormorants, gulls, and egrets in a feeding frenzy
on small fish driven to the surface by larger fish

The Refuge is simultaneously a place of serenity and of existential tumult.

Harrier, or Marsh Hawk

A visitor might well get a sense of being on safari in a distant, exotic landscape.

Osprey

Given the richness of these estuaries in supporting colonies of wildlife, it is not surprising that Plum Island attracts a wide range of birds of prey.

Red-tailed Hawk

Fierce raptors patrol the air eyeing the teeming flocks of shorebirds and rodents scurrying in the uplands.

Sandpipers and plovers take flight

Here the appearance of a falcon overhead panics waders feeding on the mud flats.

Merlin (falcon)

The falcon circled and burst into the flock as it veered distractingly in hopes of collective safety.

The Merlin and a Semipalmated Plover

The falcon succeeded in knocking down one of the shorebirds to its demise.

Greater Yellowlegs and Short-billed Dowitcher

Of course those mild-mannered mud probers are also carnivorous in their appetites as they insert their bills into the mud for tiny invertebrates.

Common Tern with fish

So are the graceful terns patrolling the waters off the beach.

Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets rising

This refuge at the edge of the continent sustains not only its resident wildlife but as a critical staging area in the Atlantic flyway for countless songbirds arriving and departing on migration flights across thousands of miles of ocean.

The U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service manages the preserve with a nice balance of primal sanctuary and recreational access and vistas for visitors. Even for those of us lucky enough to frequent Halibut Point, a trip to Plum Island feels like a safari to an exotic but accessible destination.

Swallows on the Wing

Swallows move fast and spend most of their waking hours hunting in the air. Their insect prey is invisible to us yet these birds spot it and catch it in flight. As they hurtle, loop and glide overhead swallows seem more like a concept than something with definite features, more like a verb than a noun. Swallows extend the romance of the aerial sphere beyond our knowing.

Three Tree Swallows and a Barn Swallow (top center)

And yet occasionally they alight on an observable perch. With the right light and the aid of binoculars their sleek beauty comes to the eye.

Barn Swallow over the quarry pond

One understands that swallows are able to catch more calories than they expend in their energetic pursuit of prey.

Barn Swallow feeding young

They also have to keep up with the demands of their brood. When fledglings leave the nest they line up around the quarry to observe and practice their difficult trade, while still being provisioned by adults.

This transfer of food usually comes as a bolus, a mouthful comprising many insects rather than one at a time.

Male Tree Swallow

Swallows have adapted to hunting insects on the wing by developing a slender, streamlined body and long, pointed wings, which allow great maneuverability and endurance, as well as frequent periods of gliding. Their body shapes allow for very efficient flight; the metabolic rate of swallows in flight is 49–72% lower than equivalent song birds of the same size.¹

 The impression is falcon-like scaled down to smaller prey.

Juvenile Tree Swallows

In late summer the Halibut Point quarry and shoreline provide good hunting prospects both high and low over water.

Gleaning from the water surface

The juveniles especially are attracted to picking bugs from the surface of the quarry.

Tree Swallow and the blue moon

Not surprisingly, swallows resemble falcons in their visual acuity as well as in their body and flight characteristics. They have a bifoveate retina that provides sharp lateral and frontal vision, an unusually long eye that enhances spatial resolution, a large posterior blind area, and a narrow binocular field.²

Their relatively long eyes allow for an increase in visual acuity without competing with the brain for space inside of the head.¹

Tree Swallows feeding on bayberry berries

In preparation for their fall migration southward swallows pluck extra calories from bayberry bushes along the Halibut Point shoreline.

Migrating swallows en route south

They are among the minority of songbirds that migrate primarily during the daylight hours. Although day migrants are more exposed to avian predators there are some advantages.  Day migrants are able to navigate using land formations they can see easily, such river valleys, coastlines, and mountain ranges. And, unlike night migrants, those that migrate by day can feed as they go. For Tree Swallows this means they can hunt both flying insects and their favorite berries.³  

Swallows form just one branch of the diverse winged world but they seem to have taken the achievement of flight to its ultimate degree.

1. Wikipedia. 

2. "We also show that swallows and diurnal raptors (hawks and falcons) have converged on a similar visual configuration but that, interestingly, predatory songbirds that ambush prey (flycatchers) have not converged on the same suite of traits. Despite the commonly held belief that predators rely on binocular vision, the temporal (frontally projecting) fovea present in swallows—but not present in other songbirds—is likely not involved in binocular vision. Instead, swallows have four nonoverlapping foveae in a 100° arc around the beak, which can improve the tracking of frontally located aerial prey that are engaging in evasive maneuvers."

Tyrrell, Fernández-Juricic and McPeek, "The Hawk-Eyed Songbird: Retinal Morphology, Eye Shape, and Visual Fields of an Aerial Insectivore," The American Naturalist, vol. 189 # 6, June 2017.

3. Treeswallows.com