ENVIRONMENTAL GREMLIN: Free beers threatened?

“Quick, free beers!” is the lyrical proclamation of the Olive-sided Flycatcher. This breeding, summer resident is often seen hawking from its perch on the tops of dead trees or other snags to catch a passing insect.

Once one has heard a call that seems to say, “Quick, free beers!” this flycatcher is easy to identify even at a distance. For those readers who may have spent a few hours in the field birding, the call becomes more enticing as the day warms.

This once fairly common species is just one of several insectivores that are now of special concern on the Species at Risk list. This is the catalogue of all plants, animals, fish, birds and insects that to various degrees are at risk of extinction. What is very chilling is that this list is getting longer.

Chimney Swifts are truly amazing birds. They look like cigars with wings. They spend most of their life airborne. They eat on the wing, drink by skimming ponds and break tiny twigs from the tops of trees to build their nests.

They only stop flying to nest and to roost at night. In mid to late summer, hundreds, sometimes thousands of them funnel into large chimneys in the region. The smoke stack at Middleton Regional High School is a favorite roosting stop.

In Bear River, the chimney at the Oakdene Centre was also a popular roost stop often attracting a hundred or more swifts each evening. The new liner that has evidently been installed may eliminate that roost.

Nighthawks are colonial birds that are sometimes caught in the headlights of cars on country roads as they dip and dive to feed just at dusk. Once in the Lake Cathy area on the Virginia Road in Annapolis County, they were feeding so heavily that traffic was stopped.

With falcon-like wings, they are sometimes seen over fields or lakes as a new crop of insects hatch and rise on the thermals. When flying ants hatch in August, flocks can be seen feeding over backyards.

These are only three of several insect-eating summer residents that are disappearing from the skies over eastern North America. The reasons are unknown but some researchers have speculated that declines in insect populations may be playing a role.

With black flies and mosquitoes filling the spring air, it is difficult for most folks in the rural Annapolis Valley to imagine that food shortages could be playing a role in this decline. However, these birds migrate from Central and South America to nest in this region.

Most of the eastern seaboard is dominated by large cities abutting other large cities. The hard surfaces of this urban landscape do not support the ecosystems that will generate the food to sustain these birds during migration.

The few puddles of seemingly suitable habitat in this ecological desert are often made toxic by their surroundings. Here these insectivores, like the shipwrecked sailor, face the problem of insects everywhere but not one to eat.

Whatever the causes, the clarion call, “quick, free beers,” is disappearing from our landscape. *****

Comments are always welcome and can be addressed to stephenhawboldt@annapolisriver.ca