Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Last week I got an e-mail from a listener named Russ Lindgren. He wrote:

We were coming back from Port Wing on our 26ft sailboat last Thursday morning, August 22. We left around 6:30 AM with flat water and no wind, so we were motoring around 8 MPH.

Small birds started to accumulate on the boat. They looked like warblers. They were very tame, eating bugs from the deck, sitting on us, tucking their heads and sleeping, even flying below deck and sitting calmly down below.

There must have been at least 30. We also saw several dead and floating in the water. This is the first time this has ever happened to us. We also had bats landing on the boat.

Have you ever heard of such a thing? Our theory was they were migrating and just hitching a ride to Superior. As soon as we came into Superior entry they vanished.

My own husband, who is also named Russ, saw a similar thing when he was working on a research vessel in Lake Michigan back in the 70s, and there are actually a lot of references to this in the literature. Warblers are nocturnal migrants, navigating by the stars. Since they don’t have night vision, they can’t see the ground below so they migrate at a high enough altitude that they won’t bonk into trees or hills as they follow the stars. The problem is that sometimes when dawn comes, and they’re exhausted, their fat reserved depleted, they discover they’re over a huge body of water. Sadly, many times these birds drown, as Russ Lindgren saw first hand.

I’ve read other accounts of thousands of dead warblers and other migrants washing ashore on Lake Superior, and these are the ones who didn’t get eaten by gulls or fish first. One surprised fisherman once opened a thresher shark he’d caught in the Atlantic Ocean and found among its stomach contents one partially digested Ruffed Grouse.

But once in a while birds lost over a body of water notice a ship or boat, and come down to rest. They are in such desperate straits that they risk possible death at the hands of the people on board. A few are already so emaciated that they end up keeling over despite finding a place to rest. But many do survive thanks to finding a safe crossing. And every account I’ve ever read of warblers alighting on boats or ships emphasizes how extraordinarily tame they are. But as soon as the boat reaches shore, the birds vanish. They’ve survived one grave migration danger and have only two or three thousand miles to go.

Russ Lindgren sent me some digital photos of the event, which I’ve posted on my website, www.lauraerickson.com