"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 reminds us once again in his book "Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds."
This series explores William Cullen Bryant’s metaphorical poem, "To a Waterfowl," likening a shorebird’s migration to the human journey from birth to death.
"Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
Off the chafed ocean side?"
In verse three, Bryant changes the focus from watching the bird’s movement (as in verses one and two) to wondering about its destination and the “rest stops” it will need for food and water along the way: Is the shorebird seeking a still, muddy lake, a vast, dynamic riverbank, or the crashing waves of the ocean shore?
1. The shallow waters and exposed mudflats of inland lakes provide vital rest stops for avian flyers, known as mudpeckers or peeps, who breed in the high Arctic tundra and winter as far south as South America. Here, sandpipers, yellowlegs, dowitchers, plovers (such as the killdeer), and Wilson’s Snipe refuel on insect larvae, worms and tiny crustaceans.
2. Vast, wide riverbanks, such as the Mississippi, Danube or Mekong, serve as an avian superhighway, often called a flyway, giving migrating birds a clear geographic landmark for navigation, a continuous source of water, shelter from wind and a rich buffet of food. A river blends deep water, shallow mudflats and riverside vegetation, attracting a diverse mix of species: ducks and geese, sandhill and whooping cranes, trumpeter swans, herons and egrets fly on or above the water; sandpipers, plovers, godwits and curlews explore the mudflats and sandbars; warblers, swallows, swifts, orioles and tanagers rest in the riverside trees and brush, and raptors, such as ospreys, bald eagles, hawks and falcons, ride the river winds.
3. Continental edges and flyways on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts provide visual guides and feeding corridors for birds such as the sanderlings, red knots, piping plovers, semipalmated sandpipers, bar-tailed godwits, American oystercatchers, and ruddy turnstones.
Migration is not only a metaphor for the human journey; in this verse, in particular, it corresponds to trips taken by those in northern climes who seek sun and warmth during the winter months. They are dubbed “snowbirds.” They, too, choose a destination, decide on a method of travel, and, if driving, need rest stops along the way.
For years, as a snowbird in Sarasota, Florida, I’d watched the ruddy turnstones arrive in early March, at the cove, where I lived. They’d gorge on crustaceans uncovered by flipping stones along the shell path around the cove, and after a couple of weeks, they’d mysteriously disappear. I hadn’t thought much about it until I read Weidensaul’s book.
What I found out was amazing: the turnstones came from Venezuela, the first stop on their way north from Patagonia. When they left the cove, they were heading east toward the Atlantic shore, where horseshoe crabs were mating. In perfect symbiosis, as the turnstones (and other birds) arrived, female crabs were depositing millions of eggs, called clutches, in the sand (a clutch can hold up to 4,000 eggs). After gorging on the trilobite larvae, the turnstones took off on the final leg of the nearly 10,000-mile journey to their home in the Arctic mudflats. I documented this incredible journey in a book, "Ruddy Living on the Wind."
The problem of geographic uncertainty that Bryant addresses in verse three will be beautifully resolved in verse four, where he introduces the idea of a divine “Power” ultimately guiding the creature where it needs to go. Stay tuned.
To access the entire poem, visit https://poets.org/poem/waterfo...
Readers can also track migrating birds in their locale by downloading BirdCast.
