Yesterday, August 1, marked the halfway point in the twelve weeks between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. This point in the calendar is known in some cultures as the “cross-quarter point.” In Celtic cultures it is known as Lughnasa (spelled in various ways, but all pronounced LOO-nuss-uh) and is still celebrated in some parts of the world as a harvest festival.
I’ve written about these cross-quarter points in previous blogs and each August, I feel the seasonal shift more intensely. You might be feeling it, too. It’s the strangely sudden end of our “endless summer” that sems to have just begun. There’s an inkling of autumn in the air. Even if you live in place that’s been extraordinarily hot/wet/dry/burning this summer, there’s no getting around the shortening periods of daylight in the northern hemisphere as the earth tips away from the sun.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, you can sense this change in the lower angle of the sun as it sweeps across the horizon, the yellowing of the Osoberry leaves, the appearance of purple asters and the rust-colored skippers that pollinate them, the soundtrack of the morning missing the calls and songs of the breeding birds.
If are walking the shores of the Salish Sea, you’ll notice the Pigeon Guillemots easing into the end of their breeding season. Many non-breeding birds have left the breeding colony in the shoreline bluffs. After a month of fish deliveries by their dutiful parents, the guillemot chicks have grown into sturdy juveniles. Many of the nesting burrows I monitor each summer as part of the Salish Sea Guillemot Network are empty now. Our four pairs of breeding guillemots have raised several chicks to fledging stage. As of this week, one burrow is empty and we assume-hope that the chicks have fledged and made it to the sea. You can read the eye-witness account of this rarely observed behavior n my book, The Bird with the Flaming Red Feet. I submitted a more concise version of this story to the quarterly bulletin of the Pacific Seabird Group. You can read that here.
Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of spending time among the Pigeon Guillemots with some special guests. Hannah and Erik (avid birders and birding podcasters) had traveled up from Cannon Beach, Oregon, to visit the Pigeon Guillemot colony I monitor near Olympia and to record the second part of their podcast interview with me about the guillemots and my book, The Bird with Flaming Red Feet (the first part is here).
Hannah set up here spotting scope and camera on the beach, aiming them directly at one of the active burrows. We tucked into the driftwood and waited. None of the guillemots were flying in from their more distant foraging grounds. None were holding fish to deliver to their chicks. And then from one minute to the next, everything changed.
First one, then two guillemots flew in and made their classic kerplunk splash landing. Both were holding small, eel-like fish called gunnels in their bills. My heart leapt. There were still chicks in the burrows behind where we sat. If we waited patiently, perhaps they’d fly those fish right over our heads and into the burrow. We sat and sat and sat. And then this (watch below)—the chick at the entrance to its earthen burrow awaiting a meal from its parent. The visit was more a split-second “door dash” delivery of a gunnel by the parent and ingestion by the young bird.
Don’t blink.
And more importantly, take the time to notice and savor all the seasonal changes happening out your back door.
Video of Pigeon Guillemot feeding its young. Courtesy Hannah Buschert of HannahandErikGoBirding