Karl Meyer Writing Blog

© Karl Meyer 2010

Foibles of the $47,000 fish: the Connecticut River Atlantic salmon restoration, a poor return on investment

(Note: edited versions of the following OpEd appeared in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on February 6, 2010, and in the Greenfield Recorder on February 3, 2010.)

“There will always be a hatchery component to the program.” That statement came at the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission’s December meeting.  Hatchery production must continue forever in order to produce a few returning salmon—74 fish this year.  The restoration program is now admittedly fish-farming.  This prompted the USFWS Region 5 CRASC representative to ask about hatchery costs: “How much are we spending per year?” Answer: “$ 3 – 4 million, for personnel and supplies alone.” ”How much does that amount to per fish?” That answer was left hanging.

In my dreams the Connecticut is as it was in 1991—a four-state river recovering its age-old biological connection to the sea.  May currents met a run of almost a million fish: 520,000 agitated American shad and 410,000 blueback herring lifted upstream at Holyoke dam.  There were 41,000 lampreys and a tiny return of 200 hybrid-Atlantic salmon.  Fifty-five thousand shad pushed past the dam at the Turners Falls-Northfield Mountain hydro complex; a record 37,000 shad wriggled up the Vernon ladder to Vermont and New Hampshire.  This was a legacy for coming generations.

The answer is $47,000 per salmon.  Federal hatchery expenditures alone came to $47,000 per fish in 2009.  Millions more went to genetic tests, smolt study, inoculations, electronic tagging, tracking and recapture—and state hatcheries cranking out salmon fry.  Add-in infrastructure and personnel and you can guess at a real cost per fish.

More questions arose after a presentation by USFWS researchers investigating if salmon returns would improve if hatcheries raised output–pouring millions more fry and smolts into the river.  Models predicted no more than about 50 additional fish would result from the different scenarios.  In no case would more than about 300 hybrid salmon return upstream.  The study also asked whether costs and low returns would continue to be acceptable to the public—and suggested public acceptance might be swayed if more spawned-out hatchery salmon were dumped in rivers for fishing.  “You are talking about a put-and-take fishery?” CRASC’s Chairman responded, incredulously.

“Put-and-take” is stocking fish in water bodies for anglers to yank out.  This is how the salmon program essentially works now.   Expenses aside, hatchery fish are massively disruptive to ecosystems and natural populations.  The difference here is there are no real returns to catch—though you could start charging $100,000 for a hybrid salmon license.  This led to another question: “What are the goals of this program?”  There was a lot of looking at shoes until the Connecticut representative offered, “Well, we didn’t have a specific number in mind.”

In 1967 this program set 38,000 as its goal for returning salmon–with an annual recreational catch of 9,600 fish.  The target for shad: one million at Holyoke, 850,000 at Turners Falls, and 750,000 passing Vernon dam.  Their objectives were clear: create “high quality sport fishing” and “provide for the long-term needs of the population for seafood.”  Despite its name CRASC remains responsible for all the fish in the herring family here–the core of the runs: alewives, blueback herring and the American shad, “founding fish” of this river’s restoration.  These fish fed people; an extinct salmon strain never anchored anyone’s larder.

But CRASC doesn’t stress accountability—laying claim instead to hatchery output and the latest low figures coming upstream as accomplishments.  A salmon-focused program with “no specific number in mind” costs our river dearly.  Today, two-thirds of that once-riotous shad bloom is gone; a scant 1 – 2 % of the tens of thousands of American shad that reach Turners Falls now squeeze through.  Just 16 passed Vernon dam in 2009–adjacent to warmed effluent poured in the river by Entergy’s nuclear plant.  Only 39 herring swam past Holyoke in 2009.  None have reached New Hampshire in a decade.

Occasionally I talk a little philosophy with Dr. Boyd Kynard of Amherst, MA.  Boyd’s a brilliant guy and a world-class expert on fish behavior, restoration, and the Connecticut’s migratory species.  This “retired” professor emeritus and USFWS biologist has his feet wet most of the year–consulting with China’s EPA-chief about Yangtze dams; fish passage on the Amazon; endangered sturgeon in Europe; or dam-disrupted ecosystems on the Columbia.  Something he once said about the resources going to lab study of juvenile salmon struck me, especially from someone not prone to generality, “I bet more money has been spent studying this single life-stage of this one species of fish, than the money spent on all the fish species in the world.”

It’s all about priorities.  There are bright, thoughtful people at CRASC too–people who say they would like to see a change of course.  I believe them.  The big problems are now acknowledged at the table: fish elevators 10 years past-due at Turners, with fluctuations from the Northfield plant scuttling passage at that dam; thousands of young shad killed when FirstLight drained its canal in September; thermal effluent dumped in at Vermont Yankee—with record low passage at the Vernon ladder.  These are all problems good on-the-ground science could begin turning around–on a path to a river we all could be proud of.

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Karl Meyer’s “The State of the Snake” appears in the spring issue of Sanctuary.  He tackles nighthawks and bald eagles for Birdwatcher’s Digest in May and November.

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An shorter version of this piece appears in the spring 2009 issue of Sanctuary Magazine as “Turners Falls Turnaround”

Stagnation at Turner Falls © 2008 by Karl Meyer

“It will not be forgotten by some memory that we were contemporaries,” Thoreau, on shad blocked by a dam.

I first watched a riot of migrating American shad nervously school in the fishway windows at the Holyoke dam over a quarter century ago. That Connecticut River was brimming with life: agitated blueback herring, slithering sea lamprey, fidgeting American shad. It so inspired me, I have scarce missed a season since, visiting three and four times annually from mid-May to June. Sadly, that great migration is coming undone. Each spring sees less fish. From the first half million shad tallied there in 1984 and 720,000 witnessed in 1992, to just 153,000 arriving in spring 2008. From the 630,000 blueback herring counted at Holyoke in 1985, to just four score and nine last year.

In 1955 the nation’s first fish passage success saw 4,899 American shad lifted past the Holyoke dam, 86 miles from the sea. A simple, bucket-type elevator had restored a spawning run blocked since 1849. From Holyoke it was just 36 river miles to the next dam, Turners Falls—a barrier that would surely fall quickly to this elegant solution. An 1872 Supreme Court ruling against Holyoke mandated fish passage at dams. It recognized shad runs as a rightful resource of hungry upstream citizens. It meant hope for the suite of fish that had used the Connecticut’s spawning highway to and from the sea for millennia. They included federal trust fish—the endangered shortnose sturgeon, the shad, and the blueback herring, plus migrating eels and sea lamprey.

Today, shad runs at Holyoke are half what they were in the 1990’s; herring are gone. The most recent 5-year average for shad has dropped 42% compared to 1999-2003—from 267,000 to 155,000 fish. Thirty-six miles upstream at Turners Falls dam, the center of linked to hydro facilities including Northfield Mountain and Cabot Station, passage has plummeted over 80% since 1999, when energy deregulation came to those sites. Passage there hovers near 1%, yet the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission listed the Connecticut’s shad population as “stable” in 2007

To understand you have to look to the 42 year-old bureaucracy emphasizing the reestablishment of an extinct salmon run on the Connecticut. It began in 1967 on the heels of the 1965 Anadromous Fish Conservation Act, when the US Bureau of Sports Fisheries and Wildlife, the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries and fish commissioners of CT, MA, VT and NH assumed responsibility for the restoration and preservation of migratory fish here. That mission–extended by Public Law 98-138 in1983, recognized the Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission, CRASC, as the agency of record. CRASC has a Shad Studies Subcommittee and a Fish Passage Subcommittee.

