Gratitude for This Bird

There are no holidays celebrating the Marbled Murrelet, unless you count my recent attempt to start “Nest Discovery Day” to honor the date of August 7, 1974, when the nest of this unique seabird was first discovered and documented by scientists. My celebration was just really a “whoohoo!” on social media and silly video involving a friend in a chicken suit, but that’s because I didn’t think to consult anyone at Hallmark, Inc.

The traditional Thanksgiving holiday is mostly about turkey, but the much much smaller and seriously endangered Marbled Murrelet has been the focus of my attention these days and I’m grateful for that. This little wisp of a bird is in the middle of a fight for its life and for the future of the forests where it nests in the Pacific Northwest. The forests murrelets need are described with various terms: old-growth, older, late seral, late successional, mature. The murrelet needs these trees not because of the age or size of the tree itself, but because of the size of the upper branches of these trees. A murrelet doesn’t build a nest but lays its one egg directly on the branch (usually moss covered, but sometimes bare) and so it needs a wide branch where its chicken-sized egg can be safely nestled. And it needs these branches to be at least 50 feet off the ground to keep the nest safe from ground-based predators. Such branches are found in big old trees—coastal redwood, Douglas fir, western hemlock, western red-cedar, Sitka spruce, and other varieties (including the rare occurrence in a big-leaf maple and red alder).

These trees are vanishing and so are the murrelets. Since 2001, we have lost 44% of the murrelet population in Washington state alone. The population continues to decline at the rate of about 4% every year. That might not sound like much, but if you lose 4 of every 100 murrelets every year, it doesn’t take long to get to zero. Zero is not acceptable. This is why, nearly 20 years since I first met the Marbled Murrelet in a photo on the Internet (teehee), 12 years since my book, Rare Bird: Pursuing the Mystery of the Marbled Murrelet was published, and 5 years since it was reissued in paperback…I am still talking about this bird.

I am not talking about Marbled Murrelets to sell copies of Rare Bird. I am talking about this bird because I cannot bear the thought of “losing my marbled”—of having this bird vanish from our oceans and coastal forests. By talking about the Marbled Murrelet I mean I am speaking out for it—to forest management agencies, conservation organizations, library patrons, bookshop audiences, nature-writing workshop attendees, interested friends, and tolerant family members who know I have a difficult time stopping once I start talking about this crazy little bird.

I am grateful to everyone who listens and to everyone who talks about this bird themselves. The most difficult conversations being had right now are the ones between the many people who manage the forests where the murrelet nests, the people who must generate revenue by logging these forests, and those intent on protecting these forest for murrelets. Not that opinions break cleanly along these lines. The subject of how to manage murrelets makes for complex, messy, fraught, long, interrupted, and frustrating conversations. I have been part of many of these conversations. Everyone feels trapped between a rock and hard place, facing a binary choice between saving the murrelets from extinction (possibly in our lifetime) or merely slowing down the decline to a rate we define as tolerable—the rate that will keep our children or grandchildren from cursing us.

I am grateful for the Marbled Murrelet itself for luring me to the west coast, into the deep forests where it nests and into these conversations about others about biodiversity, old-growth ecosystems, the Endangered Species Act, why birds matter, and the subtle and serious impacts of climate change on murrelets and our forest. The murrelet has given me the opportunity to think long and hard about my role as a steward and advocate, about how to walk the talk, how to resist “slacktivism” and eco-burnout, and how to let my heart go “zing” whenever I see this rare bird in the wild or in a photograph.

Who ever you are and how ever long your “life list,” let a bird into your heart. Let it live there a while. Soon it will let you know what it needs from you to survive. And what it needs is likely to be exactly what we need to survive. Listen. And give thanks.

I Heart Marbled Murrelets

Conservationists work hard trying to answer really big questions, such as why birds matter. I have read many answers and tried to formulate one of my own, about why the marbled murrelet matters. But the answers and explanations always seem to come up short. Why is this? Why can we not succinctly and successfully express in words why birds matter? Because our answers are actually to the question, "why do birds matter to me?"

I may have found an explanation of this problem in a book published in 1960--The Forest and the Sea, by Marston Bates (1906-1974), an eminent zoologist, mosquito authority, and professor at University of Michigan

Though the science is a bit outdated, Marston Bates' tackling of the big questions isn't. In the first few pages, he writes of his frustration with a question he no doubt was asked frequently about mosquitoes, "What good is it?"

"I have never learned how to deal with this question. I am left appalled by the point of view that makes it possible...The question is left over from the Middle Ages; from a small, cozy universe in which everything had a purpose in relation to man. The question comes down form the days before Copernicus' theories removed the earth from the center of the solar system, before Newton provided a mechanism for the movements of the starts, before Hutton discovered the immensity of past time, before Darwin's ideas put man into perspective with the rest of the living world.

