There’s one breed of New Englander that doesn’t fear and abhor the imminence and high cost of a furious nor’easter like the one that brutalized us last week — the intrepid sea birder.

The birder — as opposed to the casual bird-watcher — exhilarates in both the beauty and the challenges of finding and observing birds rarely seen by others. His sport, which can prove physically and mentally taxing, rewardingly transports him to a realm of beautiful and dramatic exclusivity. Nowhere is this visual luxury more abundantly and comfortably experienced than far out at sea, where unusual pelagic species can be found following trawlers or feeding on bait rich waters, some of which extend as far out as our continental shelf.

There, in a magical world so far out of our element, the likes of countless shearwaters, petrels, jaegers, skuas, gannets — and in winter, penguin-like alcids, including puffins, murres, razorbills, and dovekies provide an eye-and-heart-stimulating reward that only the sea birder ever feels. Except when a nor’easter pummels us. Then it’s possible for all of us to witness a phenomenon that’s ever so magnificent, little-known, and all too transient. All we need to do is brave the elements and position ourselves at the right place onshore by sunrise.

At those brutally pounding times, winds carry birds that winter far out at sea, and funnel them close to shore, where at first light they instinctively veer away. The longer and more intense the storm, the more the avian treasures from far offshore — even as distant as the continental shelf — can be expected to present themselves dramatically close to us in full flight. Be then at points from Cape Ann to Cape Cod at dawn, and you will see an aerial surge of avian life displaying the magic of the feathered world.

It is at these frigid times that the sea birder turns oblivious to the damaging winds, beach erosion, and flooding that others are totally immersed in. Dressed in multiple layers like an Inuit, accessorized with binoculars and spotting scope, the sea birder feels and endures the cyclonic, counter clockwise rotation of the prevailing winds, which will assuredly pack birds deep into Cape Cod Bay around Barnstable’s Sandy Neck, Eastham’s First Encounter Beach, Chatham’s beaches, and into Provincetown Harbor, Rockport’s Halibut and Andrews points, and Ipswich Bay, where they’ll briefly prove a visual feast of overwhelming proportions.

If you missed this drama, we’ll likely have another chance to experience it before winter’s over. Watch your weather reports, be in position by dawn, and know there’s at least one reason to get excited about our next nor’easter.

Remembering 'Doc' Weagle

Richard “Doc” Weagle, a true gentleman-sportsman, died Dec. 31, 2017. Many of us with good reason loved the humble, soft-spoken and brilliant, retired Auburn dentist and water department superintendent, bird carver, and birdwatcher, who knew how to bring people together. He was a great force for good at the Auburn Sportsman’s Club.

It was Weagle, as a respected member and leader, who took the club by storm, persuading it to host my Lyme disease research team to bird band on its property, thereby uniting sportsmen and naturalists in positive ways we never imagined. He, thankfully, succeeded because everyone trusted his judgement. 

This was a particularly insightful invitation by the man who ran Auburn’s pheasant stocking program, considering the ill-advised attack of anti-sportsmen on the state’s trappers in 1996. The legislation of Question 1 — the statewide ban on the use of leghold traps — was in hindsight a most regrettable political move that put a distrustful barrier between naturalists and sportsmen, one that has taken until recent years to heal.

Sportsmen then saw future threats to the continuance of their great outdoor traditions of hunting and fishing, which extreme groups were plotting to also abolish.

At the Auburn Sportsman’s Club, both groups wound up working together on the Lyme disease research to their mutual advantage — and to the benefit of countless others. A few hunters from the club became bird banders, and a couple even sewed specially designed bags to place birds in from our capture nets.

Another member, J.J. White, began a bluebird nest box and banding program that became a model for our entire state; and attending naturalists found that the club’s hunters were for the most part really great guys heavily invested in conservation just as much as they were.

Meanwhile, Weagle, then partially debilitated by aching back problems developed from bending over his dental clients for too many years, was our behind-the-scenes record-keeper, notating every bird capture — sometimes over 2,000 per year — and forwarding all of our data to the appropriate federal and state governments.

Had Weagle not invited me to set up and direct our research station at the Auburn Sportsman’s Club, I would have done so at the Westboro Wildlife Management Area. But more than 10,000 visitors throughout county, the Auburn community, and its schools over all those years would never have had an opportunity to learn about migratory songbirds, the critical importance of science and preserving habitat, and seeing how the interests of sportsmen and naturalists are really the same at their core.

So many mentored naturalists would never have become valuable, federally-permitted banders — even professionals — greatly expanding our understanding of the role that wildlife has in the transmission of Lyme disease.

Both the local sportsman’s and naturalist’s worlds — and all of us bird-banding researchers — owe Weagle a celebratory thank you and goodbye.

—Contact Mark Blazis at markblazis@charter.net.

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