"Murmuration of Swallows"

Sydney M. Williams

Essay from Essex

“Murmuration of Swallows”

October 17, 2017

“True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.”

                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

                                                                                                Richard III, Act 5, Scene 2 – 1592

They began to arrive a few minutes before dusk – a few singly, many in small groups, groups that become larger as the sun sank toward the horizon. Soon the darkening sky was laden with tens of thousands of (mostly) tree swallows that swept and dove in unison, first in one direction, then in another – their sonar infallible, as they flew inches apart at speeds of up to forty miles per hour. Then, they circled and twirled earthward, at ever increasing speeds, in tornado-like formation, to the grasses on Goose Island, just off the coast of Old Lyme, in the Connecticut River.

What we witnessed was one of nature’s magical moments. Ornithologists know why swallows stop to feed – to bulk up for long migrations south. They understand why they congregate in ‘flights.’ There is safety in numbers, against peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks and other predators. Naturalists know that, because of dense stands of Phragmites, Goose Island is relatively predator free. They also realize that the Connecticut River’s estuary offers, for feeding purposes, a high-density population of crepuscular insects. But scientists don’t know how their sonar works – what allows them fly in close formation and to simultaneously change direction without colliding.

Around the world there are more than eighty types of swallows, with Africa carrying the largest variety. They are common throughout North America, with tree, barn, cave, cliff and bank among the best known. They, along with martins, belong to the family of Passerine birds, which are known for aerial feeding.

Murmuration describes the phenomenon of birds flying in close formation, swooping first one way and then another, in perfect synchronization. The word derives from Middle English, the act of murmuring – the utterance of low, continuous sounds, or complaining noises. Listening carefully, as we watched them gather and circle before their descent, the noise was detectable. Swallows are not alone in their ability to fly in synchronized fashion. Starlings, often seen as one of nature’s least loved birds, are known for their aerial, spectaculars – again, mostly to avoid predators, like falcons or hawks. It is difficult for a bird of prey to single out an individual starling or swallow, when the group is moving in unison, inches apart. Keep in mind, as well, flocking birds are not idle. To borrow a phrase, they eat on the fly. They roost to rest. Scientists have determined that individual starlings are able to consistently coordinate with their seven nearest neighbors, yet how hundreds collectively correlate such movements, while flying wingtip-to-wingtip, remains a mystery.

The Connecticut River estuary is not the only place where swallows perform these acrobatics. They can be seen in the fall in England, before flying 3500 miles to South Africa. Floridians see them in the spring, before they make their way north. Like most living things, swallows are creatures of habit. For many years, cliff swallows summered at the Mission in San Juan Capistrano, California, building nests in the old, stone church. For eighty years, their return had been celebrated on March 19. Then, in the 1990s, when workers removed their nests during restoration of the Mission, they were forced to find alternative accommodations, including a near-by housing project. Now, they are being wooed back, with fake nests and the playing of recorded vocalizations. This past spring a few mud nests began to appear. The celebration will continue.

The gathering – ours that is, not the swallows – was at a beautiful home, conveniently situated overlooking Goose Island, a few hundred yards offshore – all in the estuary of the Connecticut River – and no more than a couple of miles from where Roger Tory Peterson lived for over forty years. (In fact, the event was a fund-raiser for the Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center, a Chapter of the Connecticut Audubon Society.)  Kayakers and other boaters could be seen positioning themselves, as they do each night when swallows descend to this small island, which they do for about a week – stuffing their bodies and conserving their strength – before continuing the long flight south. A high school string quartet played softly in the back ground, the music drifted through the evening air, as friends chatted, sipped wine and munched on passed hors d’oeuvres. All of us marveled at what we had witnessed. How lucky, I thought, we live in this place.

It is the job of scientists to seek answers. There is much for them to still learn; for example, nerve systems that allow birds their remarkable sonar. But for the rest of us, the beauty is in the mystery that remains unexplained – the fascination of watching, without comprehending, the murmuration of swallows. Nature is humbling. How does something we cannot explain – cannot even fathom – function? In this natural world with its beauty and complexities, there is room for both the artist and the scientist, each of whom, in their own way, seeks understanding. 

"Nature - Its Miracles and Mysteries"

Sydney M. Williams

Essay from Essex

“Nature – Its Miracles and Mysteries”

July 8, 2017

“All the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each as profound as any.”