"Faced with astronomical space and geological time, faced with the immense diversity of living forms, how can who ask one particular kind of butterfly, 'What good is it?'"

"Often my reaction is to ask in turn, 'What good are you?'"

Which is essentially  the same as Why do you matter?

Which is a really big question, which does not have an answer.

But here we are, with each other, with the marbled murrelets, with all the mysteries of the natural world. While understanding each living thing matters ecologically, it does not really matter existentially. What matters is that we--the living things with the capacity to understand, protect, restore, and love other living things--use these gifts daily.

Why Birds Really Matter

  Last weekend at the National Audubon Convention it was very clear that birds mattered. In fact, among the 400+ convention attendees (Audubon members, staff, speakers from across the country), it was also very clear that bird conservation mattered a lot. In fact, after the multi-day convention, it seemed apparent that birds and bird conservation was the key--if not the key--to  a fulfilling personal life, strong communities, sustainable agriculture, pure water, clean air, ecosystem resilience, and a healthy planet. 

   It seems foolish to disagree.  Audubon has done a laudable job using the best available science to prove these statements are true and not hypotheses or slogans. 

   Expressing why exactly a particular bird, a population of birds, or a species of birds matter is a challenge--one greater than I had imagined. 

Read dozens of short answers in Audubon's "Why Do Birds Matter?"

  These answers are all interesting, many of them compelling, but none really satisfying. This might be a good thing. It might mean that, ultimately, words are inadequate for describing our feelings about birds precisely because those feelings are beyond words. Yet, being a writer, I must try.

   When I ask myself why birds matter, I narrow down the question to why my favorite bird--the marbled murrelet--matters to me. 

    Given the problems in the world, it is difficult to explain why this relatively little-known bird really matters to anyone on  a practical level:  This dove-sized seabird of the Pacific coast is not a source of food for humans, it is not a major source of food for another animal species, it does not (as far as I know) have symbiotic relationship with another animal or plan. It is not a keystone species in the ocean where it spends 95% of its time nor in the old-growth forest where it nests briefly in summer. 

A marbled murrelet chick ready to fledge.

   We may never get an answer to these questions as we struggle to articulate why birds matter.

   The quick answer is that the marbled murrelet matters because it is an "indicator species"-- that is, its presence, abundance, or absence indicates the health of an ecosystems. Changes in its population signal changes in biological conditions of the entire marine and old-growth coastal forest ecosystems. 

   So the marbled murrelet is a useful tool? That seems unfair and disrespectful. 

   To be sure, the crashing murrelet populations (nearly 30% between 2001-2011) indicate that the old-growth forests and the marine waters where the murrelets forage are in serious trouble.  Other birds with declining populations (which is most of them these days) also indicate fraying ecosystems. But this is not why these birds matter. 

   We cannot convincingly argue that, in the face of human suffering and misery, that birds are aesthetically pleasing and enhance the beauty of the natural world.

   So birds are decorations for us to enjoy? 

   How about birds are important because they are part of the fabric of the planet's ecosystems? This is true, just as it is true that every thread in a sweater is part of that sweater. Just as is it true that no one knows just how many threads you can pull and remove before the sweater is no longer a sweater but a  pile of threads that are not entwined, cannot reassemble themselves into any kind of functioning bit of clothing. When does the sweater become a rag? When does an ecosystem become a park, a clearcut, a zoo, and extirpation, a complete loss?    

Here is why birds matter to me: they make me feel good.

    But why?

    Because they make me feel connected--to the bird itself, to its habitat, to the rest of the living planet. The dove-sized marbled murrelet connects me to the vast Pacific Ocean where it swims. It connects me to the small  herring, salmon, squid it eats. It brings me the salty air and fog it flies through, the coastal bluffs it flies over, and open meadows it crosses. My ears ring with its plaintive call. The murrelet connects me to the cathedral-like forests of trees I will never climb. It connects me to the old-growth forest--its trees, mosses, lichen, ferns, owls, woodpeckers, martens, fishers, flying squirrels, voles, crows, and salamanders.  These eight-ounce masterpieces of bone and feather connect me to the people I have met who love and study these birds, who work hard to protect them, who care about the forests and the oceans. 

   Feeling connected to them makes us feel good. (Just look how much we spend on staying connected to our fellow human beings through direct contact and conversations, post cards, phone calls, e-mails, text messages, blogs, posts, feeds, and tweets!) 

    We are social animals. We are social. We are animals. Feeling connected is important. Feeling connected helps us act wisely. It helps us do good work for the earth. It helps us take care of living things. 

   Please, pick a bird--any bird. 

   Like it.

   Read about it.

   Follow it.

   Love it.

   Connect.