Shorebirds have made their way north, even settling in Massachusetts; what’s in bird names; outdoor mentors
Our spectacular spring shorebird migration is over. Tens of thousands of the 34 or so sandpiper-type species, mostly wintering in the tropics, passed through Massachusetts, stopping briefly to fuel up on their way to their Arctic breeding grounds. They’re all nesting now in snowy owl and caribou territory.
Most will nest around shallow, fishless, temporary melt waters above the permafrost, taking advantage of the short summer’s bounty of mosquito larvae in the tundra pools. These billions of maligned mosquitoes, many of which get their sustenance up north from caribou blood, are critical to shorebird survival.
A handful of shorebird species surprisingly remains in Massachusetts to breed. Among them are the killdeer, snipe, upland and spotted sandpipers, willets, piping plovers and, of course, our beloved woodcock.
Killdeer, which loudly and onomatopoetically scream “kill-dee! kill-dee!” and put on a broken-wing act to lure threats away from their young, are most often seen on athletic and agricultural fields, golf courses and even flat, gravel rooftops. Their eggs blend in perfectly with stones, mere depressions of which form their nest sites.
I’ll never forget astonished principal Don Thunberg standing in the parking lot of the Auburn Middle School, looking up at my science class and me carefully documenting and observing a nesting pair up on that roof.
Snipe are rare breeders in Massachusetts, the very southern tip of their nesting range. We’re far more likely to see them during fall migration around flooded cornfields and very wet, grassy meadows.
It’s hard to miss willets abundantly breeding along our coast, though. They’re comparatively big and noisy, frequently giving off loud alarm calls whenever an intruder gets close to their marshy nesting area. And when they fly, the black-and-white stripe patterns on their wings are flashy identification signs.
Oystercatchers are another formerly rare shorebird that now regularly nests along our coast. Prior to 1955, they were seldom-seen southern vagrants. Then, as with other southern species like cardinals, titmice, mockingbirds, red-bellied woodpeckers, and Carolina wrens, they began moving north with climate change, which in the eyes of all serious local field ornithologists has had an obvious impact here for more than a half-century. The ornithological world didn’t need recent extreme weather events to finally realize the “alleged” change.
Those who observantly walk our coast’s sandy beaches will likely encounter our highly endangered piping plovers, only 8,400 of which still survive in North America. Some fireworks, beach buggy and beach access will be impacted to help protect their nesting.
But there are other non-breeding, migratory shorebirds here that don’t get the ink and are doing terribly. They need our awareness and immediate intervention, too. The spectacularly colorful red knot that once would arrive every spring in enormous numbers to feed on our horse shoe crab eggs have dwindled alarmingly.
Flocks of 100,000 that would first arrive in Delaware Bay, their most important staging area, this year numbered only 6,800. Just as alarmingly, semipalmated sandpipers and ruddy turnstones were both down 70%. The crash in horseshoe crab numbers — due in part to over-harvesting by humans — this year has obviously had a disastrous effect on shorebirds. Many of them that depend on those eggs for fueling their flight to their breeding grounds just starved.
I’ve seen many commercial horseshoe crab fishermen take vast numbers of this critical crustacean over the years and contribute to its population reduction. The tragic phenomenon is not limited to our region.
In the East Asian Australasian flyway of the Pacific, red knots were equally down. We’re witnessing the global demise of shorebird populations now, especially those that have to migrate long distances.
Some people want to learn about our wildlife problems and help. Sunday, the Forbush Bird Club, one of the oldest field-ornithology clubs in the country, held its 55th annual breeding bird census at the Mass Audubon Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary in Princeton. Each year, they, along with birding organizations all over the country, keep track of America’s bird populations, serving as barometers of our environmental stewardship.
What’s in a name?
Names and statues that honor country-fracturing, slavery-defending Confederates are being changed and taken down. Surprisingly, that trend of social conscience has recently filtered into our bird world.
Last year, the McCown’s longspur, a strikingly plumaged bird of our shortgrass prairies, had its name changed. Back in 1851, ornithologist George Lawrence named it after Capt. John P. McCown, who fought with distinction in the Mexican-American and Seminole wars and had collected it and two other species of birds new to science. But because McCown later fought for the Confederacy, the bird named in his honor was changed to thick-billed longspur.
