September 17, 1987 - Wings on the WaterPage 12A/The Suffolk Times /Sbm mber 1% 1987
Wings on the Water
By PAUL STOUTENBURGH
Our apologies for not writing the
past week or two but we had an op-
portunity to visit some exciting
places to the north I think many of
you readers might be interested in.
Barbara and I were asked to travel
along with a group of people who
wanted to go on a cruise but also
wanted that cruise to be associated
with the natural world plus enjoying
some of the spectacular rugged coasts
of the Maritime Provinces. We'd like
to share some of our experiences with
you.
Being aboard a large ship affords
one the luxury of not having to be
involved with sailing the ship and
therefore gives you a lot of time to
relax and enjoy a new way of life.
Being interested in birds, I naturally
spent much of my time above deck
scanning the horizon for anything
that even remotely looked alive.
Usually our scanning proved worth-
while.
Seabirds, like the birds in your
backyard, become commonplace after
a while. The graceful shearwaters
continually sailed on their long -
pointed wings just above the water.
What a graceful flight these birds
have -- a few quick wing beats and
then a glide that takes them up and
away as they fly over the waves.
Often you'd lose sight of one as it dis-
appeared in the trough of the wave.
This is a true seabird for it spends all
of its life at sea, only touching land
to raise its young. When one thinks
of the storms at sea and the vastness
of it, it's hard to think how these
birds survive. Often we'd see them
resting on the ever - moving surface of
the water, but more often they'd be
reeling effortlessly just above the
waves. These were the greater shear -
waters.
Then we'd see the tiny storm pet-
rels, a bird the size of a small swal-
low, dark in color with a white rump
patch. We saw two species, the Wil-
son's and Leach's. The latter has a
forked tail, the other a square tail.
One doesn't have to go far from our
shores to see both the shearwaters
and petrels for many a fisherman out
of Moriches, Shinnecock or Montauk
can vouch for their presence. What
amazes everyone that sees and
knows them is their ability to navi-
gate in the vast seas that surround
US.
Ken t Islan d Nests
Like most alcids they nest in bur-
rows on islands and land far away
from people. One of the best -known
nesting spots for the Leach's petrel is
off the Maine Coast on Kent Island
where 2500 of these tiny wanderers
of the sea nest. Like many birds, they
come back to the same site year after
year. One banded bird returned to
the same burrow for 20 years. Can
you imagine the tales that little tuft
of feathers could tell? Incubation of
seabirds is usually longer than other
birds and with the petrels it ends in
about 41 days when a single chick is
born. Feeding is done at night to es-
cape the harassment of gulls. It is
thought that they locate their bur-
row by smell, something we don't
usually associate With birds.
Like the shearwaters, petrels be-
long to the order of tube noses. That
is to say they have an interesting ad-
dition to their bill consisting of two
Focus on
Nature
tubes especially designed to get rid
of excess salt they ingest when feed-
ing. Remember there is no fresh
water at sea and so the bird has this
ability to throw off. excess salt
through these tubes, thereby utiliz-
ing the sea water. Pretty ingenious,
I'd say.
Being so tiny, these birds don't
gorge themselves like gulls and other
birds might do. Gulls sometimes fill
their gullets to such a capacity they
must sit on the water until some of
their food is digested before they can
take off. Petrels, on the other hand,
eat minute bits gleaned from the sea
-- tiny fish, crustaceans, marine eggs,
plankton -- and, to us, invisible or-
ganisms the great ocean offers.
The Wilson's petrel often follows
ships as I can well vouch for. When I
was in the service we often had them
following us for days on end. Evi-
dently the propellers would turn up
small bits of sea life that they would
feed on. In the case of the Leach's pet-
rel, they hardly ever practice this fol-
lowing of ships but rather wander
back and forth, seemingly walking
on the ocean, to find their food sup-
ply.
Because these petrels spend almost
their entire life at sea, they have ac-
quired phenomonal navigational
skills. To prove their ability, resear-
chers have taken Leach's petrels
from their nesting site off Maine and
flown them to Britain where they
were released. This is, of course,
clear across the Atlantic Ocean, one
which can often be shrouded in fog
and storm. Nevertheless, at the end
of nine days, the little petrel, a bird
no larger than a swallow, returned
to its nesting burrow.
Long Life at Sea
So well adapted are they and other
seabirds to their life at sea, their life
spans are relatively long, one being
recorded to have lived for 32 years.
There are good reasons for this
longevity, one being that there are
few predators at sea and the other, of
course, being that the sea gives forth
such an abundance of food. The only
real predator is the gull at nesting
time. They, true to their race, often
rob baby chicks before they can es-
cape to sea. As mentioned before, in-
cubation lasts about 41 days and for
four or five weeks the single chick is
fed until it is plump and fat; then the
parents leave the chick. Whether it's
hunger pains or the deep instinct of
the sea, it finally leaves its burrow
to fend for itself. It's well prepared
for the ordeal ahead for it's fat and
feathered. Its trip to the sea can be
far below and often on its flightless
drop to the sea, it will bounce from
one rock to another but most often, it
arrives unhurt. It's during this jour-
ney from the burrow that the gulls
are most destructive and do the most
damage to the colony.
Early settlers who had no electric-
ity, and very poor lighting equip-
ment, often raided the colonies of
seabirds along our coast to collect the
fatted chicks for they were an impor-
tant source of oil. Boiled down the oil
produced an excellent, relatively
clean fuel for lamps. To us that might
Bonaparte Gulls Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh
These small gulls often are seen in our waters during the winter but just
last week we found them in a Nova Scotia harbor.
seem crude and barbaric to invade a
nesting colony and kill the chicks
and boil them for oil but we must re-
member actions like that must be
considered in the time frame they
came from. If you and I had been liv-
ing during those early days, we too
might have read by lamps fueled by
the baby petrel's fat.
Of course, the common herring
gull and black- backed gull we see
along our own shores are also seen
on every trip we take but the further
offshore we are, the more they are
replaced by our true seabirds. Often
close to shore we'd see terns. The
same common tern we have at home.
The only addition was the Arctic tern
we saw off Nova Scotia. This global
traveler each year flies from the Arc-
tic to the Antarctic. Years ago when
Barbara and I were in Iceland we
saw them nesting near the Arctic
Circle at a palce called Rif. They look
very much like our common tern but
on land you can see they have shorter
legs. They also have a rich red bill
right to the tip and a whitish .cheek
patch that contrasts with the light
grey of the throat and breast. Like
home we saw the terns sitting on
fish -net poles waiting for some small
morsel to come into view. The only
difference in the pound nets we saw
was that they were made up of small
mesh to catch sardine -like mackerel.
A Rewarding Trip
We did see the Northern and Red
Phalarope, other small birds of the
sea that occasionally come inland
along our shores. A good place to see
them locally is in Shinnecock Inlet
and Bay. In their winter plumage
they look like sandpipers and when
settled on the water in a group and
from a distance, they take on the ap-
pearance of tiny gulls.
Our exposure to seabirds was
again rewarding on this trip north.
We're now looking to the sea in hopes
of seeing whale spouts for we will be
in some of the richest whaling areas
to be had. Hopefully we'll see the
most endangered, the right whale
and the largest of all living crea-
tures; the blue whale. Both are in our
area and all eyes will be searching
the horizon for their telltale spouts.
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