This month I had the pleasure to read a journal, written by Darryl McGrath, titled FLIGHT PATHS, A Field Journal of Hope, Heartbreak, and Miracles with New York’s Bird People. The back jacket of the 366 page book published by ee, excelsior editions introduces the thesis of this story better than I can, so I quote.
In The Late 1970s, The Bald Eagle And The Peregrine Falcon were heading toward extinction, victims of the combined threats of DDT, habitat loss and lax regulation. Flight Paths tells the story of how a small group of New York biologists raced against nature’s clock to bring these two beloved birds back from the brink in record-setting numbers.
As the author Darryl McGrath notes; This book is a work of journalism. Now you might ask why am I highlighting a journal and not a story that is literature? I believe good fiction is always based on a fact or facts. The characters come to believable life by the genius of an author’s imagination. The plot twists are also the author’s inspiration. But, the writer usually creates a plot of a story sprinkled with historical facts throughout the narrative.
A journalistic story has the same elements of a good story or novel except the main characters are real too. In this case both humans and birds. But their stories have the dramas of a great novel. Case in point I highlight the 1st paragraph of chapter 1, Nature’s Winged Warning System.
The last ones.
Those words have been uttered countless times since humans began noting the extinctions of other life forms on earth hundreds of years ago. Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of species have died out since then, some quite possibly without ever having been seen by humans who played a role in their demise. Tens of thousands of additional species today are on watch lists that often signify the first step toward extinction; in the United States alone, more than sixteen thousand species have begun to decline and require intervention.
Drama worthy of an epic novel! This story would never have had the positive outcome for the peregrine falcons or the bald eagles with out passionate leadership of a few ornithologists, biologists, bird watchers, student interns and others anchored at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the early ’70s. Tom Cade from Cornell, and Heinz Meng, a biology professor at the State University of New York campus at New Paltz, began working together on creating steps that would lead to the successful breeding of the falcons. This fertile atmosphere led to critical thinking that helped inseminate many professionals, students and volunteers with the shared vision of developing training methods allowing young birds to learn how to hunt and to finally be released back into the wild. Hacking a technique known for centuries to falconers. This group of men and women took it to the level of giving the chicks a sense that the humans were not around, to the point of feeding them with bird puppets. Two students of Cade’s, Tina Milburn and Jim Weaver also raised juvenile bald eagles. They attached tracking devices and released them from a hack site in the summer of 1976. McGrath goes on to note, on page 87, This was the first time that anyone had reared bald eagle chicks without parent birds in the technique known as hacking. These two young eagles found each other again and mated in 1980. They established a new bald eagle nest in New York. This nest was documented to be the first in decades.
Darryl McGrath’s journal, Flight Paths, is much more than the restoration of the peregrine falcon and the bald eagle. Stories are included about endangered loons and the work to support them. Moss lake in the Adirondack’s up to Gorham Maine and out to Michigan are the areas highlighted. Loons were not only threatened by ingesting lead used as sinkers by countless fishermen but also threatened by invasive e-botulism and mercury poisoning.
Again, McGrath’s journalistic writing is worthy of a novelist of the first order. I include here the first few sentences of Chapter 7, Toxic Summer. I had the good fortune of canoeing and camping along the Allegash in Northern Maine. That three weeks afforded me my first opportunity to listen to the loon’s soothing call.
The sound is a haunting, resonate note that starts out low but strong, and carries across the shadowed water like the summons of the ancient instrument. That first note rises to a crescendo that can be heard a mile away, then drops down to leave behind only the still surface of the lake, for the maker of this otherworldly call is more often heard than seen.
This journal highlights the ongoing work of many like minded bird lovers. Their dedicated planning and attention helped the struggling common loon. One focus of their action educated us, the public, about the vulnerability of their nesting sites on the shorelines of lakes and ponds. Our love affair with our boat, the motor, and speed is a horror story for the nesting loons with the resulting wake/waves washing away their eggs or baby chicks too often.
Flight Paths, expands the view of other birds that feel the heavy hand of our man made killing fields. Owls, thrush, sparrows, ducks, and even my own favorite, my state bird the black-capped chickadee is under pressure in the eastern part of the state. If you are fortunate to walk the beaches of New England over the years you have come across protected nesting areas for terns. ( Not highlighted in this Journal as the focus is New York State’s birds.)
This book lifted my spirit, not just because I love birds and their bird song, but because I was introduced to so many people who had a passionate vision and had the ability to work well with goals of saving a species. I have been blessed in my 73 years of this life, to see a falcon nest year after year on a high ledge of the Monarch Place in Springfield. Mass.gov.com lists that nesting site and others such as the Gills Bridge in Newburyport, the Clock Tower Custom House in Boston, the Fox Hall Dorm at the University of Massachusetts,Lowell, the New Balance old mill clock tower in Lawrence, and the Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Peregrine, Latin meaning traveler. Did these Massachusetts nesting pairs descend and migrate from New York State in the early 1970’s?
I am blessed to have the memory of fishing on a lake in Orange, Lake Matawa. My youngest son was seated in the bow of our canoe. It was late spring. The lake’s surface was glass calm and the scene was roofed by the high sun, the sky shingled blue. Fishing was slow and quiet. Suddenly there was an explosion of water about thirty yards to starboard. A large bald eagle rose from the water with a large fish in the grasp of her talons. Out of the blue, beautiful and most certainly majestic! The better fisherman that day was feathered to be sure. Was that eagle a descendant from the hacking done in New York? In the past twenty plus years I have been thrilled by the company of eagles and loons on our regular walks up at the Quabbin. We are also blessed to have a nesting pair of eagles near our back yard adjacent to the Connecticut River.
Loons are also heard and seen during our summers in Vermont. Wild turkeys are back in force here in the valley, in the Berkshires, the Quabbin and in the neighborhoods of our family homes on Cape Cod. In the 1970’s into the 1980’s I was fortunate to have worked and lived on the Island of Nantucket. One early evening I was surf casting for blue fish on the tide at Surfside beach. Surfside faces to the south, the ocean before me seemed endless. It reached to the horizon from my right to my left. As happens a lot on the Island, the sunsets are the back drop of nature’s masterpieces. This sunset had the obligatory band of clouds a few degrees above the horizon providing an orange to white canvas for the sun’s rays to reflect upon. Against that canvas from the right to the left horizon, I saw thousands of ducks flying just above the horizon. Ducks moving like pepper raining on my mash potatoes. This moving pulsating pepper like band was endless for over an hour. In fact the sun had time to remove it’s rays as it set over the edge of the world and the vision was gone behind night’s curtain. I have heard of migratory routes of birds of awesome dimension but I have never had the opportunity to be an audience to one since. My belief is I don’t travel enough to see them and they still exist in other parts of the world. But in 2017 Mass Audubon published a report that 30% of our breeding birds are already declining and are in need of conservation action. Our climate change projections estimate that 43% of the breeding species we evaluated are highly vulnerable to climate change by the year 2050.
Are our birds related to their canary brethren miners used as an early warning system in their mines? If that is the case then we also have to pay attention to our country’s declining human population. My youngest son was born in 1990. Since that year over one million Americans have been killed by guns. Lead hurt the common loon and it continues to hurt common man! There are more guns in America then there are people.
Okay, too much politicking? Not at all. We need people who have the passion displayed by the biologists of New York in the 1970’s to step forward in our body politic! Leaders with courage to make the sacrifices needed and the compassion to lead with their eyes and ears open!
I sit here this month leaning against my metaphorical lighthouse waiting to see if the ducks are coming to our rescue.
Be in peace and joy!
Thank you for reading.
Mark