Connections: Birds and Crabs, Part I

          It is early morning as I walk out on a very deserted beach along the western edge of Delaware Bay.  The sun is just edging through last night’s cloud cover and it sprinkles the sand with a few errant rays of sunshine.  As I gaze out over the beach I can see clusters…no, hoards…no, armies of birds swopping and swarming and dancing and flittering across the vast sandy stretch.

          I grew up a mere wing flap from San Juan Capistrano in southern California.  Each year, on St. Joseph’s Day (March 19) the swallows would return to San Juan and begin rebuilding their mud nests, each of which would cling to the ruins of the old stone church.  The arches (which are ideal for nest-building) of the two story, high vaulted Chapel were left bare and exposed, as the roof collapsed during the earthquake of 1812.  The town of San Juan Capistrano always takes on a festive air as scores of (human) visitors from all parts of the world gather to witness the "miracle" of the swallow’s return.

            What I am now witnessing on a stretch of Delaware beachfront reminds me of the hordes of migrating birds I saw in my youth.  Here, however, the birds are of every stripe, color, and description.  There is a constant blur of wings, a cacophony of shills, shrieks, and calls, and the “crissing” and crossing of flight paths as winged travelers dart through the pale blue sky and dance their way over the consistency of waves.  With shrill squeals and whistles, flock after flock and battalion after battalion of birds loop, glide, descend and fight.  They swoop and swirl and swarm over long lengths of sand – claiming territory for a few moments and giving it up just as easily with each new arrival.  The constant noise and never-ending activity makes the beach seem like an avian insane asylum.  This is craziness – bird craziness - to the tenth power!
            Crowded onto a far-reaching strip of land that bisects the waters of Delaware Bay and the lazy dunes of sand behind me is one of the largest gatherings of birds in the world.  These birds are on a quest – they are determined, they are pushy, but most of all they are hungry.  Their numbers are a million or more and they have been flying almost nonstop from their winter homes thousands of miles to the south.  From remote beaches in Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and the furtherest and most isolated reaches of South America a seemingly unending multitude of starving shorebirds have come to Delaware Bay.
            The gulls are bullies – they crowd together pushing and shoving against the great mass of their long-distance cousins.  Long-billed dowitchers poke and root beneath the wet sand at the water’s edge.  Yellowlegs wade in the shallows searching for food.  Red knots sweep across the sand like large flapping curtains randomly tossed over the landscape.  Sandpipers dance in and out of the gentle waves playing tag with each other.  Ruddy turnstones, sanderlings, plovers, dowitchers, dunlins, and willets all arrive – wave after unending wave after unending wave.  This does not have the gentility of San Juan Capistrano (tiny swallows are, oh, so much more polite) – the birds here are ON a mission, not IN a mission.
            They are here for the eggs…a feast of horseshoe crab eggs.