Don’t Duck Discussing the Athos I Oil Spill
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Field Guides
A field guide can help your family identify the birds you see. The following guides are available at most Delaware Valley bookstores and online at www.amazon.com: • Birds of North America by Kenn Kaufman (Houghton Mifflin, $22) • Stokes Field Guide to Birds: Eastern Region (Little, Brown, $17.95) |
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The real toll from the November 26, 2004 Athos I oil spill on the Delaware River — the cost to our environment — will no doubt take years to determine. Among wildlife, waterfowl were hard hit. We don’t tend to think of these birds as often as the birds that fly in and around our backyard and visit our feeders.
It was heartbreaking to see rescuers handling large, oil-slicked birds in need of life-saving measures. If the many affected birds weren’t captured and cleaned, they died as a result of being oil-slicked and losing buoyancy, leaving them wet and exposed to the cold, unable to regulate body temperature.
Other birds who depend on the river for their food source, such as bald eagles, were (and are) also affected by the spill, as were turtles, fish, and other creatures. If you haven’t already, consider discussing this spill and the resulting tragedy with your children. Many parents are reluctant to bring such tragedies to the attention of their kids. Understandably, they don’t want to traumatize them.
But the future of our environment lies in the hands of our young people and it’s important that they know and understand how we affect the delicate balance of nature and our environment in both positive and negative ways. Perhaps you could emphasize the positive — stop along the Delaware this winter to view surviving birds and talk about the massive effort that took place to save birds.
For background and information on the oil spill and its effects, as well as a list of resources, visit a website created by the University of Delaware’s Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service at www.ocean.udel.edu/oilspill
Bird Rescuers
Oil spill bird rescue work is being performed by Tri-State Bird Rescue, located in Newark, Del. You can learn more about them at www.tristatebird.org. Click the “get involved” tab to learn ways that you can help this organization, from giving money to saving grocery receipts to adopting a bird. Birds rescued from the oil spill by Tri-State include Canada geese, mallards, bufflehead ducks, great blue herons, coots, northern gannett and ring-billed and herring gulls. The birds were stabilized, washed and given a minimum recuperation period of several weeks.
Not all of the birds affected by the spill are “waterfowl” — a term we apply to ducks, geese, and swans. But waterfowl might represent the greater number of birds affected by the oil spill. Large numbers of waterfowl migrate each year; from, to and through our area. Some ducks migrate all the way to South America. Ducks and geese can travel as fast as 40 to 60 mph during migration.
As with all wildlife, waterfowl survival is dependant upon habitat; availability of food, shelter and nesting areas. Some birds winter here and others will migrate to this area to nest.
Earlier I mentioned that some of the effects of this oil spill will not be known for a long time. We have rescued birds and maybe even had the opportunity to identify the birds we lost from the spill, but spring will bring a whole new set of problems (and birds) once eggs hatch. How the spill has affected the nesting areas of our birds is not yet known.
Observing Waterfowl
I’d bet there are ducks and other water-dependant birds listed here that you’ve never heard of, or at least, never seen. Why not make this winter the one in which you get out with your kids and observe the birds of our rivers and lakes?
Seeing birds on the water is as easy as looking and winter is a good time, thanks to leafless branches, the absence of recreational boaters and the formation of ice on the surface of the water. When ice forms, birds gather in large numbers on the open water, giving you the opportunity to see several species in a small area.
Watching waterfowl is something you can do from the warmth of your car with a pair of binoculars, a good viewing area to park in and a field guide to help you identify the birds you see. You can even see birds while driving; it’s not unusual to see cormorants or gulls along the nets that cross the Schuylkill near the Philadelphia Museum of Art. You can also see them while driving along the Schuylkill Expressway.
You might be surprised to discover the extensive number of wintering bird species you can find on or near our waters. Make this your year to get out and observe loons and grebes, cormorants, great blue herons, tundra swans, snow geese and brandt. You can see ducks such as mallards, black ducks, buffleheads, mergansers, ruddy, wigeons, canvas backs, teals, long-taileds, and goldeneyes, just to name a few.
You can also see bald eagles fishing in our waters. See these birds while you can and I mean that literally — some are wintering birds who will be gone by the spring, others belong to declining populations thanks to loss of habitat and environmental catastrophes such as the oil spill. Introduce your children to these birds while your children are young enough to be impressed and to learn to care about our birds and our environment.
Jane Kirkland is a Downingtown PA speaker, naturalist, photographer and author of the Take A Walk nature
books for kids. Learn more at www.takeawalk.com.