So many of our common names for birds are ill-chosen, arbitrary, poorly descriptive and sometimes even ludicrous. There is a history of them being subsequently changed.
The well-named olive back thrush was changed to the Swainson’s thrush. Red-backed sandpiper became dunlin. Duck hawk was changed to peregrine falcon. Sparrow hawks are now kestrels. Pigeon hawk was changed to merlin. Myrtle warbler, well named for the berries it would eat, was later changed to the yellow-rumped warbler, which describes its beautiful butter-butt.
Official common names of America’s birds include names like Lucy’s warbler, Blackburnian warbler, Wilson’s warbler and Bachmann’s warbler. Those names aren’t very helpful to highlight their most poignant characteristics. Why are there often people-centered names?
Those who scientifically first describe a species can give it whatever common name they choose, though it’s not good form to ever name it after yourself. Sometimes, they name it after its first collector. Even the Latin scientific name allows for considerable leeway.
While every species must be placed in its proper genus, the second word in its name, its species name, can be anything the namer chooses. Problem names are numerous. One of them is Bachman’s warbler, our latest American warbler to go extinct. One male was confirmed singing alone in South Carolina’s Ion Swamp back in 1962. Later, single females were reported in Florida in 1977, and in Louisiana in 1988. The always uncommon species bred exclusively in flooded cypress swamp forests spotted with cane, palmetto, and blackberry thickets.
On its only wintering grounds in Cuba, it was last seen in the 1980s. I sadly visited that very spot, where Orlando Garrido, author of “The Birds of Cuba,” pointed out to me the very shrubs it last flitted in. Its critical winter habitat had all been tragically converted to sugar cane plantations. The extinction of the Bachman’s warbler was the price the natural world paid for cheap sugar for communist countries.
Studying dozens of its preserved and labeled skins at Harvard’s Peabody Museum, I found that hundreds of Bachman’s warblers had been collected around Key West on their annual migration to and from Cuba. Here was one instance where scientists contributed to the extinction of a species, though commercial clear-cutting of its South Carolina breeding habitat for timber was also a culprit.
It was John James Audubon who named this bird in honor of his friend and collaborator, Rev. John Bachman, a Lutheran minister who discovered the species in 1832 around Charleston, South Carolina. Bachman sent skins of the new species to Audubon, who was painting his landmark “Birds of America.” Interestingly, this striking jungle jewel of black, yellow, green, olive and gray was one American species that Audubon never saw alive.
The only local birder I know to have ever seen the species was Worcester’s late, former Forbush Bird Club president, Davis Crompton, who, by the way, was one of the last birders to ever see an ivory-billed woodpecker, too.
The problem with Bachman’s name comes from his writing about evolution, then a new theory that he would help develop and lend support to. To his credit, Bachman was a social reformer who ministered to slaves as well as white Southerners. However, although he argued that blacks and whites were of the same species, he also wrote about what he perceived to be white intellectual superiority, black’s incapability of self-government, and the Bible’s justification for slavery.
It will be interesting to see if Bachman’s warbler and numerous other species’ names tainted by racial injustice associations will be changed in the near future.
Boost from brother
What would we do without outdoor mentors who get us started loving nature, hunting, and fishing? When I was just 9, my older brother Gary Blazis would take me worm fishing for native brook trout in the tiniest brooks — before most succumbed to developments. That led to my love of fly fishing that expressed itself on five continents.
When I was 13, planted vulnerably on the east side of the city, he got me out of the pavement into tournament archery at the Auburn Sportsman’s Club, where with the coaching of Ed Gay we competitively shot Fred Bear compound bows with no sights. That led me to a lifetime of bow hunting rewards.
When Gary left teaching at Barre High to move to his dream destination at the Cape, he taught me diving, lobstering, shell-fishing, and later helped me set up a second home from which to pursue some of the greatest game fish in the world. I wouldn’t be writing this column today without his guidance.
Happy Birthday, brother. And to everyone who can mentor a youngster to love the outdoors, please don’t miss that impactful opportunity.
—Contact Mark Blazis at markblazissafaris@gmail.com.
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