Keep Calm and Bird On: September 2025
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews
September on Nantucket is a month of arrivals and departures, as our winter visitors begin to return, while our summer residents think about departing, and some transients are just passing through.
The relentless drought has probably impacted some of our breeding landbirds. Although not all data are in and it is hard to quantify its effect, birds eat bugs. And what’s a bug to do when the leaf of which it would like a tiny bite is withered and dry? Or sprayed to remove it? We still have to hope for rain.
So, arriving early and leaving early, some of our breeders like Yellow Warblers and Common Yellowthroats have already taken off. But still, those from further north may continue to pass through. Meanwhile, shorebirds continue to find food on sandbars and mudflats, as marine organisms—nereid and polychaete worms, along with crustaceans, and the beetles and flies that gather in beach wrack, keep them going. Least Sandpipers have been plentiful; Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Sanderlings; there is still a lot to look at.
At the end of the month the MMA will do fall checks of Barn Owl boxes, and, we hope, band some young. Skyler Kardell and I are now officially permitted to attach bands under the direction of master bander, Richard R. Veit. But will there be a banding office? The Supreme Court recently okayed the firing of Federal workers; the Banding Office was among Federal departments slated to be cut or eliminated. And while there are now sexier—and vastly more expensive—ways to track migration, a cheap, simple leg band is still the only true measure of individual longevity. That is a crucial data point for wildlife managers. It would be a shame to interrupt a data stream now running for over 100 years.
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