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. 

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.