                                                                                                Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

                                                                                                Proto-Leaf (Leaves of Grass), 1860-61

Being neither a doctor nor a scientist, I have the advantage of not dwelling on the mechanics of life; instead, I am awed by its mysteries and the miracles that produced what I behold.

Among the most cherished miracles and mysteries of fatherhood is the introduction to one’s new-born child – the marveling of its perfect toes (with beautifully formed nails) to the wisps of hair that sprout from its head. How did it come to be? How did it grow in the womb of my wife from an egg into this child I hold? How did it know when to leave the sanctity of that dark and comfortable place and enter the world, to be held at the breast of its mother? It is both a mystery and a miracle.

The Scottish philosopher and empiricist David Hume once defined a miracle as a “violation of the laws of nature.” But 1,300 years earlier St. Augustine wrote “miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature.” I think St. Augustine got it right – experience and knowledge alone are not requirements for belief. I think of a miracle as our interpretation of an observation we do not understand – an explanation for an event that cannot be explained rationally – a mystery enshrouded in faith.

Walking the paths through the fields and woods that surround our home at Essex Meadows, I marvel at the interdependence of nature – of the fact that all forms of life – animals, birds and fish – survive by consuming something that lives, or has lived and died. One ponders how life came to be. There is a chicken and egg aspect that is beyond comprehension (or, at least, beyond mine) – as to which came first? Scientists have theories, but I am tempted to prefer the wonder of the unknown, to the drudgery of the lab and the denseness of dusty texts. These are questions as well to put to philosophers, poets and artists, as to doctors, scientists and technicians. In breaking the analysis down into rigid, mechanized component parts, do we not lose something of its mystery?  Will discovery destroy imagination?

We talk of perfection in nature. We think of the “best-in-show” at the Westminster Kennel Club, a Triple Crown winner, the most perfect rooster, goat, sheep, cow at country fairs, or largest pumpkin or biggest tomato. But perfection, like Stuart Little’s search for his beautiful bird Margalo, is a quest for castles in the air[1]. All nature, we should never forget, is a work in progress. It is continuous. It is never finished. We, and all life around us, have evolved and will continue to do so.

All species adapt to changing environments, or they die. The evolutionary process for those whose lives are long, like man, is slow. A hundred years might produce three generations, hardly enough time to adapt if climate change comes quickly. On the other hand, the Mayfly, which has a life span of 24 hours, would produce, in that same 100 years, about 50,000 generations, making them better able and more likely to adjust to evolving conditions[2].

Could we, I sometimes wonder as I meander under trees and across fields, with my field glasses and camera and in my shorts, sneakers and baseball hat, survive in the wild? When we get hungry, we go to the supermarket. Fish, birds and animals must forage, or hunt and kill. When we are cold, we pull on a sweater. Birds that have stayed behind ruffle their feathers. Frogs bury themselves in the silt of streams and ponds beneath the ice. Many animals hibernate through cold, winter nights. When we want to go somewhere, we get in our cars, trains or buses. Our fellow creatures must fly, swim, walk or slither. They, of necessity, are self-reliant. We change our clothes daily, something a cat – a stickler for cleanliness – must think frivolous. Most animals die wrapped in what they were born.

Nature is violent, but not in the way civilized man is. There are emotions we share: hunger, fear, surprise and, I suspect, loyalty and trust. Other emotions, such as lust, greed, hate, anger and disgust – emotions responsible for senseless violence – are peculiar to man, not to the rabbits, turtles and birds I see on my daily walks. I doubt there are any Hitler’s or Stalin’s among the squirrels I watch leaping from branch to branch. Leopards and Baboons are famous as mortal enemies, but I suspect it is not hatred that drives their need to battle, but fear and surprise. Neither employs experts, as do we, in places like the Pentagon or Znamenka 19 in Moscow, to map campaigns and plot the annihilation of enemies.

Most violence in nature is reserved for killing for food. Whether vegetarian or carnivorous, all creatures survive by eating something that is alive, or was. We may think it cruel on the unsuspecting frog to become breakfast for a black snake, but would we rather the snake starved? After all, the frog may have dined on a daddy longleg the night before, the mother of whom was surely upset. And the snake, besides devouring moles we detest, provides fare for owls and hawks. This symbiosis in nature is one of its mysteries. How did it come to be? Why does it work so well? Its complexity challenges today’s most brilliant scientists. It is a system today’s most sophisticated computer programmers could not reconstruct.  This interdependency of species is one of life’s miracles; its origin, a mystery.