Driven by sport fishing interests, that agency focused on the Connecticut’s only missing species—the restoration of a leaping, but extinct strain of cold-loving salmon to a warming Connecticut. Though shad and herring naturally range from Labrador and Nova Scotia south to Florida, they received poor step-child status. Market research for 1967 projected a yearly harvest of 9,600 salmon–bringing $120 per fish from high-end anglers. Two foot long shad were a bargain at $3 each, with a projected harvest of 150,000 annually. After 42 seasons, 82 salmon returned past Holyoke in 2008.

Despite millions spent on research, hatcheries, genetics, and Byzantine stocking programs, more American shad were lifted at Holyoke in 1955 than all the salmon returned there in the program’s history. The Connecticut’s salmon strain was extinct by 1815. A pioneering species, it was a recent transplant–its southward spurt the result of an all-too-current phenomenon: climate change. Salmon biology and archeological data point to an arrival on the changing Atlantic currents of a brief, northern hemisphere climate aberration, the Little Ice Age, 1400 AD – 1800 AD.

In 1992 Catherine Carlson said this in a dissertation in the Anthropology Department at University of Massachusetts. Carlson was doing masters archeology work at the University of Maine when she was surprised by the absence of salmon bones in digs at coastal, estuarine, and inland-river fishing sites. Her work impressed professor emeritus Dena Dincauze, head of UMass, Amherst’s Anthropology Department, who recruited her to continue that research at UMass.

Carlson’s thesis, The Atlantic Salmon in New England History and Prehistory: Social and Environmental Implications, showed the salmon’s importance in colonial New England had been largely over-stated by sport fish minded interpreters. My own research at Antioch New England University in 1995 bore that out after extensive examination of the Sylvester Judd (1789-1860) Manuscript at the Forbes Library in Northampton, MA. Judd is a primary source for colonial history, natural history and genealogy of Connecticut River towns from northern Connecticut to Turners Falls. His records and interviews with men who had fished opposite Holyoke in the 1750s and 1760s led him to conclude salmon “were always few in number compared to the shad.”

Carlson surveyed seventy-five digs across the northeast in which fish bones had been identified at least down to their genus. A 5,000 year record revealed regular use of shad and river herring as a food source at many locations. But just a single salmon bone from Maine was positively identified. At one Turners Falls site, 590 fish bone fragments were uncovered. All were shad or river herring.

Carlson outlined the Little Ice Age here—showing the salmon’s migration this far south was driven by that brief climate oscillation. Dams and pollution were minor factors in its Connecticut demise–as salmon still survived further north on Maine’s long-dammed Penobscot. Her findings were not welcomed at CRASC. Their 25 year-old effort—annually hatchery-raising millions of salmon fry from eggs; fattening smolts, and stocking it all in tributaries was languishing. Carlson had noted the taxpayer costs, $80 million by 1989, and that “One Fish and Wildlife study has predicted that costs between $120 million and $450 million will be spent between 1989 and 2008 to make the restoration effort successful.”

“Some of them were quite hostile to me,” Dr. Carlson recalls sixteen years later. After leading departments at two universities she’s now a consultant in her native Vancouver, B.C. “No amount of manipulating is going to change the environmental conditions for the reintroduction of that fish,” she says. Climate science agrees. Asked why her work didn’t receive its full due, she cites several factors, “First, it was archeology, not biology; you are trying to prove a negative—that salmon weren’t there.” Being female in a male dominated field wasn’t helpful, “It was all political. It didn’t have much to do with the actual science. My sense is that they were just so heavily invested in it.”

But Carlson’s findings couldn’t be rejected out of hand, particularly since Dr. Boyd Kynard, fisheries biologist at the USGS’s Conte Anadromous Fish Lab in Turners Falls was on her committee. An associate UMass professor, Kynard had a reputation as an expert in migratory fish behavior and fish passage. Today he consults with governments on fish passage and rare sturgeon species on major rivers in China, Europe and Brazil. His credentials couldn’t be impugned. Carlson’s work remains largely unchallenged today. In 2002, her “absent-salmon” conclusions received note in John McPhee’s shad tribute,” The Founding Fish.”

This spring thousands of Connecticut Valley kids will raise salmon eggs in school–guided by USFWS personnel, trout organizations, teachers and college instructors who recruit many for fry stocking. Programs like Adopt a Salmon and the Atlantic Salmon Egg Rearing Program (ASERP) are neatly tailored to classroom math and science requirements. It’s an easy fit for teachers and has great PR value for a restoration program always lobbying for funds. The USFWS Connecticut River Coordinator sometimes dresses as a salmon at these programs, which reach into167 watershed schools. In Maryland today, kids are hatching shad and raising American eels in their classrooms—learning, at least, about the real problems of viable species on local rivers.

Adult, spawned-out hatchery salmon are stocked to lakes, ponds and rivers in watershed states here. This agency PR gives weekend fishing families and trophy anglers a taste for big introduced fish, but no context for understanding faltering native stocks. But, complexities are mounting. Didymo, an introduced, smothering algae, a.k.a. “rock snot”, was recently found above the federal salmon hatchery on the White River in Bethel, Vermont. Didymo carpets river bottoms, choking off oxygen. Since the White River is used as a direct hatchery water source, its operations were temporarily shut down–lest didymo be transported via stocking.

This spring none of the eggs; six-million fry, and hatchery smolts seeded into Connecticut River tributaries will come from “wild” salmon stock. All the “wild” sea-run salmon had to be destroyed a year back because a highly contagious virus, IPN, was found in salmon at federal hatcheries. Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis, deadly to fry and smolts, is a by-product of fish farming. Farmed salmon are escaping ocean pens and infecting North Atlantic strains. IPN got into the new salmon hybrids migrating back to the Connecticut—fish that are recaptured for breeding. “Biosecurity” programs are now deployed at all hatcheries, as stocking programs are potential vectors for new disease.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that CRASC has known for 30 years that some of the biggest restoration problems center at the fishways and generating facilities linked at Turners Falls dam. They helped create them. In the late 70’s, those state fish commissioners and federal officials insisted Northeast Utilities install fish ladders there based on Pacific salmon runs on the massive Columbia River—this, despite evidence those ladders might not work for shad and herring. Two ponderously-long ladders and a narrow gatehouse exit were installed at Turners Falls in 1980. Millions were spent. The few arriving salmon passed easily, but just 10% or less of arriving shad succeeded.

Kept quiet, that single-species blunder effectively locked meaningful runs out of Vermont and New Hampshire habitats for at least the next twenty years. Completion of those prescribed fishways prevented any revisit of the issue for two decades under the site’s 40-year FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) license, which expires in 2018. FERC regulates operations at mainstem facilities and is tasked with enforcing protections for federal trust fish. Licenses can be reopened and FERC can halt operations if conditions injure runs. FERC receives information from CRASC–which recently characterized the Connecticut’s shad population as “relatively stable.”

