Keep Calm and Bird On: August 2024
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews

Shorebirds continue to flood through in August. It is worth remembering that you might see the same species every day, but it is likely not the same individual, day to day. Stopovers are often brief, a mere pitstop for re-fueling. So the tide, the wind, the availability of food on the ground are all crucial elements in an ever-more dangerous journey south.
That migration is hazardous is nothing new. Birds have been figuring out survival strategies for millennia. They adapted to climate change as glaciers froze and melted, as oceans rose and fell, mountains rose or chipped away. And almost everything—except possibly horseshoe crabs—evolved along with them: fish and crabs, clams and worms, isopods, and amphipods.
Birds adapted as predator populations rose and fell. Often the strategy was to have tremendous fecundity; or if not, power and endurance, or longevity and wisdom.
But now the pace of human-constructed hazards has picked up with astronomical speed. Tall buildings kill thousands of land birds every year. Lighthouses were recognized as attracting birds from the very beginning of their construction. Oil rigs, cruise ships, windmills, and other offshore hazards take their toll, usually without any notice or outcry. Evidence of harm just washes away. The difficulty of proving a “taking” that might incur a penalty makes otherwise risky—sometimes exceptionally risky—locations appear more attractive.
So, it becomes ever more important to protect known locations for migrating shorebirds. The shoals and shallows, mudflats and sandbars, where tiny creatures nourish such as, Whimbrel and Dowitchers, Plovers and Sanderlings, Yellowlegs and Godwits, must remain undisturbed. Birds need safe access to feeding areas. Without them, our shorebirds, the long-distance fliers, athletes of the air, cannot survive. Cars, boats, dogs, runners, walkers, kites, all create a footprint of disturbance larger than their physical volume, with noise and wake and appearance. If we cannot calm the rush for unspoiled serenity, there will be none, for bird or human.
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