I have always been fascinated by
migration. I have a map of bird migration hanging on the wall of my office. I
read everything I can about it, and I marvel at the mysteries that science has
unraveled about how birds and fish navigate over literally thousands of miles
of ocean.
Here in the South Carolina Low
Country, we know a lot about migration. Over the past few months, we have
witnessed the streams of warblers passing through as they migrate toward
nesting grounds full of food and safety further north. The red knots recently
stopped on our beaches to feast on horseshoe crab eggs before continuing their
16,000 mile journey from Tierra del Fuego to the Arctic tundra.
 |
| Black-bellied Whistling Ducks |
We are seeing some unusual
migrants this year, too, as birds may be expanding their ranges in response to
climate change. Several families of black-bellied whistling ducks seem to have
settled in the Savannah Wildlife Refuge. And roseate spoonbills, while never
total strangers to the area, seem to be more widespread than usual this year.
All this migratory activity, even
when it is outside normal ranges, tends to satisfy the crucial need for
organisms to reproduce and perpetuate themselves. But when I study the
fantastic migrations of some bird species in particular, I can't help but
wonder if there is some additional evolutionary force at work, a force that
favors exploration as well as migration. Albatrosses, for example, cover
thousands of miles of open ocean just to find food to feed their nest-bound
chicks. Arctic terns fly north along the entire coast of South America and
North America in spring to nest near Greenland in summer, then return south in
fall via Europe and Africa.
For the past few winters a pair
of highly endangered whooping cranes has been sojourning in the vast marshes of
the ACE Basin estuary in South Carolina. What's unusual about these birds is
that they apparently belong to a flock of hatchery-raised whoopers that
scientists are training to migrate between Wisconsin and Florida. The only
natural whooping crane flock, numbering less than 300 birds, travels between
the Texas coast and northern Canada and has been doing so for hundreds of years.
 |
| Lowcountry Whooping Crane |
The hatchery-raised flock,
though, is showing some signs of independence. They have been training to
migrate by following ultralight aircraft between their summer and winter
grounds. Last year the whole lot of them refused to continue on to Florida
after being grounded on the Alabama coast for several days by a storm.
Several years before that, two
birds broke off from the main flock and diverted to South Carolina to spend the
winter. They apparently go back to Wisconsin in summer with the rest of the
flock, but they have decided they prefer winter in the Lowcountry rather than
the Sunshine State.
I love that South Carolina pair,
and not just because they choose to spend the winter in South Carolina. I love
their independence, the fact that they chose a different direction. They are
pioneers, and if they successfully nest and their babies follow them to the
Lowcountry, they will be the reason this "artificial" flock succeeds,
by expanding territory and improving the species' chances for survival.
Call them independent, call them
pioneers, these birds are important, just as the whistling ducks that showed up
in numbers this year, and the expanding numbers of spoonbills. I'm assuming, of
course, that these are breeding birds that will raise young and eventually declare
the Lowcountry home.
But could some of them be retired
birds, the ones who aren't breeding any more, whose chicks have all fledged,
but who still have plenty of life and perfectly good wing feathers? After all
those seasons of flying over seas and coasts and mountains, stopping over in
marshes and ponds and rivers, in short, after seeing some of the most beautiful
parts of this big blue planet, do they just pick out a pothole or swamp and
hunker down and wait to die? I think not!
 |
| Snow Geese |
Hey, that's what wings are for,
and I think they're using them. They've done their bit to keep the species
going. Now it's their turn to travel for fun and explore new places. It's what
they've been working for all their lives, all those months on the nest,
regurgitating half-digested worms and fish for their squawking babies, building
and rebuilding nests that just get fouled with baby bird poop, teaching the
babies to hunt or forage, maybe even mourning the ones that don't make it.
All right, this is totally unscientific.
I'm projecting. It's what I would do if I were a bird, because it's what I'm
doing as a "retired" human. As long as the wings still work and the
wind blows, I'm gonna fly, to new places and old, just because they are there.
And I'll tip my hat to the birds that join me.
