Christening, tern style

Least terns make up for in moxy what they lack in size. As I walked along the edge of a Gulfport, Mississippi, beach where terns were nesting, a whole cadre of bird-chaperones cautioned me to “watch it suckah!” A group of the tiny white birds hovered a few feet over my head, occasionally charging. I could feel their little feet grazing my head softly every time they swooped down, offering a not-so-subtle, but gentle reminder that their eggs lay unprotected on the sand, incapable of withstanding my clumsy feet.

This beach is designated as nesting grounds for shorebirds like the least tern and black skimmer and is closed to public access, except for the sidewalk that stretches the length of the colony between the beach and Highway 90—about 100 yards. This small space set aside for these birds is well used, with nesting terns and skimmers sitting on their nests and ferrying silvery fish through the air en route to their open mouthed babes. Nests were marked with pink flags, so many that the grassy dunes were filled with bright pastel notices announcing the next generation. I walked along the boardwalk and the spunky little least terns dove chirped at me if I veered too close to the beach edge of the walk. To calm their anxiety, I sat down behind a sign that alerted passers by that the beach was off limits.

I settled in to observe and photograph. Behind the sign I spotted a tern standing with a fish over a newborn ball of fluff straining to get it’s mouth open as far as possible. A smile spread across my face that had been absent since leaving my home in Maryland at the beginning of the week. My traveling companions, Jamie Rappaport Clark and Cindy Hoffman (here to assess the situation in the Gulf for Defenders of Wildlife), sidled up and it was clear in their eyes and the way they walked that they too had been transfixed. This was the first truly light moment for us in days. Jamie and Cindy walked on down the path to the skimmer real estate on this nesting beach and I stayed to observe the terns. That was when I noticed a new blotch of white upon my shoulder sleeve. Hmmm, poop. “Right on little tern,” I said to myself and winked at the nearest nest.

This was the second time in two days I had been marked by birds. The first came from a pelican in Venice, Louisiana, after a day parting a path through grime and oil that has settled on the Gulf waters off the coast of Louisiana. Jamie, Cindy and I had been accompanying U.S. Fish and Wildlife personnel on a tour of the Gulf looking for oiled birds that needed capture and transport to a rehab facility, where they would be cleaned or, at last resort, euthanized. We traveled with Defenders’ board member and Animal Planet star Jeff Corwin, who is now reporting for NBC. Also with us was National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore. Divided into three boats, we toured the facilities where several wildlife agencies and contractors ran the wildlife rescue operation. We also attempted to meet up with rescue boats so we could observe the work they were doing. This second objective never really panned out, but seeing birds in distress proved much easier than seeing rescue boats capturing them. There were so many oiled pelicans, perched with orange heads and black bodies next to their healthy brothers and sisters with white heads and light brown bodies. Those that had been oiled were easy to spot by their appearance, but also by the fact that when our boats approached, healthy birds flew away, but those with oil on them just shifted uncomfortably on their perches.

When we returned to the marina, I worked with Cindy to videotape some interviews. One interview, with Fish and Wildlife staff, came to a sudden halt when I felt a huge plop on my face, head and arm, and simultaneously heard Cindy say, “Agghhhh.” She had a big black smear on her face and I had a few of my own. I looked down to see a large splatter of black liquid. It was pelican poo, but so dark. I asked the wildlife biologist we had been interviewing why it was so dark. “Probably oil,” he said. He told us that they had found that some of the birds had bloody, oily stools after ingesting oil and toxic dispersants while trying to preen the oil from their feathers. Not to mention that when pelicans feed, they end up with large amounts of water in their mouths, water that is now mixed with oil and dispersants.

It seemed somehow appropriate that suddenly I was coated in the same filth that I had been documenting all day. That kind of grime – a bird’s body trying to process a toxic soup and then dropping it out on your skin and hair – it doesn’t wash off in the shower. All the images and anxiety that has descended on the millions of people who are following the disaster in the Gulf, have felt this dark mood permeate our pores, lungs, blood and heart and mind. I wonder, is it possible, if we are not decontaminated, could we actually drown in this darkness? For me, what lifted some of the heaviness of the past few days, ended up being today’s christening from the arse of an angry tern.  In the belly of this disaster, it is easy to become overwhelmed with the utter ugly bleakness of it. But taking a few steps back, or east, as the case was today, I can see that all has not yet been tainted. Even though we have only given them a little bit of space, these terns and skimmers are nesting and surviving along a noisy stretch of a major highway. It’s not ideal, but it’s a start. Sadly, their continued survival is now at the mercy of the currents of the Gulf.

These birds are nesting within 10 yards of the ocean, and this stretch of beach sits between Pensacola and Barataria Bay in Louisiana, where oil has already begun to reek havoc. These newborn chicks upon these white sand beaches are helpless against such a threat. And though their parents are fearless against threats they understand, (i.e. a giant human with a giant camera intruding into their nesting bliss), they would have no recourse against a tide of oil washing over their babies.

So we wait, to see how fate will twist and carry this oil we have unleashed. I can only hope that if it does reach this beach, the tottering, fluffy golf-balls-on-legs that the parent terns now care for will have already grown strong enough to fly out of harms way, far, far away from the Gulf.