The View from Sapsucker Woods

From Our Director

The view at Sapsucker Woods in late September reveals a world in transition. This week a Merlin spent several days perched atop the great snag over the pond, obviously enjoying a bountiful respite in its journey from taiga to tropics. Occasionally it chased after a nuthatch or goldfinch, but most often we saw it snacking on the dragonflies that cruise in growing numbers over the pond as late summer turns to autumn. Rich in fat, the biggest of these juicy morsels (called green darners, Anax junius) are also en route southward. Like birds, these dragonflies engage in an enormous, though much less heralded, mass migration out of North America?s higher latitudes during early fall. They will lay eggs in the south, and then die. Their offspring will return north next spring.

Merlin by John W. Fitzpatrick

A few days before the Merlin appeared, an Olive-sided Flycatcher had perched atop the same snag, also snatching dragonflies with long, acrobatic sallies. Now that the maples are turning red along the edge of Sapsucker Woods, this flycatcher already may have reached South America. It will catch dragonflies all winter at the edge of balmy tropical forest. A lingering male Scarlet Tanager appeared this week in its transitional plumage, an irregular patchwork of brilliant reds and bright yellow-green. He, too, soon will be foraging high in bromeliad-laden, moss-covered trees of the tropical Andes.

Many of these birds will face stiff winds before reaching their tropical homes. No fewer than four hurricanes (Ivan, Jeanne, Karl, and Lisa), each at a different life stage, are churning the waters of the Atlantic and Caribbean as I write this. Florida is bracing for its fourth major landfall of the year, after escaping for half a century averaging fewer than one per year. This spectacular tropical storm season, predicted months ago, is spawned by unusually warm surface waters. Whether this warming is anomalous, or ominous, remains unclear. Some experts believe it reflects a larger-scale climatic transition toward warmer seas. If so, our Merlins, flycatchers, and tanagers will run a more treacherous gauntlet every fall, and the Caribbean habitats on which many of our migrant warblers depend will be dashed more frequently into early-successional rubble. Such larger scale changes in climate and habitat cannot help but alter the pathways and relative abundances of the billions of birds undertaking these semi-annual global journeys.

Views about the reality of global warming are, themselves, in transition. Most Floridians for decades have enjoyed (and developers profited from) a mysterious ?halo of protection? from severe tropical storms, but I doubt that any Floridian alive today will forget the fall of 2004. Those along the coasts live only a few meters above sea level, and the younger ones among them must wonder: What will our tropical storm seasons be like, 50–75 years hence, when standing sea levels are a half meter or more higher than today? Hotel chains, businesses, insurance companies, and emergency management agencies—not to mention homeowners—must now be reassessing the pace at which society takes heed of how we are treating our earth. One wonders if the short time horizons upon which politicians typically focus will ever permit them to follow suit. The only constant in nature is change. Will we now take seriously the signs that change is coming?

—John W. Fitzpatrick
Louis Agassiz Fuertes Director

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu