"At every moment of every day, morning or midnight regardless of the season, there are birds aloft in the skies of the Western Hemisphere, migrating," Scott Weidensaul wrote in "Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds."
As the hot, lazy days of summer transition into the crisp, cooler days of autumn, billions of birds, mostly unseen by us, will cast themselves upon the breeze and fly overhead.
William Cullen Bryant's 1818 allegorical poem, "To a Waterfowl," describes a shorebird's migratory flight and reminds us that our lives, too, are migratory journeys, like those of the shorebirds and songbirds aloft in the skies:
"Whither, 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?"
This series explores Bryant's poem verse by verse, seeking what wisdom we can glean from the shorebird about the journey of life – from birth 'til the crossing of the River Jordan.
Guided by the stars, the sun, crystals in their little bird bodies, landmarks, and following a path graven in their genes, these amazing avian fliers undertake long, arduous journeys to winter feeding grounds. Their flights are examples of perseverance, determination, and pure grit, also known as faith.
When the Ruddy Turnstones take to the wind from the Arctic mudflats and journey to their winter homes in Patagonia, they fly for five to eight days at a time, without food or water. Their wings will flap a total of 3 million times in their quest for food. When they return north in the spring, they will have flown over 13,000 miles.
On its way north from Patagonia to Delaware Bay, the Red Knot flies over Brazil's bulge for 10 days straight – a 240-hour trip, without stopping for food or water. This plucky flier, banded B95, is nicknamed “the Moonbird,” because after more than 20 years of migrating, he’s flown the equivalent mileage of traveling to the moon and back. The oldest Red Knot has become an icon for birders.
The White-Rumped Sandpiper flies 9,000 miles twice each year, pursuing summer. That was a record until birders banded and tracked the Arctic Tern. What they found was astonishing!
This 4-ounce wonder flies 44,000 miles round trip from Nova Scotia across the Atlantic to the southern shores of Africa, back over the Atlantic to Patagonia, back to Africa, and then back over the ocean for the fourth time to Nova Scotia and from there to the Arctic mudflats – a dazzling aerial figure-8 in pursuit of food.
The Blackpoll Warbler is one of the gutsiest songbirds. This little sprite starts from Alaska and flies 3,000 miles east to Nova Scotia, where it gorges on webworms and sawflies. When a strong northwest wind blows, he's off on a 2,000-mile transoceanic flight. At a mere 4 inches long and weighing one-third of an ounce (that's 50 birds to the pound), he's all feathers, hollow bones, and heart. He cannot swim, so he must keep flying – up to 90 hours at a time! He doesn't glide, so if he's not flapping, he's dropping. He sprints forward on long flights, folds back his wings, and drops – over and over again - 20 times a minute.
Migratory birds fly mostly at night when the air is less turbulent, so they expend less energy. The cooler air diffuses dangerously high levels of body heat from the constant flapping and reduces dehydration. Enemies, mainly hawks, are diurnal, and owls, though night prowlers, aren't agile enough to harm them. Despite flying against incredible odds, including dehydration, starvation, disease, predators, skyscrapers lit up at night, and satellite towers that can take out unwitting fliers, the GPS systems of these migratory wonders guide them back and forth to the same locations every year!
This is the bird Bryant memorializes in his poem. As we journey to the Promised Land, towards light and peace, our travels are often fraught with difficulties and trials, resembling a shorebird’s migratory flight.
To access the entire poem, visit https://poets.org/poem/waterfo....
