On our way out to Iron Banks, we passed a female Magnificent Frigatebird bobbing in open water, half-submerged. Something was wrong: these are usually the most aerial of birds. They eat many a fish without ever touching the water, by harassing terns or gulls until they give up their catch. At times, they skim close to the water and dip just their bill (the kind of appendage Captain Hook would be proud of) to snatch surface prey.
This was a bird in trouble. Tables had turned, and Laughing Gulls were buzzing low over the frigatebird’s head. When they decided it was sufficiently exhausted, they would likely attack. Every few minutes it would beat its long, W-shaped wings against the water, but couldn’t get clear.
We thought it might be snagged on a buoy or crab trap, but when I scooped it with Capt. Iverson‘s fishing net it came right out. We headed for the nearest patch of saltmarsh so the bird could dry out and warm up. It perched calmly—if a bit dejectedly—on the net handle, shivering. Water streamed from the bird’s foot-long wing feathers and from the long edges of its scissor tail.
Strangely, considering its condition, the bird showed no sign of oil, except possibly a light tan stain on some of the breast feathers. Its head was dry and its dark eye alert. Pink webbed feet with curved nails grasped the net handle. The breast and belly were so wet I could see straight through to the skin.
Frigatebirds are big. This one felt extra heavy out on the far end of the net, but I didn’t want to get much closer. I kept imagining that bill hooking in to some meaty part of my arm. The thing had a supremely utilitarian look—the seams between the straight bill and the rough hook didn’t even seem completely joined. It was looked more like it had been manufactured than actually grown.
I watched the bird watching me, its eye darting, the delicate blue skin pulsing at the base of its bill. I felt just as uncomprehending as the bird when it comes to understanding this oil spill. Had we just found a weak bird, or had it plucked an easy meal from oily water a day or two ago? How many more frigatebirds, and how many more species, are suffering effects that we don’t know how to measure? These are the questions that scientists are working on right now, though the answers may not arrive for years.
We dropped off the bird on a sunny patch of matted grass after the worst of its shivering had subsided—but not before it stretched out its neck, spread its wings to their full seven feet extent, and flapped them a few times—whacking me in the head on each pass.
Just to be on the safe side, Iverson reported the bird to Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, giving them the coordinates of the saltmarsh where we left it. We heard from the rescue team about two hours later. They were taking the frigatebird to a rehab center.
(Images by Benjamin Clock)
6 Comments
an interesting (and sobering) first-hand account of what’s happening in those waters off Louisiana. Thank you for keeping us informed.
-Kay
very moving story, I wonder if you can follow up with the rescue center and find out the short-term fate of this less than magnificent frigatebird. whole disaster is heartbreaking, but thank you for showing the healthy marshes too. Interested to see what your next story brings…do you get a sense of the scale of the devastation from the ground?
Thanks for your comments! We did ask the rescuers to tell us the fate of the bird if they could—but we’re not sure how likely this is. The bird will be handed off to at least a couple of different carriers belonging to different organizations before it gets to a rehab center, and I’m not sure at which point it will be given an identifying number. I’ll be sure to let readers know if I find out anything.
I will try to give you a sense of the oil extent in one of the next posts. My sense so far is that even though when oil arrives it overwhelms beaches, animals, and saltmarsh for several miles at a time, the real horror is in the immense amount that is still out at sea.
I’d say this bird has most likely been oiled. Perhaps the oil was too thin to leave much visible residue, but the way the bird appears to be soaked through to the skin seems indicative of oiling. The oil tends to separate the cover feathers, and they no longer blend together to hold out the water. That’s why when we cleaned birds during the 1990 Bolsa Chica oil spill we worked hard to remove every vestige of oil from each bird’s plumage. In some ways, a bird’s plumage is like the rubber drysuit a diver wears in frigid water. If you get a pinhole in a drysuit, water leaks in and spreads everywhere. Oil on a bird’s plumage has a similar effect. I’ve never seen a frigatebird looking as wet and bedraggled as this one.
this is an awesome story. going to try to post on my facebook
I have a very similar picture of a frigatebird taken off the coast of Ecuador. We were traveling in a small yacht in the mid-afternoon after finishing our dives for the day, and were enjoying the pelicans and frigatebirds foraging near the boat. As we watched, one frigatebird appeared to try and grab something from the water and missed, somersaulting forward into the water. When it came up it looked as wet and bedraggled as anything, and after 10-15 minutes of attempting to fly it appeared to give up. We decided to motor over to it, and in a very similar fashion to the one that Hugh describes, we scooped it out of the water and it sat on the yacht all the way back to shore, where it remained after we docked. Though we dried the bird off a bit after first grabbing it, it didn’t seem in a hurry to leave!
I spoke about it with some ecuadorian biologists the next day and they remarked that frigatebirds can’t fly if they get completely wet, and that it’s common at frigatebird colonies for nearly all the birds to take to the air when it starts to rain. I had the opportunity to see this happen myself while at a frigatebird colony when a thick mist came through. All of the birds took to the air and basically hovered above the island, and every few moments they would perform a full body shake on the wing to shed some water…
2 Trackbacks
[...] Skip navigation About « Louisiana report: Helping a less-than Magnificent Frigatebird [...]
[...] and Sooty Tern. (Of six frigatebirds listed in the report, only one was found alive; we hope it was the one we found and reported on June [...]