A Few Photos From My Last Two Trips Out To Sea

I'm heading out in the morning for another three day trip. Usually we leave at night to arrive at our crabbing grounds by early morning, but this trip we are going down to our deepwater lobster gear further away, and we are leaving during the day, which means I get to bird on the way out. I'm pretty excited about that. I'm really hoping to see a Dovekie within Rhode Island state waters for my year list.

Here are a few photos from the last two trips. During the last trip, the temperatures were in the single digits and everything was frozen, including boogers and beardcicles!!



Deck Boss Chris Wroblewski chips at ice on the tanks at sunrise.

A full load of three trawls heading toward the crabbing grounds. Along with the 150 pots is over 3 miles of line connecting the pots within each trawl. Miraculously, it all went back into the ocean without a single snag!

Frozen Bait that had to be chipped out before we put it in the pots. It was real cold. Seriously.

Transit deckhand Bert downstacks a trawl at sunset.

This Northern Gannet came in for a close look at the boat. Gannets are frickin' cool!

It glided down for a shallow dive, and you can see how its tail feathers parted the face of the wave as it slid in.


Sunrises on the sea are almost always amazing.

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind...

As a field biologist I have had the privilege of engaging many birds on a close and personal level while studying them. Last week, while on the boat out at sea in a random event, I got to hold one of my favorite birds in the world, the Dovekie!! What has always amazed me is just how different certain birds behave in the hand, and at times I feel that it gives a certain insight into the bird's demeanor. This kind of talk is difficult as it relies on a certain amount of anthropomorphizing of these wild creatures, but that's how we understand certain things outside of our realm, we compare them to our own realities.

One of my favorite species of bird to encounter in the hand is the Wilson's Warbler. Almost without fail, the Wilson's Warbler is beyond calm as they are removed from the net, and seem to have an amazing patience while being poked, prodded and measured. In their preferred habitat however, they are quick to scold, skulky and difficult to approach.

There seems to be little correlation that I can find as to how birds behave in the hand, and what they do in the wild. While it's true that all birds are relatively high strung when compared to humans, and most birds in the hand behave as they should when a predator has them in their grips, sometimes birds will surprise you and make you question what you thought you knew.

While in the Gulf during the BP Oil Disaster people that I spoke with who had rescued Brown Pelicans time and again reiterated something that I had heard about Pelicans previously. While they are difficult to capture initially, once in the hand, it's as if they know you are there to help. Maybe their calmness is a way of preserving energy and can be explained in purely scientific terms as a means of self preservation, but when you are holding a bird and open to certain emotions and feelings, sometimes it just feels like the bird knows that you aren't there to harm them.

The first Saw-whet Owl that I banded at the Idaho Bird Observatory in 1997 did something that I will never forget. After taking all of its measurements and weighing it, I went out into the dark, Idaho night to release it. As I opened my hands to let it go, it perched on my hand, and then flew onto my shoulder. I walked back over to the banding shed, where they were still processing another owl, while the Saw-whet remained on my shoulder. It stayed there, alert, and constantly moving its head and looking around, and seemingly unafraid of me as I checked it out, eye to eye. As they finished up the other owl and released it, the owl on my shoulder flew off into a nearby Douglas Fir with the other bird and let out a little chirp. It was as if the owl on my shoulder was just waiting for its companion.


Back to the Dovekie. We had finished up working for the night, and had actually already eaten dinner and the other deckhand was out on deck having a cigarette. He said that he turned around, and a Dovekie was sitting on the banding table. He opened the door and yelled in, "Hey Drew, I've got one of your birds out here." I was thinking that maybe a Gull was on the boat, or something, and he said, " no, it's one of your little penguin-like guys," and I ran out there to check it out. Sure enough, Mike, the big, gruff fisherman was cradling a little Dovekie in his arms like a baby. He handed him over to me, and immediately I could sense the bird's distress. It did not want to be held, and it was constantly struggling, and I knew I had to release it as soon as possible. I felt the bird's sternum, and checked its short, sturdy wings for injury, and finding nothing walked over to the rail and opened my hands, and it flew off into the night. I didn't even get a photo!

While handling birds can be amazing, it is a privilege that should be practiced with the utmost caution and only when a very specific, scientifically meaningful and conservation based reason has been established. The experience of holding a cuddly bird in the hand is uniquely amazing, and can be a life changing and eye opening event. In my opinion there is a lot of unnecessary handling of birds that happens simply because people enjoy holding soft, colorful and vibrant little birdies.

The Sky is falling. Why Birds might rain down on the earth.

Some birds are very high strung, some are less hardy, some birds are very mellow and downright friendly. Bird's dispositions are varied and run the spectrum much like human personalities. I have held and studied thousands of different birds of many, many species and families, including lots of Icterids, (blackbirds) and some Starlings. With this in mind, I find it very unlikely that a noise or disturbance could have caused the demise of the Beebe, AR birds alone. I also think it unlikely that these birds were flying over the town in a nocturnal migration at the time of their fatal fall. While many birds migrate in the night, including blackbirds, and I am not an expert in movements of southeastern Icterids in the winter months, but I would guess that for the most part, long distance, night time migrating is over, and that these large flocks are moving from food source to food source, and roosting in large groups. I may be wrong on that, but I don't think so.

What I think people ought to be talking about more is the weather system moving through the area at the time. Although radar maps show that at the exact time of the incident there was not a strong cell over the exact area, a VERY strong front had just passed through, the same one that had spawned over 20 tornados in a rare weather event in the state of Arkansas earlier that day. Tornados very frequently pick items, and organisms up and deposit them elsewhere. I also think it feasible that extreme pressure changes and other potential weather related factors could have combined to cause any number of scenarios in which a large flock of birds could have met their untimely fates. I would not rule out a combination of noise disturbance and weather, nor would I rule out poisoning and weather combinations, or some freaky government experimentation.

It sure is weird that on the same day thousands of fish died nearby in the Arkansas River, and that cities all over United States are experiencing large numbers of birds, mostly blackbirds, dying in similarly inexplicable ways. There is a lot of speculation on the conspiracy chat rooms and websites about the potential causes and meanings of all of this. The theories range from the end of the world and polar shifts to the government's HAARP project causing atmospheric anomalies which combined to kill these birds.

I'm at a loss, and after seeing first hand in the Gulf what our government and media are capable of, I am not about to rule ANYTHING out. It is a strange phenomenon that's for sure, and I hope that all of the attention these incidents are receiving means that there will be widespread scrutiny of the causes and work done to find the causes, whatever they may be. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out, maybe??

I'm headed out to sea, in fact, writing this blog from the wheelhouse of the F.V. Timberwolf, be back on Friday, hope the world is still here, and that the government hasn't HAARPed every living creature by the time I get back, or that 2012 doesn't come early, or...(enter own doomsday scenario here). I was going to write about personal experiences with certain birds, including Dovekies and Green-tailed Towhees to illustrate the differences in bird demeanor, but that'll have to wait until Friday. Have a great couple of days!!