by Joshua Rose
The cliff swallow is actually a relatively recent arrival to Massachusetts; the species was unknown here before approximately 1800. It increased rapidly from there, mostly due to agricultural changes to our landscape, and is thought to have peaked around 1870. Cliff swallows’ nests are hollow globes of dried mud which the birds stick to vertical surfaces; these globes adhered nicely to not only natural cliffs, but also to many widely used 19th-century building materials. As we entered the 20th century, however, we began using different materials, and coatings of paint, to which the swallows’ nests could not adhere.
by David Spector
Naturalists are often asked “W” questions: What is this organism? Where is it found? When am I likely to see it? And, most interesting and most difficult to answer, why? Why-questions provoke answers that address natural processes, often multiple, complicated, and incompletely understood processes. Full answers to why-questions include acknowledgment of uncertainty.
By Scott Merzbach
Life-threatening dangers are posed any time a migratory bird approaches a building, unaware that it could be on course to strike a window. “They just see a reflection of vegetation or of the sky,” says Randy Dettmers, migratory bird biologist at U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Hadley, who estimates that 20 to 30 birds annually can be fatally injured at any one- or two-story building.
Birdwatchers make lists. We list bird species seen by day, week, year, or lifetime. We list birds seen in a yard, town, state, or continent. We compete and get a special thrill from finding a stray from far away.
By Joshua Rose
A few months ago, headlines flared that Peter Kaestner had seen his 10,000th bird species. This could have been anticlimactic, as Kaestner has been renowned for years among birders for traveling worldwide and seeing more species than anyone.
However, the feat gained drama just before Kaestner’s milestone when Jason Mann, so non-renowned that few birders had ever heard of him, suddenly revealed that he, too, was approaching 10,000 species seen, and even claimed to have reached the milestone mere hours before Kaestner did. Mann ultimately was found to have padded his list a bit and withdrew his claim, but for a while, the title of world’s top birder unexpectedly became a competition.
By Meghadeepa Maity
In a past column, I wrote of “a Bengali poem that I‘ve loved forever” which references several species of wildlife and plants, and “stands out for the unsaid depth of emotion — it speaks of nostalgia, grief and homesickness.” আবার আসি ব ফি রে (“Abar Ashibo Phirey”) was written in 1934 by Jibanananda Das (he/him) and published posthumously in 1957. I’d recited the poem at a bird walk once, and after requests from several attendees, I determined that a translation was necessary.
By Joshua Rose
Maybe you looked into a bird’s nest and saw one egg that was a different size and color than the rest. Or you noticed a chick that was larger, louder, and more aggressive than the others. Maybe you saw a parent bird feeding a chick larger than itself, and different in color and shape. What you saw was a brood parasite, an animal that fools animals of other species into caring for its offspring, usually at the expense of the host species’ own young.
By Lee Halasz and Kari Blood
This winter has been one of the warmest on record in Massachusetts, and around the nation, extreme weather events are in the headlines on a regular basis. Scientists agree that our rapidly warming planet is now feeling the effects of the climate crisis. However, climate change is not the only crisis our planet faces. For decades, scientists and conservation groups have also been raising the alarm about the “biodiversity crisis,” in which wildlife populations are plummeting. Fortunately, one solution to addressing these challenges may lie in a surprising place: the farmlands that help define the landscape of the Connecticut River Valley.
By Meghadeepa Maity
When I look at the news, I’m far more likely to see a Black victim of police brutality than to see a Black birder like Dexter Patterson (a.k.a. The Wisco Birder) singing and laughing in the woods. Today’s mainstream media have shown a necessary, heightened presence of minorities, but it’s a far cry from the kind of visibility we need. The disabled, queer/trans folks, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color), immigrants and the poor are so often and so exclusively represented in our suffering, that after the latest targeted mass shooting has gone off air, we can just cease to exist in the public memory. We deserve to be recognized and amplified in our everyday joy, dignity and successes, rather than only in light of a catastrophe.
By David Spector
For many years my research brought me outside in May and June about an hour before sunrise to hear and record yellow warblers. Males in breeding season sang intensively for a half-hour or so, and, depending on their mating status, sang in a somewhat different style and less intensively well into the morning. Females often responded to male song with “chip” notes, and both sexes used a variety of short calls. Each vocalizing bird revealed its location, and often much more information — its species, its sex, its individual identity, its mating status, its willingness to fight if approached by another of the same species and sex, and perhaps more about its behavioral state. Such information is valuable, possibly affecting the bird’s survival. Why share it? How might sharing this information benefit the individual animal? I suggest three answers to these questions: leakage, manipulation and probing.
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
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