Incredibly, a 5-year, CRASC partnered study begun in 1999 by the USGS’s Conte Fish Lab found that half the shad passing Holyoke “attempt but fail” to make it past Turners Falls: “Passage of American shad through the fishway complex at Turners Falls is poor (less than 1% in some years), and may be having a substantial limiting effect on the Connecticut River population as a whole.” This profound development—shad had plummeted from over 10,000 shad annually to around 2,000, was also left below decks. That drop was on the heels of energy deregulation at the hydro facilities owned by Northeast Utilities throughout the study. Some 70,000 shad were likely turned away at Turners Falls last spring.

What changed to cause the drop between 1999 and 2000 that continues to this day? Possibly something to do with the newly-deregulated, electricity “spot market” generation at the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Project, sister operation to the Turners Falls dam and canal. Just five miles upstream, Northfield generates upwards of 1,000 megawatts of electricity by pumping water out of the Connecticut’s bed and into a 5.5 billion gallon mountaintop reservoir, and sending it back through turbines in downstream surges according to demand and spikes in the market price. Turbines for the 300 acre reservoir can reverse from sucking up water to sending millions of gallons downstream in minutes.

Water level fluctuations in that Turners Falls “pool” average 3.5 feet daily, but can range to 9 – 10 feet in the course of weekly operations. Those pumping and flushing effects through Turners Falls are felt by migrating shad and the river’s only breeding population of endangered shortnose sturgeon–slugs of water that must be reacted-to by operators at the Holyoke dam, 36 miles downstream.

Whatever the cause of the new Turners crash, urgency isn’t apparent at CRASC’s public meetings. Annually there is tinkering at the fishways; and a few truckloads of shad are dumped upstream to maintain a biological pulse for the run. But the partnership–the USFWS, Conte Lab, the National Marine Fisheries Service, reps from CT, MA, NH, and VT, watched this new disaster unfold and never brought it forward as their public trust. They left the public ignorant about the fish; the river. In fact they chose to “throttle back” shad monitoring at Turners, later stating in an April 3, 2008, discussion of failed herring returns, “There is less concern about the shad population since it has been relatively stable, though at a lower level than historic peaks.”

CRASC didn’t press FERC to intervene. FERC–who could reopen the license, shut down operations, or force a return to conditions that recently squeezed 10,000 shad through Turners, didn’t enforce. The eroding shad migration on the Connecticut can apparently wait for 2018.

Recently Dr. Raymond Bradley spoke on climate change here at Greenfield Community College. Decades back Bradley partnered in groundbreaking science–using polar ice core data to substantiate early signs of climate change. Included in those findings was a now-notorious “hockey stick graph,” vividly depicting spikes in greenhouse gases and temperatures. The Bush Administration tried to quash those findings. In 2007 Bradley, who directs the UMass Climate Research Center–along with Al Gore and other partnering climate scientists, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

This night Bradley, my “Climatology” instructor in the late-70s, has more sobering news—that Massachusetts and Vermont temperatures will likely align with the climate of today’s North Carolina and Virginia in just two generations. It’s a cold comfort message to deliver–one that would be small solace to Catherine Carlson, I’m sure. Still, basic biology shows that American shad would be at home in those climates; and, with help, herring could be at home there too.

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Karl Meyer is author of Wild Animals of North America, winner of a 2008 Teachers’ Choice Award for Children’s Books. His latest, Dog Heroes, is out from Storey Publishing.

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This essay first appeared in early May 2009 in several Connecticut River Valley newpapers, as well as the Worcester Telegram.

Towards a New River; or, How to keep a dead fish alive

© 2009 by Karl Meyer

Charles Darwin was born in 1809, the year the last wild fish from a minor strain of cold-loving salmon died out on a warming Connecticut River. Half a century later, On the Origin of Species placed evolutionary theory and reasoned science at the forefront of how we perceive our place among the world’s plants and animals. For 42 years now over half a billion public dollars has been spent turning the Connecticut into a four-state science experiment to create a new strain of “wild” Atlantic salmon from hatchery spawned fish. It has failed. It’s time for a new idea on the Connecticut River.

Predictions in 1967 from the bureaucracy that became today’s Connecticut River Atlantic Salmon Commission (CRASC) promised an annual angler’s dream of 9,600 returning salmon. Returns average 140 fish. Einstein said insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Today, without the six-million hatchery fry dumped into tributaries annually by fisheries biologists, trout interests, scout leaders, teachers and school kids, the few fish that limp back each year would die off in an evolutionary heartbeat.

For decades CRASC has been responsible for the Connecticut’s age-old runs of American shad and blueback herring—part of a suite of “federal trust” fish that include the shortnose sturgeon. The herring run is essentially dead—from 630,000 fish passing Holyoke in 1985, to 89 fish returned in 2008. In 1992, Holyoke hoisted 720,000 shad at its lift. A decade back runs averaged 300,000 fish. Just 153,110 American shad returned in 2008.

Two hundred years after Darwin’s birth its time to stop thinking we are smarter than rivers; smarter than fish. The Connecticut was the southern-most river in the salmon’s biological footprint. In 1992, Dr. Catherine Carlson’s UMass anthropology thesis revealed a gaping absence of salmon in the region’s archeological record. Thousands of bones covering a 5,000 year sweep were identified as shad or herring. Across all sites–including 590 bones from two sites at Turners Falls, MA, just a single bone from Maine was positively identified as salmon.

Scores of Connecticut River town histories record 17th, 18th and 19th century farmers crowding riversides each May, confident in leaving with a supply of shad. But salmon was a new visitor. It arrived with the Little Ice Age–a period of cold winters and brief, chilling summers which lasted in New England from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s. When cold conditions warmed, salmon runs died out, helped off the stage by the first dams across the Connecticut. They persisted on the colder, dammed rivers in Maine.

The salmon limping back today are evolved in tanks, their genetics guided by computers. They are not what are best for our river. Hatchery fish mask the real problems of rivers—foundering native populations, warming currents, deteriorating habitats, and blocked access upstream and down. Hatcheries are now potential dispersal points for exotic plagues like deadly IPN and smothering didymo—which recently caused closures at federal sites in Sunderland, MA and Bethel, VT..

The historic significance of salmon here has long been overblown by lobby interests wielding clout far in excess of their numbers. In 2008 CRASC representatives from the US Fish & Wildlife Service scheduled “outreach” visits to Congressional offices at a rate of more than one per week. State fisheries managers annually dump fat, spawned-out hatchery salmon in lakes to whet angler appetites for big, exotic fish. Teachers bring salmon eggs into classrooms, where thousand of kids participate in mini-hatchery programs tailored to math and science goals. Shad and herring losses go unexplored.

It’s time to stop holding the Connecticut hostage to this experiment–conducted largely without public input, published budget data, or notice of public meetings. All but 1% of migrating shad are now blocked at Turners Falls–virtually next door to the Dept. of Interior’s million-dollar Conte Fish Lab created to protect runs of “federal trust” fish. That information never reached the public.

