Magdalena Bay to Boca de Soledad
Imagine being a world traveler, covering 5,000 to 8,000 miles of the coastline of the Americas twice a year. You carry no luggage, no passport, but must avoid many perils for a successful journey, one upon which your very life depends. Putting on fat, finding safe resting areas, and avoiding predation are your primary concerns. As a Whimbrel you are a fourteen-ounce package of hollow bones and cryptic feathers, migrating in the company of the other whistling wind birds: the Marbled Godwit, the Willet, the Long-billed Curlew. Your wing shape is honed long and slender for the long distance flight, and you stay in contact with your avian community through distinctive and musical whistled calls along the way. Your group will continue north with the lengthening days, but many of the company will veer east and nest on the grasslands of the western United States and central Canada while you fly further on. Rising at night to avoid predators and take advantage of more favorable flying conditions you continue with the other Whimbrels flying up the Pacific coast, then crossing Alaska to the north slope where you will nest in the safety of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge, hidden from view in boggy tundra vegetation.
The bird lives we observe today are but a snapshot in the remarkable procession known casually as migration, surely one of the most impressive phenomena in nature. Our day opened with pelagic birds sailing over the ocean waves in search of food, some of them the Pink-Footed Shearwaters far from their natal homes off the coast of Chile. Entering Magdalena Bay we saw a stream of thousands of resident Double-crested Cormorants pass the bow of the ship, testimony to the productivity of the waters here. From our Zodiac tours, a variety of herons and ibis, Scrub Jays and even the elusive Mangrove Warbler were observed, all of which live year-round on this coastline. But evidence of the great passage of migration was on nearly every exposed mudflat as we sailed north along the Hull Canal.
These tall shorebirds as well as plovers, dunlin, yellowlegs and peeps picked and probed at the mudflats, finding the energy that will fuel them far to the north. We think nothing of what lies beneath the sandy surface of these shores. Yet the existence of these birds, whether at rest in the prop roots of red mangrove during the high tide, or standing in the open feeding is a reminder of the grand workings of the seasons of nature. The fertile shorelines of the area are an essential stopover re-fueling site for thousands of northbound avian visitors, testimony to the value of the biosphere preserve protected in this part of Mexico.
Over forty species of birds highlight our day as we traverse from the Pacific Ocean to the protection of the mangrove lagoons edging Magdalena Bay and Hull Canal. We have spent a day admiring birds, as we position ourselves seeking the gray whale, champion of marine mammal migration. In a very different journey, it too will go to the far reaches of Alaska in the weeks of coming spring. The wind birds, the whales and the humans: we are travelers all.
Imagine being a world traveler, covering 5,000 to 8,000 miles of the coastline of the Americas twice a year. You carry no luggage, no passport, but must avoid many perils for a successful journey, one upon which your very life depends. Putting on fat, finding safe resting areas, and avoiding predation are your primary concerns. As a Whimbrel you are a fourteen-ounce package of hollow bones and cryptic feathers, migrating in the company of the other whistling wind birds: the Marbled Godwit, the Willet, the Long-billed Curlew. Your wing shape is honed long and slender for the long distance flight, and you stay in contact with your avian community through distinctive and musical whistled calls along the way. Your group will continue north with the lengthening days, but many of the company will veer east and nest on the grasslands of the western United States and central Canada while you fly further on. Rising at night to avoid predators and take advantage of more favorable flying conditions you continue with the other Whimbrels flying up the Pacific coast, then crossing Alaska to the north slope where you will nest in the safety of the Arctic National Wildlife refuge, hidden from view in boggy tundra vegetation.
The bird lives we observe today are but a snapshot in the remarkable procession known casually as migration, surely one of the most impressive phenomena in nature. Our day opened with pelagic birds sailing over the ocean waves in search of food, some of them the Pink-Footed Shearwaters far from their natal homes off the coast of Chile. Entering Magdalena Bay we saw a stream of thousands of resident Double-crested Cormorants pass the bow of the ship, testimony to the productivity of the waters here. From our Zodiac tours, a variety of herons and ibis, Scrub Jays and even the elusive Mangrove Warbler were observed, all of which live year-round on this coastline. But evidence of the great passage of migration was on nearly every exposed mudflat as we sailed north along the Hull Canal.
These tall shorebirds as well as plovers, dunlin, yellowlegs and peeps picked and probed at the mudflats, finding the energy that will fuel them far to the north. We think nothing of what lies beneath the sandy surface of these shores. Yet the existence of these birds, whether at rest in the prop roots of red mangrove during the high tide, or standing in the open feeding is a reminder of the grand workings of the seasons of nature. The fertile shorelines of the area are an essential stopover re-fueling site for thousands of northbound avian visitors, testimony to the value of the biosphere preserve protected in this part of Mexico.
Over forty species of birds highlight our day as we traverse from the Pacific Ocean to the protection of the mangrove lagoons edging Magdalena Bay and Hull Canal. We have spent a day admiring birds, as we position ourselves seeking the gray whale, champion of marine mammal migration. In a very different journey, it too will go to the far reaches of Alaska in the weeks of coming spring. The wind birds, the whales and the humans: we are travelers all.
