Inside the Outdoors: Birdlife surprises and enriches us

I’ve never thought of myself as a “bird watcher” in the formal sense. Maybe that’s because, for as long as I can remember, there has been—at least among my generation—an implication in this label that bird watchers were not serious outdoor types. Of course, this is blarney. One of my most respected former acquaintances—a decorated World War II fighter pilot, and avid grouse hunter and dog trainer—studied ornithology as a college career path, and was on intimate terms with both his birding binoculars and his 20-gauge shotgun. Considering how often I sit out on my deck with a pair of binoculars, consult my illustrated bird guide, photograph birds or “listen” for them with a bird song app on the smartphone mounted on my bike when I ride, I, too, must be a birder.

To be fascinated with birds and their lives is not “sissified,” as politically-incorrect as that term may now be. Birds fascinate many of us because they are among the most diverse, abundant, adaptable and beautiful creatures to come down to us through the millennia, departing as they did from the reptilian dinosaur lineage, and—though now so very different in appearance—surviving the last great extinction event 66 million years ago that ended the age of dinosaurs.

For as long as I have been an avid observer of birds, and as many common loons as I have seen and heard on waters both remote and close to home, before this past week there was one behavior that I had never before witnessed.

The behavior that puzzled and, in fact, first alarmed me, looked clearly like that of a bird in distress. It was first seen by my son, who with his family was visiting for the recent holiday. Out on the lake, down the hill that separates the shoreline from our cabin deck, he had watched a loon “being attacked by a muskie,” the only explanation he could think of. Our lake is known for its muskie population, and it’s beyond question that from time to time a muskie will make a meal of a loon chick, a duckling or gosling, perhaps even a very young, just-hatched cygnet—a baby swan. But attack an adult loon?

The possibility seemed, well, impossible, but I followed my son down to the shore, and witnessed the behavior, too. The loon would alternately thrash the water, paddle with one wing, attempt to dive under the water backwards, turn over on its back with its white breast to the sky, then partially disappear. Regaining its floating posture, the loon would momentarily sit quietly, then begin again to thrash the water, roll over on its back and paddle with its wings, giving the appearance—or so it seemed—of trying to fend off an attack.

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After repeating this sequence multiple times, the loon became calm, riding the surface as if it was none the worse for wear. I asked myself what else could have caused this unusual and seemingly frantic behavior. Was the loon injured, and actually unable to dive? Had it been hit by one of the high-speed jet-skis cutting across the lake’s surface? Struck by a fishing boat, a pontoon or a ski boat? There was no telltale red to suggest a bleeding wound, which would have been almost inevitable if it had been struck.

As probably happens too often in these times, I eventually fell back on the advice given by my spouse when I’m puzzled: “You can google it.” Good advice, in this case, for I discovered that in all likelihood this loon was “bathing”—quite violently, at that—as it attempted to rid itself of the tiny parasites that are found in the feathers of almost all birds, including waterfowl.

Loons are not immune to accidents, whether it’s becoming entangled in fishing line, consuming crippling lead fishing tackle or—yes—being hit by a watercraft. But by all appearances this one was just doing what comes naturally; natural, but not so common that it is regularly witnessed!

Eagles nest in one of the tall pines down the shoreline. Sometimes we’ll see them cruising the shore, looking for an easy meal in the form of a fish that might have washed up, or is floating shoreward under the influence of a south wind.

Part of the past week’s entertaining of family included swimming and wading with young grandchildren in the shallows. If at such times you hear an exclamation of “gross!!,” it’s a good bet that something dead is in the water, or has washed up on shore. In this case, it was a nice largemouth bass of about two pounds, sadly a likely victim of hooking mortality. Lying as it was on the neighbor’s beach, it was easy to justify letting Nature take its course, knowing that some scavenger or scavengers would eventually find and recycle it.

Next day, alone in a deck chair with a cup of very early morning coffee, I watched an eagle rise from below the crest of the hill leading down to the beach. Suspecting that this eagle was the beneficiary of the dead bass’s demise, I descended the steps down the hill. Several dock sections from shore was what little remained of the bass. Its bones from head to tail were picked almost clean, leaving the skin and skeleton for the next diners. In this case it was the flies that had detected the scent, and were attracted to the skin and the bits of bass flesh that still clung to its ribs and spine. One sweep of the dock broom, and the remnants were in the water, there to perhaps be cleaned up by crustaceans and other aquatic diners.

We typically picture great blue herons stalking patiently in the shallows of a lake or marsh on long, thin, stilt-like legs, their muscular, curved necks poised to uncoil and direct their long, pointed bill in a strike on an unsuspecting fish or frog. But I’ve often noticed that a heron flying over the lake’s expanse will suddenly execute an aerial spin move, and spiral down to the lake’s surface, where it claims a fish that is floating on the waves. Heron are not waterfowl in the duck, goose, swan or loon sense, so we may not instinctively think of them as capable of resting on the water, afloat. But they do, and—hereabouts, anyway—they are frequent “cruisers” that get a meal the easy way!

This was also the week of my first-of-the-season juvenile ruffed grouse spotting. While on a morning bike ride, we spotted a hen and five half-grown chicks on the shoulder of a county road, birds that scattered into the roadside grass as we rode by. On the return leg of our ride I watched apprehensively for any evidence of one or more of the checks falling victim to a collision with a passing vehicle, and fortunately saw none. Young grouse face a number of hazards on the road to adulthood if they survive the early weeks after hatching, when cold, wet weather and a scarcity of insects can claim them. Hawks are high on that list of hazards, but death by motor vehicle always seems an especially untimely and unnatural end.

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Of course, it’s ironic that we might worry over the welfare of a young ruffed grouse as it tags after its mother along a country road in July, and in a mere three months might pursue and attempt to harvest it with our dog and a shotgun. Though some may dispute it, to me it means that we, too, are predators, but also have the capacity to value a creature for its own sake, beyond its practical and sporting value to us.

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