In October, Dr. Ray Bradley, Director of the UMass Center for Climate Studies, spoke at Greenfield Community College. I had Ray for “Climatology” in 1979. He is one of the team of scientists awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for documenting unprecedented climatic warming—information the Bush Administration suppressed. Our new President believes in evolution, science, and eliminating programs that don’t make sense. Dr. Bradley illustrated his talk that night with a graph showing Vermont and Massachusetts mirroring the climates of Virginia and North Carolina just two generations hence—hardly salmon country. Ages ago shad and blueback herring evolved to spawn in rivers as far south as central Florida. Its time we evolved too.

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Karl Meyer’s Wild Animals of North America won a 2008 Teachers’ Choice Award for Children’s Books. His “Turners Falls Turnaround” is in the spring issue of Sanctuary.

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The following article appears in the Fall 2008 edition of Santuary, from the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

Fall’s well-fed bears, by Karl Meyer

I live bear country, Franklin County, west of the Connecticut River. Rolling up into the heart of the Berkshires are the deep woods and mature nut and pine tree habitats that state biologists say are prime bear habitat. And black bears are thriving in Massachusetts, after their near extinction here in the 19^th century. They’ve long since recrossed the Connecticut, swimming east. And today, though a good deal of it is sub-optimal suburban habitat, most people living beyond the crescent of Boston’s Rt. 128 again reside in towns visited by bears. Fearful of humans; largely hidden, they are out fattening up for hibernation right now.

“For bear, they be common, being a great black kind of bear which be most fierce in strawberry time, at which time they have young ones.” Thus wrote William Wood in New England’s Prospect, published in London in 1634, on the heels of his four-year New World sojourn. Residing in the fledgling settlements along today’s North Shore, of bears nearing winter, Wood observed, “Food being scant in those cold and hard times, they live only by sleeping and sucking their paws, which keepeth them as fat as they are in summer.”

And fat they must be. In late fall bears need to head to den sites with enough accumulated calories to cover the 30% of body weight that simply vanishes with the energy expended in hibernation. That fat is in large part the result of the black bear’s age-old association with nut trees: white oak, beech, red oak, hickory, and chestnut. These are the preferred fall buffet for bears. But if things get tough—if the mast crop fails as it does cyclically, black bears are wonderfully resilient. They’ll make up part of that deficit with grubs, roots, leaves, seeds, and berries, and supplement–or even substitute that lost forage with trips to isolated corn fields, orchards, or unsecured trash bins.

“Bears are omnivores,” emphasizes Massachusetts wildlife biologist Jim Cardoza, who has been the state’s Bear Project Leader since 1970, “They eat almost everything.” But wild game is rare, he says, “It’s hard for them to prey on live animals.” They do some scavenging though, and on rare occasions easy opportunities may tempt older males and they’ll prey on a penned-up goat, or get into a cage full of rabbits. Mostly it’s the nut crop they want in fall—the mast, plus wild cherry and the other succulent forest foods that Cardoza calls soft mast. “If necessary,” he notes, “they’ll eat whatever is: one, abundant; two, nutritious; and three, tastes good.”

Trackers and photographers often study bears. Ask MassWildlife photographer Bill Byrne and retired professional tracker—now turned nature photographer, Paul Rezendes, what would be heaven for a fall black bear, and their portraits nearly merge. Years of anticipating the needs of their quarry solicit these settings, “I think of a beautiful, old beech forest with some big canopies and big, old hemlocks—which are really good for cubs,” says Rezendes, “If there’s trouble the cubs and that bear can go up into the hemlocks and you’ll never see them. We’ll call that bear paradise.” Unapprised, Bill Byrne almost mirrors the image, simply adding in oaks, “A secluded oak and hemlock ridge, with a bumper crop of acorns and a scattering of beechnuts. The hemlock would provide security–I could feed undisturbed all day.”

A few decades after William Wood’s New England’s Prospect was published, a minister’s wife in Lancaster, Massachusetts was roused by a fierce attack on an icy February 10, 1676. It led to her three-month captivity among rebelling Native Americans. Mary Rowlandson lived and struggled alongside the embattled Nipmucs, Narragansetts, Wampanoags, and Pocumtucks of King Philip’s War until she was ransomed in early May. She experienced their desperate, subsistence flight from the standpoint of a virtual slave–retelling her story in The Captivity and Restoration of Mary Rowlandson, a colonial “best seller.” Rowlandson was dealt indignity, abuse and hunger–as well as unexpected kindness, while held by her captors. One turned out to be the Metacom, King Philip himself.

In early March the fat and meat of a bear, likely killed at its den, greatly fortified Rowlandson. She had met King Philip, who she could converse with in English, and did “extra” artisan labor for him and other captors—knitting, in exchange for food and small privileges. She shared a dinner with Metacom, “He asked me to make a cap for his boy, for which he invited me to dinner. I went, and he gave me a pancake, about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear’s grease, but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life.”

Starvation was never far off for the pastor’s wife, or the Indians. Often she was reduced to begging, and hoarding tidbits, “I was fain to go and look after something to satisfy my hunger, and going among the wigwams, I went into one and there found a squaw who showed herself very kind to me, and gave me a piece of bear. I put it into my pocket, and came home, but could not find an opportunity to broil it, for fear they would get it from me, and there it lay all that day and night in my stinking pocket.” Her treasure nearly rancid, she went back, “In the morning I went to the same squaw… I asked her to let me boil my piece of bear in her kettle, which she did, and gave me some ground nuts to eat with it: and I cannot but think how pleasant it was to me.”

Mary Rowlandson survived her ordeal; and those samplings of bear loom large in a hunger-filled memoir. Metacom and many of his people ultimately perished in their struggle for a homeland. Partly as a result, the following century saw the Massachusetts landscape wholly remade in the image of old Europe. Forests fell; fresh farms blanketed ancient woodland terrain. Wolves, beavers, bears, and wild turkeys quickly paid the price for an expanding drive for land and timber. Squirrels, cottontails, and the occasional deer, were what remained for game.

But black bears are survivors in every sense of the word. Nearly extirpated when hunters sought them in their last remaining stands, they somehow hung on in rugged Berkshire reaches into the 20^th century. But even in that sheltering place they witnessed the demise of one of their ancient staples, the American chestnut. Still, in the late-1970s when New England forests were slowly reaching maturity once more, those oaks, beeches, and hickories churned out ample mast. That, along with a supply of soft mast, ants, grubs, leaves, shoots, bird’s eggs, berries, mice, frogs, and sundry other omnivorous treats, helped the bear population begin to expand.

Today, from a core population of perhaps a hundred bears three decades back, the Massachusetts black bear population is estimated at nearly 3,000 animals according to Jim Cardoza. It’s thought to be growing by 8 % annually. The densest populations remain west of the Connecticut River, but bears are now fairly common in the central part of the state. Sightings in eastern Worcester County regularly make the news.

According to fact sheets from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, average weights for Bay State bears are 140 lbs. and 230 lbs., for adult sows (females) and males (boars) respectively. These forest and swamp omnivores–basically the size of adult humans, have evolved a survival strategy that emphasizes retreat, into trees or dense cover. Untempted by the baits of human trash, bird seed, and untended food sources, they skillfully avoid human conflict. But to a bear, the scent of “grill grease” is tantamount to the mention of McDonalds to a 10 year old in a car, says Jim Cardoza. When bears develop a taste for our human food traps, they risk paying a high price as “problem” bears. The problem is that we’re baiting these animals.

