Warbler Day

There’s a day in spring when the warblers, last seen in September, seem to arrive all at once. For me that was Saturday. I took my usual walk down to the pond, where the shadbushes and viburnums have bloomed but the trees are still leafing out, and there they were: yellow warblers, chestnut-sided warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, and a yellowthroat foraging in last year’s cattails.

They flew many hundreds or thousands of miles to get here; the mind boggles at the feat. But what I find myself wondering about, even more than navigation mechanisms or flight metabolism, is the lived experience of migration. What does it feel like to land after crossing the Gulf of Mexico in a single nonstop flight, as this yellow warbler almost certainly did on his 2,800-mile-long sojourn from Colombia, where Maine’s yellow warblers usually winter?

When biologists put route-tracking sensors on yellow warblers in Maine and Wisconsin before they flew south, then recovered the sensors the following spring, they recaptured the birds within fifty feet of where they’d first been tagged. They don’t just return to a region but to a place. What goes through a warbler’s head when he sees home again? What emotional bonds form between birds who meet along the way, or between mates whose relationships survive such vast distances?

These are questions that science only partly illuminates. Few researchers these days seriously deny that birds have subjective experiences or emotions, but the habit remains of not thinking much about them, and—probably more importantly—avian subjectivities are difficult to measure. Science can still inform by observing life histories and behaviors, and placing them within evolutionary and cognitive frameworks, but knowing a warbler’s mind is as much a matter of imagination as research.

Hopefully I’ll write a story about this before too long. In the meantime, I feel comfortable thinking that this guy was happy.

A Whiskered Welcome

… to everyone who subscribed to The Catbird Seat from my Hakai Magazine article on muskrats! And for those who were already here: I recently wrote for Hakai about the very troubling decline of muskrats, a semi-aquatic rodent whose populations have plummeted across much of North America during the past several decades, in many places by 90 percent or more.

Not many people know about this—before the story was assigned to me, I had no idea—and nobody knows why it’s happening, though the loss and fragmentation of their wetland habitats is likely a big part of it. Articles like these are a downer, I know, but there’s a lot in there about muskrat life and ecology that I hope will bring joy. Beavers get all the wetland engineer attention but muskrats deserve plenty too. And becoming aware of the problem is a first step to solving it.

It was also a delight to have the talented Sarah Gilman illustrate the story. She used a photograph (above) I took of Conrad, a muskrat who once lived in my pond, as the model for a painting that depicts the web of life supported by muskrats. You can buy a print from her Etsy store.

Today’s Beautiful Fact

Common green darners—those blue-and-green dragonflies you’re likely seeing right about now if you live in the US or southern Canada—have flown 400 miles or more in the past few months. They'll soon mate and lay eggs, and in late summer their progeny will return south.

I don’t know why insect migrations astound me so much, but they do.

Mother’s Day

Was yesterday, and it made me think of this video I took a few years ago when a fox couple raised their babies in a nearby den. I put up a trail camera next to their meadow and late one evening it recorded the youngsters playing in the twilight, racing back and forth, while mom—who’d been up since dawn hunting for them!—kept watch at a distance, her vigilance making possible these moments of boundless, carefree journey.

Here’s to you, moms.

Book!

If you haven’t already preordered Meet the Neighbors, do so soon and then fill out this form. I’ll send you a signed bookplate illustrated with your choice of art from the book and a postcard. Offer good while supplies last!

A very happy spring to all,

Brandon

Illustration: Mattias Lanas