Tag Archives: plastic pollution

Flyways: a poem for our lost birds by nature poet and new member, Hayley Kolding

Posted on August 25, 2020 by William Freedberg

Flyways

I lived a good life
and was reborn a sparrow.
Towhee-like
I scratched meals 
on the ground
with both feet
but mostly I flew,
threading a needle
through dense thickets,
wheeling in legions
above power lines.
My breast was streaked
white and brown,  
my bones  
an invention of light.
Crossing low alone
in clearings I felt 
I soared: 
then a pane of glass
in what had seemed  
a clearing.
So the reality
I meant only to pass through
contracted
to an instant 
and killed me.

God had mercy
and remade me as
a blackbird. 
In the marsh
it was sweet:
I built my nest,
wove a wet cup
about the cattails.
The walls
were bur-reed and rush
the bed inside
grass dry and soft. And oh
I loved the brood
with eyes tight shut.
For my baby
seed of the field,
damselflies
for my baby. But you
do not grow fat–
I paired again,
my mate distinguished
by song:
a choking,
scraping noise
made with much
apparent effort.

Expiring
without legacy
I begged to still
be winged An ivory
gull A plover
A thrush
And mercy
was endless
As a guillemot
I returned
starving slick
in my own color
as murre in
Alaska I starved
as one penguin
of 40,000
Then God blessed me
at last I was a sea bird
in Australia I floated
in the water
I ate everything
the world gave me
And then I was full
O Heaven Then
I realized my need
could not be met

There is an emotional toll, for birders and nature-lovers, in reading so frequently about the scale of bird declines. Summaries of recent scientific papers, updates on population trends, and calls to action can fail to address the sadness and loss readers feel at more bad news. These reactions are just as real as the ecological damage that provokes them, and scholars increasingly recognize them as “ecological grief.” For all the successes of conservation movements, the declines of many species continues unabated, and each feels like a defeat.

Kolding approaches these defeats from a bird’s perspective— in fact, from the perspective of several birds. She treats an indefinite number of birds killed by human activity as reincarnations of one consciousness, condensing a wide and complex range of conservation threats into a linear, tragic story. In so doing, Kolding’s poem resists the treatment of bird deaths as statistics.

While this poem takes ample (and poetically necessary) liberties in ascribing feelings to birds, its poignance is grounded by accurate natural history details and descriptions of real threats. The last passage (“I ate everything the world gave me/ And then I was full… Then I realized/ my need could not be met”) both describes a complex emotion— the dread of living in an unsurvivable world, or of asking in vain for what you need— while also reflecting the reality of how some seabirds die. Plastic pollution kills seabirds because they eat indigestible plastic debris, which accumulates inside them until they starve with a full stomach. (Plastic in the ocean smells like food to seabirds because it grows the same algae as decomposing fish).

In each of Kolding’s vignettes, she frames a scientist’s perspective on birds with a poet’s sensitivity and imagination. The result is a both refreshing and profoundly sad approach to thinking about conservation losses.

How Do Pelagic Birds Find Fresh Water At Sea?

Posted on August 31, 2018 by William Freedberg

The short answer: they don’t.

Seabirds drink ocean water, and excrete the excess salt that would otherwise leave them dehydrated. Specialized glands, located above the beak and just under the eyes, filter salt ions from seabirds’ bloodstream. The glands also draw out just enough water to dissolve salt into a highly concentrated saline solution, which runs out through the bird’s nostrils.

If you’ve ever seen a gull standing on dry land, with fluid dripping down the tip of its beak… that’s because it’s expelling salt!

These glands can atrophy and stop working if not regularly used. Seabirds at zoos and wildlife rehabilitation clinics actually need to be kept in saltwater—if their glands stop pumping, the birds can experience salt poisoning when re-exposed to ocean water.

 

A Sooty Shearwater exhibits a typical “tubenose” beak structure: elongated nostrils through which salt is excreted. Photo © William Freedberg

 

Terrific Tubenoses

Birds in the family Procellariformes (which includes albatrosses, shearwaters, petrels and storm-petrels) excrete salt through one or two tubes that sit atop their beaks, giving the group the informal name of “tubenoses”. A common misconception among birders is that this tube is an organ used uniquely for excreting salt.

In fact, it’s not clear that these birds process salt any more efficiently than any other seabirds, like pelicans or marine ducks. Tubenoses’ beak structure might help them keep saline excretions from blowing into their eyes in high oceanic winds, but that’s probably not its primary function.

Recent evidence suggests that these tubes help channel airborne scents, contributing to tubenoses’ ability to sniff out plankton blooms on the open ocean. There’s also evidence that the nasal tubes of albatrosses contain pressure-sensing nerves, helping these birds find and navigate the rising air currents they use to stay aloft.

 

Seabirds Under Threat

Seabirds’ exquisitely fine-tuned sense of smell serves them poorly in oceans plagued by plastic pollution. It turns out that plastic, especially when covered in marine algae, smells just like the zooplankton seabirds love to eat.

While some seabirds that frequent Massachusetts waters are doing well (like Wilson’s Storm-Petrels and Cory’s Shearwaters) others are in serious trouble. And unlike some declining groups, pelagic birds’ absence flies largely under the radar of most land-bound naturalists. Among myriad dangers, entanglement in fishing gear, climate volatility, and invasive species drive seabird declines.

Help fight these threats by purchasing American-caught seafood—fishery regulations here favor seabirds more than in much of the world— and by reducing plastic waste.