Bear sightings are always remarkable. They bring people face to face with the presence of “other.” And when that other is a black bear, it usually stops an observer dead in their tracks. Most sightings are strikingly brief, recounted using terms like “big,” “small,” “lumbering,” or “scampering.” Though the largest, oldest, males may reach well over 400 lbs., most are much smaller. In the Bay State, upright black bears rarely rise to over 5-1/2 feet, and they are notorious for their response to most human intrusions: they run for cover.

Paul Rezendes knows the places where black bears run. He’s tracked them to dens, tree refuges; feeding sites. He knows their resilience—having witnessed their fall movements when food is plenty and noted their resourcefulness when its scarce, “They gravitate to whatever mast crop is producing heavily.” Rezendes says. He remembers one fall in the Savoy area where the mast crop had failed, the acorns and beech, “But there was this enormous crop of ash seeds. And the bears were climbing up in there and tearing those trees apart. I’ve never seen that before or after.” Given a choice though, Rezendes says bears seem to prefer beech nuts, “Even after the snow falls I’ve seen them digging through over a foot of snow to get to beech nuts. They probably smell them–they’ll even put off sleeping if there’s a good crop.”

Rezendes also remembers a particularly difficult fall for bears in New York State, “I used to do some tracking programs in the Catskills, and they had a mast failure there, with the oaks.” But the keen noses of bears led them to a bread bakery, where they repeatedly rifled through dumpsters, “They had a heck of time. When the mast fails, the bears start taking chances—start going places where they don’t normally go.” Bears are generally not risk-takers, they like the security of mature woods. If those woods happen to be oak, “The bears gravitate toward white oaks,” says Paul Rezendes, “If there’s lots of activity in a mixed oak area, you’ll probably find clawing and bite marks on the white oaks.” Another fall favorite is wild cherry, “They just love the stuff.”

State photographer Bill Byrne has been shooting pictures for MassWildlife for over three decades. He’s taken a lot of bear pictures in Franklin County. He’s also witnessed the seasonal diet change, from heavy foraging on late-summer blueberries to a nearly instant switch to mast—in one instance turning to acorns from red oak, “As soon as those first acorns were falling, they lost interest in the berries.“ Byrne says it’s all about getting the best pre-winter calories, “Its like how much fat can I gain before I have to sleep?” He’s witnessed other evidence of the black bear’s fall drive for calories; the signs of their foraging–they rip open paper wasp nests. “Insects are pretty high in protein.” Black bears also dig up ground wasp nests, “The bear will just open that up and expend the energy to consume the larvae. It’s not a big expenditure of energy–but it’s impressive how they’ll accept the pain of the stings.”

When mast and forage is less than optimal, these opportunists sometimes turn to other available soft “mast”: isolated cornfields. “When there is high productivity in berries, in grapes, in acorns, there’s less pressure on the corn fields,” observes Byrne, who says 90% of his observations are in Franklin County. But damage to feed corn is a regular occurrence. Many seasoned farmers just accept it as the price of doing business in bear country, telling Byrne, “I know they get my corn, so I just plant more.” It’s often the secluded fields that are hit most, he notes, “So some are planting more crops that keep an opening around the corn. They’ll seed-in alfalfa.”

Bill Byrne holds black bears in high regard. He wants people to know that conflicts with bears can be minimized if humans make good choices, “The more people can learn about them, the more they can actually protect the bears.” The photographer sees situations where people are actually putting out food to attract them, “That usually spells a death warrant for bears.” Jim Cardoza will tell you that bears have a long memory, returning season after season to check on an easy cache of sunflower seed—long after a wildlife enthusiast may have learned to take down the bird feeders between April and December. For bee farmers with hives and honey to protect, the standards for electric fencing are changing, “Some bears are learning to negotiate anything that is not hugely hot, “says Bill Byrne, “5000 volts now seems to be the standard if you’re going to protect hives. They are right up there with black angus.”

Still, with thick fall woods around, and good mast, most people won’t be encountering bears from year to year—even if they are in the neighborhood. Suburban sprawl and thoughtless human behavior will certainly be a continuing cause for difficulty as bears go about fall foraging. The American beech continues to struggle under a series of weakening plagues, and the relatively rapid loss of the eastern hemlock to the scourge of the wooly adelgid will present these shy creatures with a new security problem: the shielding branches of their favorite refuge trees are disappearing.

But, with winter approaching, it’s pleasant to contemplate this late-fall portrait, rendered by Bill Byrne. A friend had called, saying he’d discovered a bear den. It was basically the remains of an overturned tree–the base of the root ball. The two approached slowly, upwind, and watched a very large male from a distance. “It was December, there was snow on the ground,” Byrne says, “But it turned out to be a warm day, and he was dozing on top.” This bear was “sated,” Byrne recalls, “just waiting to put up the do not disturb sign.” Fascinated, they observed quietly, the photographer noting the impressive size of the head; the creature’s slow movements, “The males tend to hibernate last,” Byrne notes. But this would not be that day. As they stared, the logy bear roused a bit, “Then he turned around, like a dog, and lay down again.” For now, this bruin was just napping on top of the covers.

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© 2008, Karl Meyer                            

This wren uses the stairs

The wren visits on the dreariest of winter days, and it uses the stairs.  I like the wren.  It visited today.  It prefers afternoon visits.  That’s fine with me.  It prefers days that are rainy, and gloomy, and somewhat out of synch.  That’s great too.  And it uses the stairs—did I already say that?  The wren hops down the stairs.  It’s a very orderly wren.  You don’t often think of wrens as house guests, good or bad, but this one is exceptional.  It visits and hops down the deck stairs, inches from my window–on dreary days.  It is quite cheerful.  I like this wren.

You might figure, from its manners and suburban setting, that it is a House wren.  It is not.  It’s a tidy Carolina wren.  It hops down the stairs one at a time, and looks sideways and askance in the window as it passes.  As a wren, it could easily take the steps two at a time—with all the attendant clatter.  My wren does not do this.  It is very polite and quiet as wrens go.  Very southern, I think.

My Carolina wren is a bird of generous character.  Its visits are spontaneous; they are good will offerings of a high order.  This is not a wren here for a hand-out, or a hand-up.  I’ve made no wren offerings to entice it—no suet hung, or seed hors d’oeuvres set out for wren entertainment on the patio. 

This wren has been winter’s great surprise: a whimsical guest on days when rain and fog press hard on dirty piles of snow.  It arrives in the afternoon, and takes the stairs one at a time.

There is no obvious reason for this tidy, visiting wren.  Winters of late have been warm, but this one’s had a wintry bite.  Not a whit of hospitality has been offered wrens this winter.  December drifts, driving rains, wild temperature swings—hardly wren-friendly weather.  This winter did not say, “May I take your wren hat, your muffler?”  Yet, curve-billed, quizzical, a Carolina wren visits, hopping politely from stair to stair.  I like the wren.

It could go south, this guest, to safer and warmer wren quarters.  But this wren does not.  At peril to life and limb it stays nearby for raw, rainy days, then comes to the stairs and looks in on me as it hops.  In turn I offer surprise–understated of course; a modest turn of the mouth, a raised eyebrow.  There are no false or ungraceful moves.  I keep my comportment natural, and don’t jump up to put on the kettle.  Truth be told, I don’t know much wren protocol.  So I keep it simple.  If it were a House wren I might offer cookies; a Winter or Cactus wren?–maybe dried fruit, or chips and guacamole. 

