Your Mother’s Birthday
I went down to St. Marks NWR this morning to do my end-of-season Duck Survey. A waxing first quarter moon had set early in the night and the Milky Way was glowing bright in the Southern sky as I made my way out to the far end of Stony Bayou. I listened to Great Horned and Barred Owls and watched a bright sparking meteor as I waited for dawn.
My survey got started with a single Wood Duck at first light. By the time I finished, five hours later, I had a total of 183 ducks of seven species. This is about half the number that I expect in March. They were mostly Bufflehead and Blue-winged Teal, but included Green-winged Teal, Redheads, a single Common Goldeneye and two pairs of Mallards.
The last of the ducks are heading North and Winter is officially ending. The Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring is this Saturday.
There are cultural points in the year like Christmas, Hanukkah, April 15th and your mother’s birthday. These are important dates. Yet there are also the eternal markers of change: the solstices and equinoxes. They are the annual points in the year that mark our orbital and seasonal progress and they cannot be renegotiated, delayed or arbitrarily set as Monday Holidays.
Although the Vernal Equinox technically marks the first day of Spring, down here along the Gulf coast we are early adopters and Spring is already under way.
Wildflowers have started blooming; Rain Lily, Dewberry, Dwarf Blueberry, Spiderwort and White Waterlily. Thistles are coming out along Lighthouse Road and will provide waystations for newly-arrived Ruby-throated Hummingbirds later this month.
Deciduous trees and shrubs have woken from their brief slumber. New leaves, buds and flowers are attracting insects and providing food for song birds, many of which time their Northbound migration to coincide with leaf out.
We’re at an inflection point in Spring migration. The first trickles of returning Summer breeders and transiting migrants have appeared, but most of the migrants are yet to come.
Spring migration is a massive surge of billions of birds moving to their breeding grounds. Some wintered here in the South, but three and a half billion of these birds spent the winter in Central or South America. A few long-jumpers, like Pectoral Sandpiper, will be moving from the pampas of Argentina to the Canadian Arctic.
Measured in frequent flyer miles, this is a bonanza.
Overall, because of mortality during Fall migration and over the Winter months, fewer birds will be heading North than came South. However, the flood of returning migrants that we see will be boosted by hundreds of millions of birds that jumped across the Atlantic to South America during Fall migration and will be returning on an elliptical path that brings them over the Gulf of Mexico. Over ten million migrants may pass over or through St. Marks during Spring migration. All of these birds – warblers, tanagers, orioles, buntings and grosbeaks – will be in brilliant breeding plumage.
Strap in tight and cancel all extraneous social obligations. The peak of avian movement happens over the next seven weeks. This is a recurring annual miracle. However, each iteration is a distinct event. Spring migration 2021 will only happen once. Your life will be the poorer if you miss this.
Come down to the refuge for the Vernal Equinox and a little Spring birding on Saturday. You have plenty of time to plan your visit to St. Marks for the Summer Solstice on June 20th and it would be a really good idea if you didn’t forget your mother’s birthday this year.