I was glad-handing a free-lance writer around, showing him all the natural history hotspots and wonders of Cape May. First stop: Sunset Beach.
There was a Merlin sitting on a telephone pole. Northern Gannets toeing the horizon line between heaven and earth. Red-throated Loons bobbing about in Delaware Bay. Sanderling on the beach. A pod of Black Scoter off the Concrete Ship. Red-breasted Mergansers diving beyond the surf.
Then we got in the car and went somewhere else to be wowed by more stuff.
Then it hit me. All the things we’d just seen were birds I spent tens of thousands of dollars to see last summer. I’ve been working on a book project about the Arctic. Wife Linda and I traveled pretty extensively (and expensively)–from Baffin Island (where the Vikings touched down about 1,000 years ago) west to St. Lawrence Island (where North America’s first arrivals probably stopped to raise a generation or two before moving on to found civilizations in Eastern North America, Mexico, and Peru about 14,000 years ago).
It cost me about twenty bucks in gas to drive from my home to Cape May and back again to see the very same birds. Cape May residents can do it even cheaper.
What’s my point? It is that one of the really nice things about living in Cape May is that you don’t have to travel very far to see the rest of the world. In terms of birds, many of the denizens of the world ultimately will come to you.
The Red-throated Loon? Spends about four months in the Arctic, bobbing around small tundra ponds. Most of its life is spent in coastal waters. Very shortly, Delaware Bay will host thousands of loons as they gather in preparation for their journey north.
The Merlin? Merlins breed in the taiga. Closest breeding Merlins are found (sometimes) in the Adirondacks. They’re pretty common in the northern forests and live all the way out onto the tree-poor tundra. In fall, they are here by the hundreds. In winter, you’ll find them here and there.
How about Sanderling? The quintessential sandpiper of the sandy beach. The birds are high arctic breeders. They go as far north as you can go before you hit glacier and nest. “As far north as you can go” means most do not even breed on the North American continent proper. They go all the way up to Baffin and Ellesmere Island.
Where their close cousin, the Red Knot, breeds.
They are here almost all year. The only time you won’t find them here is from about early June to mid-July. That’s when they are breeding. The balance of the year they are here.
We didn’t see any Brant on Sunset Beach. We had to wait until we got to our next stop, Cape May Harbor. There we saw Brant, small marine geese whose honked call is more purr than bugle. We saw Long-tailed Ducks, Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead and Common Goldeneye, too.
All these birds are northern birds. All breed in the taiga forest region or north into the arctic. All were there for anybody to see for the price of looking. They’re here every winter. They are residents (just like you) or long-term visitors.
They are pretty much taken for granted. Which is a shame because they’ve gone to a lot of effort to get here. Made a pretty big carbon footprint to leave the Arctic and spend the winter for our viewing pleasure.
So before they leave, take a moment. Go to a vantage point near you. Cast your eyes upon the water and say “howyadoin” to a bunch of neat birds.
Or you can fly to Pond Inlet, Nunavut, Canada and hire a local hunter to snow machine you out to the edge of the ice pack and see these same birds. But it’s going to be a lot colder. And you’re going to have to wait until mid-June for the birds to arrive.
Up to you.