by Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist (read the original in Noozhawk by clicking here)
Let’s say you’re a Scripps’s murrelet. Chances are you hatched on Santa Barbara Island, the most remote of the Channel Islands.
You spend your whole life at sea, except when you return home to rendezvous with your life mate.
Let’s say this is your first time — you’re 2 or maybe 3 years old, and you’ve been at sea the entire time, traveling down to Mexico and up as far north as British Columbia. Now spring is in the air, and on a whim you decide to visit your birthplace.
There you meet handsome Harry, and pretty soon you’re checking around for a good place to call home. You check out crevices and ledges on the cliff at Arch Point, where both of you hatched.
Harry decides to check up top. According to island lore, there used to be dense brush coverage to shield a nest.
After rabbits and cats were brought in by humans, the island habitat was decimated and is mostly barren, but Harry has heard tell of more recent humans who have been gathering seeds from the island, growing them up in a plant nursery near their landing cove.
(Such a fuss: we don’t need a landing cove or fancy nurseries!) Harry does an aerial survey and pretty soon he’s screeching in excitement: the people have planted them out atop Arch Point!
Some of your species’ favorite nesting plants are there: Santa Barbara Island buckwheat, purple needle grass, tar plant, silver lace and giant coreopsis. Even some box thorn further up from the cliff.
Close to the cliff, you find the prize nesting site: a large woolly sueada shrub that looks perfect for your growing family. You quickly gather some material and assemble a cozy nest just in time, for you’ve become so heavy you can barely launch.
You lay an enormous egg with such effort that now you are famished. You head out to sea again, hoping Junior isn’t eaten while you’re gone.
The humans have removed the rabbits and cats, but you’ve heard native deer mice sometimes still predate eggs.
A week later you return to lay Junior’s sibling. You are relieved to find the first egg still well hidden.
You’re exhausted after laying a pair of eggs over 20 percent of your weight. Now you and Harry can begin incubating in earnest.
Around five weeks later, the little darlings begin to poke out of their eggs. You let them take their time because you know what’s ahead. You Scrippsies aren’t ones to coddle your young!
After two days of listening to their constant whimpering, they get hungry enough to follow your voices to the cliff’s edge. You lead them right over the cliff and let them fall off, skidding and flapping down a hundred feet or more to the water.
No wonder your chicks will stay at sea for two years — what a nightmare! You spend the next month teaching them to fish, and then they’re on their own.
Anyway, you’re thrilled with your first nesting experience. That sueada shrub was a real find!
It’s hard to figure out those humans — always building something up or tearing it down — but you plan to seek it out again next year, and fall into Harry’s loving wings.
Karen Telleen-Lawton, Noozhawk Columnist
Karen Telleen-Lawton is an eco-writer, sharing information and insights about economics and ecology, finances and the environment. Having recently retired from financial planning and advising, she spends more time exploring the outdoors — and reading and writing about it. The opinions expressed are her own.