The Birds

When it comes to birds, I'm neither a pure lover nor a pure hater. 

Come spring, I love seeing the first red, red robin come bob, bob, bobbin' along. 

I love waking up to chirping birds. I love seeing hawks flying over Boston Common. I love the occasional sighting of a colorful bird, like a cardinal or a Baltimore oriole. (My brother recently saw an oriole on the Cape. I'm jealous.) I love, and am always amazed by, hummingbirds. (How do those little critters survive???)

I love making way for ducklings. 

I love the raptor show in Tucson, Arizona.

I love that birds are dinosaurs. Or were. 

I like crows. I like watching swarms of starlings swoop around. I don't mind blue jays. Sure, they squawk, but they're a pretty blue. 

I get a kick out of seeing buzzards in the Southwest. 

On the other hand, unless they're in chevron formation, flying somewhere else, I despise Canada geese and the crap they strew far and wide, wherever they waddle. 

And pigeons? Don't get me going.

But whether birds are on my good or bad list, I hate the idea that, thanks in large part to human activity, we've lost 3 billion birds in North America since 1970. That's one quarter of our feathered friends. And that's a lot. (Source: American Bird Conservancy)

So I'm happy to learn about pockets of preservation.

I haven't been there in years, but I used to do an annual dune hike on the Snail Trail in Provincetown, where areas are staked out for the piping plovers when they're nesting. And if you get too close, you will absolutely be strafed by a protective plover parent. Yay, piping plovers!

And I am buoyed to learn that, over the past twenty years, thanks to conservation efforts, the population of roseate terns in Buzzards Bay on Cape Cod has doubled over the past twenty years. 

It's just that the conservation efforts are a bit creepy. 

Those efforts take place on three islands in the bay, including one that's aptly named Bird Island. Part of those efforts is the annual counting-of-the-tern-nests. Which sounds like a colossal nightmare. 

Carolyn Mostello, a biologist with Mass Wildlife, has been leading the charge for the past two decades. 

Not that there’s any real way to prepare someone for the sensory overload that is Bird Island. As Mostello steers a boat toward the 2-acre island just outside Marion Harbor, the sound grows from a dull roar to a shattering shriek, and with it the realization from the crew — five young student volunteers — that they are going to spend the next five hours trapped inside a Hitchcock movie, under constant attack from the common terns and endangered roseate terns whose nests they have come to count.

“The first day here, I thought I was going to die,” said Adriana Pastor, a Bates College student on day three as a volunteer. “I was honestly wondering if I would ever see my family again. I wanted to leave. But now, I kind of love it.” (Source: Boston Globe)

I don't imagine that I'd ever get over the "going to die" and onto the "kind of love it" sentiment. Part of the deal is that you end up covered in bird shit. The birds peck at your back. And, woe to you (and your eyeballs) if you look them in the eye. This gives new meaning to our family motto, which has long been Don't Make Eye Contact. 

For the count, the island is marked out in a grid, and the crew members line up a few feet apart and slowly walk through each section, counting the nests. To make sure they don’t count the same nest twice, they place a tiny piece of leaf in each nest to show it has been tallied, an action that enrages the birds, who don’t like anyone going near their eggs.

And you have to be super careful that you don't step on an egg or a hatchling. Even if I wanted to take part in the count, I believe that my size 11 feet would eliminate me as a candidate.

But crushing young 'uns and soon to be young 'uns underfoot is only part of the problem. Biologists have to contend with animal predators, like racoons, that swim the mile to get to the island to feast on the terns and their eggs. Right now, the biologists are trying to trap a mink that's been responsible for dozens of deaths. 

Not for me, that's for sure.

I'm certain I'd feel differently if the preservation efforts were being aimed at Canada geese, but I'm happy that there are folks like Carolyn Mostello and her student volunteers who are making Buzzards Bay a safe space for terns. 

You don't have to be a birdwatcher to feel that birds, for the most part, make the world a better place.