But this is a Carolina wren, one that hops past the window on gloomy, wintry days.  It takes the steps quietly, one at a time, and always uses the back entrance.  This wren is just the wren you’d want.  After you’ve whined about the weather, called your friends, slogged down coffee, and despaired of light ever returning to the landscape—a wren calls, unannounced.  Its timing is always perfect; it never stays too long.  It hops into view, politely.  It nods its wren head; and glances at you with its bead-black eye, then continues down the steps, cheerily, one at a time.

Winters can be vexing, and seemingly unending.  Brilliant days are matched by others that are punishingly-dark.  But one afternoon—one somber and dulling afternoon, a tiny, feathered comet may burst through the fog and begin bouncing down the steps.  It will acknowledge you with a nod, and a glint from its fiery black eye.  And–politely, you will smile. 

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                                                                   © Karl Meyer 2008

                                March Madness

It’s become familiar turf—part of my personal landscape history. I realized this when I left the edge of the pavement and fitted myself into a narrow, snow-slumped trail made by hikers, cross country skiers, and snowshoers in a wide swatch of woods. Something about the light, and the March snow cover, enabled me to discern the date almost exactly: it was 9 years ago that I’d first taken this path into these woods.

I remembered because I had just moved back to the Connecticut Valley after a stint living in Rhode Island, and then eastern Massachusetts where I’d worked for Mass. Audubon. I was thrilled to be back, and went out walking along the edge of this ridge with a small knot of friends. It was a sunny, mid-afternoon when we came abreast of a small hemlock grove along the dirt track. The sound caught my ear immediately; we all stopped.

It was a thin, melodious, wavering trill, coming from somewhere in the shadows of those hemlocks. Eastern screech owl. There came that sweet, spooky, arc of a trill again. We all stood, mesmerized. These were not thick hemlocks; the little grove was only fifteen feet deep, spread along sixty feet of trail. It seemed there was no way these birds could not have been aware of four people chatting as they moved through the woods.

But there was more to this, of course. The duettng screech owls had mating in mind. These were courtship calls. Both the males and females of these 8-inch, tufted-eared owls sing. We never glimpsed either of them. But neither did we disturb them. Pair bonding was occurring as this little herd of humans stood silent, taking in the cool March air. By mid-April they would be sitting on 4-5 eggs, the male and female sharing the incubation. Sometimes the two of them would squeeze into that tiny nest hole together. By May they would be feeding their young pre-digested bugs, mice, and wood frogs.

I continued my walk, reminded that this is now a familiar wild place—about equal parts park, open woods, and forest. I’m grateful to have it as part of my history. This was another cool March afternoon. There had been another recent snow, but the angle of the sun was conspiring to scour out bare ground in many south facing places. The maple sap was building in those tree roots, readying to make its spring run. You could just feel it. I little downy woodpecker hammered away at a bark-less snag.

For then next while my walk was unremarkable; contemplative. Footsteps on a softening snow path. I eventually wandered up a path that brings you alongside a little rill. With nothing in particular wedged in my mind, I can only say I was startled by a raucous “bah!, bah!, bah!!” I froze. It was a pileated woodpecker, a familiar resident here. Its fist-sized carvings are a signature of many decaying hardwood snags in this tract. I looked up to the trees, but saw nothing.

Then, a shadow, and “bah!, bah!, bah!!” again. It was below me, and to the left, smack in the middle of a ten foot pool of water–moved gently by the input of that tiny brook. Red-crest raised, wings held aside, this crow-sized king of the woodpecker family was having itself a bird bath. I didn’t move. I thought it had been yelling about my intrusion. This was something else. It fidgeted in awkward contentment in that stream for twenty seconds. When it looked aside I quickly shifted so I could see better look around the thick trunk in front of me. The woodpecker shook its wings, droplets rolled off its back. Then it took off.

I thought it would be gone, but the bird stayed. It simply pumped off wing beats enough to take it to a spindly, wrist-thick elm, and then glued itself to the bark, where it used its bill to preen from the tail forward. It was a ridiculously small tree for such a large bird. But then it shot into flight again—not away from me, but back into the puddle. “Bah!, bah!, bah!!!”, it screamed, settling into the chilly stream. Again, it bathed for a minute; then took off to a nearby tree. This one was a slightly more suitable maple, the thickness of the barrel of a baseball bat. There, it did a little more preening, perhaps dispensing with some of the mites in its feathers.

It repeated this act once more, its boisterous yells coming as it settled into the cold water. I felt like I was watching some Russian bureaucrat visiting an icy Moscow pool, then scooting back into the steam bath. Finally, after a victorious yell, it took off for a more suitable forest tract, landing about 40 feet up on the fat trunk of a hundred-foot white pine. I soon lost it in the branches—in woods that are now part of my landscape history.

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The following appeared January 30th, in the RutlandHerald

Karl Meyer

                              Towards a true refuge

The Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge is currently accepting public comment on the direction the Refuge should take in its preservation work for the next 15 years.  Here’s one suggestion: preserve what’s here.  This is not a flip answer.  As a FISH and wildlife refuge they should take their mandate seriously.  Preserve the FISH.

I don’t’ want them chasing ghosts—continuing down the failed 40-year path of farm-raising hatchery Atlantic salmon and tossing them in the river to replace a run that’s been extinct since 1815.  Just 140 return per year. 

I want the Refuge to include plans to preserve the 300,000 American shad that came upriver in 1997–the year the Refuge was founded.   I want a plan that shows what the Refuge has done, and what it will continue to do, to nurse and nurture the 64,000 blueback herring that also swam upstream in 1997.  Part of the Refuge’s mandate is “watershed education” to create an informed public “that supports and understands anadromous fish restoration.”  The shad run is withering; the blueback herring is all but extinct since Conte arrived.  There is little evidence the public understands this tragedy.

The first three species in the Refuge’s conservation mandate are “Atlantic salmon, American shad, and river herring.”   It’s unconscionable that the public is unaware the shad run up the Connecticut River has been virtually reduced by half since Conte began.  Just 159,000 fish swam past Holyoke dam this year, compared to twice that many a decade back.  Blueback herring are now scarcer than sub-prime loans—just 69 swam past Holyoke in 2007, while there were 64,000 in 1997, and 310,000 five years before that.  As a FISH and wildlife refuge, that’s failure.

Another failure is what the public is being left to believe.  Many think salmon is an endangered species here.  It is not.  The Connecticut River’s native salmon strain became extinct two centuries back.  And though it is widely believed that dams put the final nail in that salmon-run’s coffin, it is likely that a short-term climate aberration called the Little Ice Age (1300 – 1850 A.D.) brought cold Atlantic currents–and Atlantic salmon, south to the Connecticut at that time.  When cold currents receded, so did salmon.  They were visiting the southern-most major stream in their fluctuating footprint.  When currents warmed, detouring runs withered—at the same time dams blocked the last spawners.

