It’s hard to write upbeat stuff about warblers in clean Midwestern woodlands when you’ve got a blob of sludge the size of Puerto Rico heading for coastal zones along the gulf states and all around Florida.
Those steamy sunny places are where I’ve done some of the best bird watching of my life. I’ve seen Willets and Sanderlings in so many numbers they became junk sightings. I know they’re possible on Lake Michigan beaches but I almost never see them up here.
Down on the warm gulf I’ve seen Frigate Birds, Laughing and Bonaparte’s Gulls, Brown Pelicans flying low in single file, Anhingas, ducks, egrets and herons of all makes and models; ibises that look like they escaped from a zoo but didn’t.
I saw a Purple Gallinule one time—that was something to remember—countless sandpipers, and my favorite Ruddy Turnstones. I’ve taken for granted that there would be beaches with Common Terns, Least Terns, Caspian Terns. The list goes on. And it’s not a life list. It’s the freakin’ opposite.
Yeah, sure, the problems that the gulf oil slick might present for birds and other wildlife are only part of a multi-dimensional story. There’s the human cost. And the fishery story, the possible devastation of an industry. The blob of runaway oil could muck up a big chunk of the natural world if it’s not contained, and the unnatural world, too.
Even though we live up north, we’re watching what’s going on down there. We don’t know how the story’s going to end. Or when. But in the meantime, the spring warbler situation around here seems kind of trivial at the moment, and it’s going to have to play itself out without much commentary from us.
