Natural Attrition and Human Emotions

A few years ago, I spent many May hours looking down into a robin's nest from my guest room window. I watched nest building then brooding and then the endless and devoted feeding of either four or five chicks. It was amazing how many quivering, breathing, palpitating little bodies fit into that small cup!

Then I went away for a weekend. When I got back, the adult robins and most of the young were nowhere to be seen. One dead chick was hanging out of the nest, close to fledging size and age. Surely the nest wasn’t destroyed by a predator; what self-respected predator would leave a tasty chick behind?

I wondered about death by exposure. That May was cold and wet, with nighttime temperatures close to freezing, and the young robins got soaked every time they were left alone for even a few minutes.

I wondered if the dead bird was the runt, developing after the others, and if the parents had abandoned it to care for fledglings that had already left the nest.

But mostly – after wondering – I mourned. It's hard to watch nature take its course when it involves creatures we've been watching and feel a connection with!

That fall I met one of Vermont's loon watchers, dedicated volunteers who monitor natural nesting sights and man-made nesting platforms for the Vermont Loon Recovery Project. The man had become very attached to the breeding pair on his small lake.

 He watched the pair’s one chick grow to adolescence - and then one morning he looked on in horror as a Bald Eagle swooped down and snatched it!

The poor man raced to his canoe, desperately hoping that he could somehow catch up with the eagle, which was struggling to get airborne with an almost full-grown loon in its talons. He thought he might be able to paddle like mad, then stand up in the tippy boat, and hit the raptor out of the sky with a fishing pole. Miraculously, before the poor man even got the boat launched, he saw the chick plummet from the eagle's talons and plop into the pond. The man yelled and shook a paddle and waded into the water and yelled some more, and the irritated eagle flew off.

Almost immediately, two agitated parents joined the ruffled and agitated (but uninjured!) chick. Within minutes, the chick had apparently forgotten its near-death experience and was back to its peaceful life of catching small fish and gaining size and weight and flight feathers. It left the pond that autumn right on schedule.

But the poor loon watcher’s agitation didn’t end that soon. Telling the story months later, the man clutched his chest. “I don’t think I can be involved in the Loon Watch Project ever again!” he said. “It’s just too stressful for an old man!”                       

                                                                    ~Maeve

          Loon at Caspian Lake, Greensboro, VT

          Photo credit: Maeve.