Perhaps this is what is meant by taking time to “smell the roses,” to appreciate nature around us. It’s not necessary to understand every technical nuance, to be able to provide the Latin name for every plant or animal, to deconstruct the scientific explanation as to why trees come alive in spring, or to question why beavers smack their tails when danger approaches. But it is important to be an observer, to appreciate nature in action – be it a honey bee gathering nectar, a chipmunk having lunch, a clutch of turtle eggs, or turkeys gathering their chicks as they scramble for cover. To see nature is to witness miracles. Best of all, it is a show without alpha or omega, and it is free. As Thomas Wolfe wrote, “Nature is the one place where miracles not only happen, but they happen all the time.”

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[1] A favorite line from E.B. White: When asked to describe Margalo, Stuart replied, “She comes from fields once tall with wheat; from pastures deep in fern and thistle; she comes from vales of meadowsweet, and she loves to whistle.”

[2] Using the same formula, and assuming some semblance of mathematical accuracy, to achieve the same number of generations would take man more than 1,000,000 years – back to a time when our ancestors resided in Africa, when we bore marked differences to how we have evolved.

"Mud River Swamp"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

                                                                                                                                        May 24, 2017

Essays from Essex

“Mud River Swamp”

“Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields,

not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.”

                                                                                                Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

                                                                                                “Walking,” a lecture, 1851

In “The Sound of Music,” Julie Andrews sings, “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” Just as truthfully, but less poetically, one could say that from Mud River Swamp, comes the cacophony of an untutored symphony – “In all swamps, the hum of mosquitoes drowns this modern hum of society,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in his Journal. Like all swamps, the Mud River Swamp abounds with nature in its roughly twenty acres. The evensong of peepers is a harbinger of spring. Every so often, during late winter nights, come the howl of coyotes and the hoots of the Eastern Screech Owl. On spring mornings, we wake to the song of the Catbird. But it is during spring, summer and early fall days when the swamp comes audibly alive. (It is at night when beavers build, skunks hunt and predators prey, but they do so discreetly.) With daylight comes the voices of birds, insects and frogs, comprising an undisciplined, but intoxicating, orchestra. Flutes and Clarinets compete with Violins and Cellos, only to be interrupted by French Horns and the clash of Cymbals. Combined, they produce a sound that would make Beethoven wince; but, to one who is musically challenged, there is magic in the variety of sounds.

The word “swamp” is often spoken with a sneer. We think of the one in Washington that needs draining, or the demeaning term “swamp Yankees,” which refers to tight-fisted New Englanders. For others, the word conjures thoughts of slime, unpleasant smells, places difficult to penetrate and land that has no commercial value. But it was from swamps that life sprang. Water represents life’s genesis. From the Old Testament, we learn of the importance of the Tigris-Euphrates wetlands, and of the Fertile Crescent, which curves north and west from the Persian Gulf, through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, to the Nile Valley.  It was from this part of the world that human history was first recorded.

Thoreau, an admirer of swamps, wrote: “I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village.” He added, “…hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.” In his most famous work, Walden, he acknowledges swamps’ critical role in nature mankind’s dependence: “Without the wetland, the world would fall apart. The wetland feeds and holds together the skeleton of the body of nature.”

“A swamp,” noted David Carroll in his 1999 book, Swampwalker’s Journal, “is a wetland forest of tall trees, living or dead, standing in still-water pools or in drifting floods of water, or rising from seasonally saturated earth.” All swamps, whether coastal or inland, have in common sufficient water and poor drainage. We see many dead trees in swamps – a boon for woodpeckers whose homes bedeck their trunks. They are fit for insects, like ants, that feed on the tissues that connect roots to the crown. It is the oxygen-depleted water of swamps that causes the roots of most trees to die. An exception is the Alder. In his book, The Secret Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben noted this phenomenon: “Their secret [Alders] is a system of air ducts inside their roots. These [ducts] transport oxygen to the tiniest tips, a bit like divers who are connected to the surface via a breathing tube.” Swamps are transition areas that provide natural and valuable ecological services, like flood control, water purification and carbon storage; they serve as wildlife habitats. Coastal swamps are spawning areas for fish. The largest swamp in the world is the Pantanal floodplain of the Amazon River, which lies mostly in Brazil, but also reaches into Bolivia and Paraguay. It encompasses 70,000 square miles, roughly the size of North Dakota. In the United States, the Atchafalaya Swamp, at the lower end of the Mississippi, is the U.S.’s largest swamp. Most famous of our swamps is the Everglades, a six thousand square mile system that comprises the slow-flowing “River of Grass,” which has its origin in the Kissimmee River near Orlando and empties into the Straits of Florida, which connect the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean.