Salmon is a mythical fish.  It’s big.  It leaps.  Fishermen moon over it like hunters who want to believe in wolf packs and cougars in the woods.  These are ghosts.  The extinct salmon run is simply extinct.  Global warming will not favor a cold water species on a warming river.  Shad were never extinct.  The river teemed with them a decade back.  Why this fish was never prioritized is a tragedy.  It’s been salmon first.  Salmon in grade schools; salmon studies at Conte Fish Lab; and preserving “salmon” streams.  The return on this has been misled school kids and 140 hybrid fish produced at huge expense in energy-sucking hatcheries.

Isn’t it time for change?  Studies left quietly under the radar show that American shad are virtually blocked at Turners Falls dam.  The number of shad passing successfully through fishways there is hovering at 1% since the year 2000.  That was the first season after deregulation allowed hydro-operators–at Turners Falls and just upstream at Northfield Mountain, the unencumbered ability to pump the Connecticut up and down according to spikes in hourly prices on the electricity “spot market.”  Since that change shad passage has plummeted by 85% at Turners.   The river population of shad has dropped a full 17% since 2000.  New Hampshire and Vermont no longer have shad runs. 

A main Refuge artery is blocked—adjacent to a Refuge Visitor Center and the Conte Fish Lab.  The public hasn’t a clue.  No clamor is raised by researchers and the Connecticut River Coordinator’s Office because the handful of salmon that reach Turners fishways pass there easily—all SEVEN this year.  The facilities were designed for salmon, not hoards of two-foot long, green-gold shad, or shiny, foot-long herring–this river’s living fish.  These are not sexy enough, apparently.  So grade school teachers offer kids myths.

Sadly, decades of failed marine fisheries policy may have doomed herring runs to extinction due to wildly fluctuating populations of predatory striped bass.  But the Refuge could keep its name as a true FISH refuge if it prioritized saving the eminently preservable, arguably magnificent, American shad.  The public—in classrooms, in Vermont and New Hampshire; along the entire River, could have an enduring refuge symbol.  But that recently blocked artery at Turners Falls dam would have to be unstopped—fisheries experts would have to speak honestly; committees charged with preserving fish runs would have to stand up; FERC regulators would have to regulate; lawmakers litigate.  That would lead to a real refuge, one with an informed public and real fish—one with an honest future.  Preserve what’s here. 
                                         #  #  #

 Karl Meyer lives in Greenfield, MA.  His book Wild Animals of North America has been given a 2008 Teachers’ Choice Award for Children’s Books.  

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Karl Meyer                                            December 6, 2007
Greenfield, MA

                             On making assumptions…

Never assume anything–particularly wrens.  I made that mistake recently and a wren got the jump on me.  It was a good lesson.  The weather was brooding and dreary.  The afternoon world was wrapped in dulling late-fall rain.  Then a wren barged in–spring-boarding off the window casement three feet from me.  Its scratchy wildness scuttled any thoughts of surrender to dreariness.  A world with wrens is magic.  I’ll never again assume to the contrary.

It’s not that I ever discount wrens.  In southern New England we’re never completely without them.  A few hardy winter wrens–secretive denizens of evergreen shadows, don’t retreat south from our winter chill.  And Carolina wrens, a species that jumped north to our latitude in the mid-1900s on global warming’s edge, are now widely dispersed through varied scrubby habitats.  They hold their turf in winter to the point where significant die-offs occur some years due to intense cold.  The other wren varieties we enjoy from this plucky, gravy-boat-shaped family—the house, sedge, and marsh wrens, all retreat south at winter’s approach.

But here–out of the bleak afternoon universe on the cusp of winter, comes the wren.  It’s a lightning bolt visit.  Quickness is the livelihood of wrens.  Just a flash: a head with a curving bill, a bright eye with arching white eyebrow, and the briefest flicker of a stubbed brown tail.  Then it bolts from view.  Wren!—unmistakably wren.  Quick, stubby, plucky, and warm brown—a Carolina wren!

You may not know this bird from sight, but likely somewhere you’ve heard–spring, summer, or fall, in the last decade.  In the size-to-volume range this wisp of feathers pumps out song like it has a bullhorn.  It’s a boldly sweet, “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea,” pause, “tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea,” pause—“tea-kettle tea.”   And then again, over and over—until it’s through with that variation, and moves onto something quite similar but varying by a quarter note, and runs through that repertoire.  And then another barely perceptible change, and then another run of wren song.  It’s what wren’s do.

More Carolina wrens are making it through more Eastern state winters–further north and at higher elevations, as our climate warms.  That’s good news for the wrens, while we’ll have to do the math on what it means for humans.  In summer here you’ll now you hear “tea-kettle-tea” high in hilltowns, where it was never heard before.  So, even at winter’s approach it’s incumbent on all of us to prepare ourselves for wrens.  You just never know.

The actual prep work isn’t much really.  It amounts to un-cultivating the certain understanding that life can appear boring at times—routines can collect in a dulling sameness, leaving us vulnerable to the element of surprise.  And then, WHAM!—that wren hits your window.  To those not mentally prepared, this might assault our slowed senses as annoyance—there’s a leaf, a branch, a twig, some sparrow blundering onto the deck.  It is not.  It is magic come to visit—so be not fooled.

Why a wren you might ask—why here, why now??  Well because insects and spiders crawl around your porch steps and window casements—all are winter gifts to a Carolina wren.  And then, even in urban neighborhoods, there are likely a few choice berry and seed producing shrubs that can supplement a wren’s insect diet through a winter.  With enough scrubby shelter and available water, this half-ounce feather ball just might make it to spring, and a new round of tea-kettling in your neighborhood.

If that happens they’ll be two Carolina wrens looking to nest.  They stay together year-round and mate for life.  The males do the bulk of the tuneful singing, but they both work on the domed nest that’s wound like a beehive and is made from bark, grass, leaves, hair, and even plastic.  There will be an entrance at the side, and 3 – 7 eggs will be placed at its center.  It’ll make for a very melodious summer.

Meanwhile, if you’re out in the wilder, dense evergreen woods, you might listen for the intense little spit-stutter-scold of the tiny winter wren.   These guys are tiny, grayish-brown, secretive and amazingly quick.  They are usually not far from water and dense cover—which includes brush piles.  Don’t let them get the jump on you!

Curiously, the winter wren is the only wren species that we share with Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Same bird.  In Ireland there’s the medieval tradition of the Wren Boys.  On St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, groups of young boys go around and get the jump on a winter wren—known simply as “the wren.”  They kill the poor creature, tying it to a stick.  They then go around dressed-up, singing songs and begging money for the dead bird on a stick.  When there’s enough money for a party they give that wren a solemn burial, then drink themselves silly.  So, even if you’re a wren: never assume anything.

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Copyright: Karl Meyer
November 3, 2007

Crows in the night

They’ve become simply, “the crows.” And they are ever present. Of course they are ever present everywhere. But here, in this town of Greenfield, they have a large and not so secret roost. I do not know where it is yet, but I’m sure many do. Thousands of crows gather in the dusky skies nightly, heading for home. But it’s what they do that’s of most interest to me. It’s what’s most fun–most antic. What is it that the crows know?

They sometimes strafe the ridge top place where I sit above town. I was there early the other morning and a lone crow was rolling along in gleaning flight along the ledge. I startled it–which is unusual for a crow, and it quickly veered away from the cliff face in a broad arc. It’s not everyday you get the jump on a crow, so this day’s little quirk belonged to me. Surely I was not a serious material threat, just a known crow predator– a human. I did honor its passage with a quiet crow call, signaling no harm intended. It flew on.

