the highlight of your adirondack adventure

After 5 days away in northern Michigan, I arrived back home in the Adirondacks on Sunday evening of Memorial Day Weekend. I was half-listening to CNN news Monday morning, when I registered “Whiteface Mountain” and “3 FEET of snow”! I rewound the news hoping I incorrectly heard it. Five inches of rain had fallen in the lower elevations of the Adirondacks, and at higher elevations, it was snow – a great deal of snow in a short amount of time. Temperatures were in the 30s at lower elevations and as is usually the case, it was no doubt at least 10 degrees colder in the higher elevations.

I have had calls and email messages asking about Bicknell’s Thrush and how it could be faring. On May 19th I found many Bicknell’s Thrushes back, and many other species holding territories on Whiteface Mountain’s summit area. I immediately thought about the implications of such a severe weather event for all the species at high elevations. I thought about the female Bicknell’s Thrushes just returning, depleted from their long journey, arriving into a world of cold and snow. One person suggested that all the birds could simply move to lower elevations and wait out the snow melt. I highly doubt that these territorial species will leave their breeding grounds, and I suspect the event will end up taking a heavy toll on many of the birds. I recall a late April storm over a decade ago when we received a sudden two-foot snowfall. An American Woodcock ended up on someone’s porch in town (the only place it could find without snow). I called a rehabilitator friend and she immediately picked up the bird, but its weight was half of what it should have been. She tried to save the bird for 3 days, but it died. There is no doubt that many other birds died from that severe weather event. If only it was as simple as having all the birds temporarily move to a snowless place, but it just doesn’t work that way! I have observed thrushes, in particular American Robins and Hermit Thrushes, gather on plowed roadways when we’ve had late snow events. The Whiteface Mountain manager informed me that they were plowing the road and hoped to have it re-open right away. So I hope the snow-free roadway provides a place for Bicknell’s and Swainson’s Thrushes, American Robins (yes, there are actually nesting robins on Whiteface!), and other high elevation species to find food to get through this severe weather event. But only one mountain in the Adirondacks has a road, and all the other High Peaks are buried in deep snow. I have observed Bicknell’s Thrush appearing to fare well when we have received early October snowstorms before their fall migration – but not in THREE feet of snow!

A sarcastic comment was made on a recent group email message (not a birding group) about the heavy, late snowfall in the Adirondacks and how the person thought our problem was “global warming”. The ignorance in such statements is greatly troubling. While we can never prove that any one extreme weather event is the direct result of global warming, we can certainly look at the patterns and trends. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe as we continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. The extreme weather graph mimics the Keeling Curve, and I might add, the world population curve also. (There were 3 billion people on the planet when I was born, and if I live to my life-expectancy, it will be 9 billion – a TRIPLING in one lifetime.) A warming planet will greatly increase the chances of extreme weather events. You would have to have your head in the sand not to notice this is already the case.

Each year, I become more worried climbing up the mountains and wondering what changes I will observe from the prior year. The rate of species expansion upslope is astounding. This year, Black-throated Green and Black-throated Blue Warblers are holding territories well over 4,000 feet on Whiteface Mountain – something that would not have been the case a decade ago. I tallied twice as many Swainson’s Thrushes during the Mountain Birdwatch survey of Whiteface Mountain in 2012 – again, something that would not have been the case a decade ago. (Scientists believe that the warming spring temperatures have allowed Swainson’s Thrushes to rapidly expand their breeding range upward in elevation – and become a potential competitor with Bicknell’s Thrush.) The steep decline in Bicknell’s Thrush numbers I’ve observed in the past couple years is particularly troubling. Observing such rapid ecological changes on the mountains over the course of a mere decade is like someone holding up a magnifying glass to climate change effects, and it is a frightening image.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about my own unintended complicity in our warming planet, and the resulting harm done to other species, including extinction for some. In a talk that I give on climate change, I have a slide with photos depicting the typical U.S. lifestyle – two cars, 24-7 access to electricity, seemingly unlimited appliances to simplify our lives, a big (heated or cooled) home, air travel, and stores filled with a myriad of food choices, some shipped thousands of miles from around the world – all spewing CO2 into the atmosphere. I think you get the picture. We grew up with this lifestyle and no one wants to give it up. But our lifestyle is inflicting great harm on the life forms of our planet – including humans. Humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere enveloping Earth, which is a terrifying reality. As a result, the world in which our current life forms evolved is rapidly changing. Extreme weather events take a huge toll. For birds, it can hamper nesting (as 5 inches of rain and 3 feet of snow no doubt did this past weekend), and this year, bird migration was even more perilous as birds encountered extreme weather events (including changing wind patterns) when they were already depleted from such exhausting travel – resulting in a huge number of fatalities.

To leave this blog post on a more positive(!) note, I recently heard the tail-end of a piece on National Public Radio highlighting the work of a number of PhD students working on climate change. They are receiving millions of dollars for their research on artificially creating a photosynthesis process to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. It was the most hopeful news I’ve heard in a long time. There are many complications in their work, and their potential solution will take time, but it was so heartening to hear of young people concerned about climate change and working hard to find a solution. I hope they hurry.