My swamp, to inaccurately use the possessive, is the Mud River Swamp.[1] It consists of about twenty acres, located within Essex Meadows’ one hundred acres. The Mud River is no more than a trickle when it descends from the Preserve, a thousand-acre property of protected forest that abuts Essex Meadows. The twenty-foot drop over a hundred-feet is grandiloquently called a cascade. The stream then relaxes, as it gently meanders and widens out, among Willows and Alders, Skunk Cabbage and mosses that comprise the Mud River Swamp.

The Mud River heads east and then north where it intersects with the Fall River, about two miles away. The Fall River wends east another mile or so, until it enters the Connecticut at North Cove in Essex. At its headwaters, I watch the brook slip over the rocks in the cascade, knowing that its waters will mix with those of the Connecticut, a river that runs four-hundred miles from the Canadian border. I think of the beavers that build their dams, to give themselves a home, and I wonder at the fish that swim in it. I rejoice in the birds whose songs mingle with the sound of trickling waters and the deer that drink from them, and I am thankful for the otters and muskrats that play along their banks. 

Water is where life began. Bill Nye, the science guy, says that in our search for alien life, “the presence of water is key.” In his Journal quoted above, David Carroll writes: “Although I know of the oceanic origins of life on earth, it is in swamps and marshes that I feel my keenest sense of life’s past, my sharpest intimations of life’s journey in time, and my own moment within the ongoing.” Swamps are ancient, something P.G. Wodehouse knew. He had Bertie Wooster muse in The Inimitable Jeeves, “…on the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt, like mastodons bellowing across medieval swamps…”

There is death in swamps. There has to be. Life is symbiotic. Many living creatures live off the flesh of another. And, unlike one or two of my grandchildren, others happily dine on vegetables, like grasses, plants and berries. The coyote, the largest predator that has been known to feed in our swamp, eats muskrats, otters, ducks, snakes, frogs, turtles and even a beaver. His victims, in turn, eat smaller creatures, like minnows, worms and insects. There is a symbiosis to nature. Even the smallest creature deserves our attention and concern, as Shakespeare reminded us in Measure for Measure:

“The poor beetle, which we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great,

As when a giant dies.”

My swamp is a way-place for migrating birds, as well as home for dozens of avian species who build nests within its trees and bulrushes. On a recent bird walk, on a chilly day in May, we identified thirty species, either by sight or sound. And that did not include a Mallard Drake that I often watch protecting his nesting hen. We did not see the Red-tailed hawk I often see searching for mice or chipmunks, nor did we sight the owl we sometimes hear at night. We did, though, see or hear Red-winged Blackbirds, Yellow Warblers, Downey Woodpeckers and Cedar Waxwings, among others.

Swamps are like our cities. Thousands of species and millions of individuals live within their borders. Most of the sounds we hear are either mating calls or warnings to intruders. Violence and murder are common in swamps, perhaps more so than in cities. But greed, hatred, jealousy or revenge are never the motives. The death of one means sustenance to another. Thoreau saw that, and he inverted Christian orthodoxy, claiming that in the midst of death we are in life.

We are fortunate to live on the edge of this swamp. Man has used nature for his own purposes. We have fished its waters, cultivated its fields, mined its minerals, chopped down its trees, diverted its wetlands, built dams along rivers to generate power, harnessed its tides and winds and captured its sunlight. In doing so, we have become wealthy; and that wealth now allows us to give back. We need to be conscious that, while most resources are renewable, there is a limit to what we can do, and that “renewable” can mean millions of years. The world is in constant motion, so we cannot ask it to stand still, but we can conserve what we have – let nature takes its course, with us leaving minimal footprints. We must be mindful that it is the ability to adapt to changing environmental conditions, regardless of their cause, that allows species to evolve. In a quote that is applicable to extremists on both ends of the environmental spectrum, E.B. White once wrote: “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.”

I am neither a scientist nor a naturalist; I am a person who loves the world we live in. I walk around the Mud River swamp, ignorant of the names of most of the creatures and trees that I see, but that neither reduces my appreciation, nor diminish my respect. We don’t have to travel far to see marvels of nature. With eyes and ears open, there are millions of stories for us to witness and to hear, right here, in the Mud River Swamp.   

   

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[1] The swamp has no name. I felt that an oversight on the part of cartographers, so named after the brook that runs through it.