But the other night, secure in my apartment just after dusk, I heard crows through an open window on an unusually warm, late October night. The radio was on. Truly it was dark, but I was hearing birds. It’s the radio, I thought, background noise not edited from a news interview. I ignored it. But then, next story, there was that noise again—a low, caw-caw-caw. And then it would stop.

At the third sounding I flipped off the radio; went to the window. Dark. There was just an afterglow in the western sky. This was night in late-October night. Birds don’t sing when the street lights are on, save owls and the odd mockingbird at the full of the moon. And, though the full moon was near, these were no mockers. “Caw, caw,” again. The call was not feverish, but a minimal communication, a signal–a crow sharing news. “Caw-caw,” something is up, someone is up, something is exciting and newsworthy in crow culture. Perhaps it is the moon, or, more likely the weather. Or maybe it’s just late-day crow intimacy too juicy to wait until daybreak.

It is night. The crows are singing. I’m fascinated and grateful to have these new neighbors—as someone who’s just moved to the city from the country. At this moment they are as wild as wildebeests.

And this morning, awakened, pre-dawn, by some unknown bump or scratching, I am up before six to make coffee in the glow of a single light. I return with it to bed and grab a the thick novel I’m working through. Shortly though, I hear it. Caw! Then another. Then, caw-caw-caw-caw-caw-caw! They are up, and not just one or two. This is bait I can not help but take. I rise again, and quietly head out the door to a second floor deck overlooking back yards and the dead end of a street.

Looming above is a tulip tree, nearly a hundred feet tall, with a large silver maple in its understory. The leaves are half-fallen. And there are the crows, yelling, then silently moving to-and-fro in pre-dawn silhouettes. The chorus is truly big neighborhood news, but the neighbors are not up yet. It’s too dark to see if perhaps the point they are making is that there’s a predator in this tree—an owl or roosting hawk. I’ve seen a Cooper’s hawk around. The yelling continues. More crows fly in, joining dozens. Others scoot by for a look, some moving off to the west. But the core of them stays, continuing to grow. There is split-second quiet when I move, telling me they’re aware of my presence, but it is momentary. Whatever they have to share is more important. The gabfest goes on.

Coffee in hand, I’m there for ten minutes, fifteen. When it seems like the darkness has lifted enough to make binoculars useful, I duck in and some. The noise continues; crows swirl. I can’t make out any lump of an owl or hawk, or marauding raccoon or fisher either. It’s just those shadowy crows. They have something. They must. But my vantage just will not reveal it—there is a side of these two trees that will remain hidden from my sight as darkness continues to lift. I move up and down the deck, hopeful of catching some predator’s hunch, or a bit of movement. Once or twice I hear a plaintive, low call—something more than a cooing, but similar to it. I can’t place it though.

Daylight makes a slow entrance this gray morning. The catcalls of this wondrous hoard continues, but with less intensity. Inevitably morning brings a subtle, quiet dispersal. Crows peel away one and two at a time until its just me left on the deck, pondering their wildness–wondering who and what had come to rest in that tulip tree to receive the honor of such noise. I’m awake, in a still wild world.

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Coyotes and tigers and bears…

It seemed perfectly safe. It was a brilliant October mid-morning and I needed a walk in the woods. My allergies had been haywire. I felt a walk would clear my head. I trundled through suburbia toward the woods and ridgeline above Highland Pond in Greenfield. The sun shimmered off yellowing maples and still-green oaks–a perfect fall day in New England. And then, it screamed at me. WARNING: Coyotes in Area. The sign, in bold red-orange, must’ve gone up over night.

Stunned, I halted in my tracks. Coyotes—in the AREA! My gosh… What to do?? Life had suddenly become scary. I collected myself. My racing heart slowed. I looked around quickly. Everything seemed, NORMAL. There were no people around, but then this was The Woods. But MAYBE that’s just what the coyotes want you to think, then…WHAM! Modern life is a full of danger signs, thrown up by who knows who. And choices.

I was upset, confused. I reviewed my options. I could turn back, find safety in the bosom of civilization. I could sit down where I was and look over into the scary woods—a warped version of reality TV. I could call the police and hope for an escort through the treacherous area. Or, if I waited, someone might come along and we could brave the wild canine gauntlet together. At the very least I’d make sure they were warned.

And then, a certain hero-scenario came to me. It was a simple dream: that I would someday collect enough coyote-defense skills, weaponry, and wild dog security equipment to start the Franklin Coyote Escort Service. I’d bring people for tours through the area—in hum-vees with stereos and side-slits for coyote sniping. Make this place a haven for civilization, like Iraq. But no, it was a crazy notion—few people ever attain that level wilderness courage and business savvy.

I stood before that sign, my life’s journey teetering in the balance. My impulse was to sprint back to the civil-safety of traffic, cell phones and shopping. But something stopped me. I’ll never know what. Suddenly I’m walking past the warning sign like some Stepford sacrifice, into the very heart of Greenfield coyote country. Each step brings me further from coffee and buy-one, get-one free–further toward the gaping maw of the woods and blood-thirsty hounds. There is no other human in sight. I’m alone—an Incan offering, thousands of miles and centuries off the mark.

In my auto-pilot state everything SEEMS normal. Squirrels chatter, chipmunks squeak, migrating robins scuff for worms in the leaves. I begin climbing upward, unaware of how many wild eyes may be devouring me from close-in. I reach Sachem’s Head and the old wood platform that once served as a dance floor for mountain visitors, before these howling woods became lousy with wild dogs. Oh for those peaceful days once more!

Me, I’m a babe in the woods—a shadow propelled by forces unknown. In my madness I sit down IN THE MIDDLE OF COYOTE COUNTRY, and read the newspaper—with that craven hoard likely so near I could’ve heard them breathing. Blithely I scan the horizon south to the beautiful ancestral bottomlands of the Pocumtuck, now “old” Deerfield, tracing the arc where that river leaves the Berkshires and pushes to its meeting with the Connecticut. In my altered state it all seems beautiful.

And then this: bizarrely, I lay down in the open and close my eyes for a nap—focused only on sinuses and the aches I’m nursing from the five games of volleyball I engaged in two nights before. I play exactly three times a decade–to stay ready for those instances where a man’s preparedness might be tested in some life-or-death Jack London setting as this one. Instead, insane, I doze for a full ten minutes, Pocumtuck princesses dancing in my head. That I do not awaken to a flash of canines at my throat remains a miracle.

A raven calls in the distance, another shadowy creature bent on destruction. Two crows sail by on the October wind—feathers glinting mockery at the fall sun. This is a set-up, I’m sure: the coyotes will rake my throat; crows will peck my eyes; the ravens will gorge on my liver. Dazed, I rise up–some final ounce of courage sustaining me, and finish my walk. Yet to this day I remain under the coyotes’ spell. It grips me as I sit here, thinking: WARNING–you have more to fear for yourself, your pet, or the suburban deer herd from the neighbor’s dog or the Rottweiller down the street, than you do from coyotes! The records bear this out. So, you see, I’m hopeless. I know that only my blood, at the full of the moon, will satisfy what the coyotes want of me. I am ready.

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