Pushing
Boundaries
I
recently heard of a tropical ocean bird who flew
all the way up to Lake Tahoe, California, this
past summer.
The
lone Cocos booby was first spotted on August 1,
fishing in the Tahoe Keys area of South Lake
Tahoe. A photo of the bird, posted to the Tahoe
Birding Facebook page, set birders near and far
aflutter. Over the next eight days, many arrived
at the lake to watch the bird fly over the
waters, following fishing boats and performing
cartwheeling dives to hunt for food.
Cocos
boobies aren’t traditionally migratory. They
historically inhabited Mexico’s Gulf of
California and parts of southwestern Colombia.
But over the past two decades, as our oceans
have warmed, small breeding populations have
moved to the Channel Islands, off the Southern
California coast.
“The
species is becoming less and less a strictly
tropical entity; it’s range is expanding north
at breakneck pace,” Will Richardson, executive
director of the Tahoe Institute for Natural
Science, informed me over the phone from Reno,
Nevada. Still, the fact that this one had flown
inland up and over the Sierra Nevada mountains
was “rather insane,” he said. Most likely, it
had lost its way.
Nine
days after it was first spotted, the bird was
found dead on a boat. “It’s a seabird. It was
fishing quite avidly, but its internal chemistry
couldn’t hack it with the clear water of Lake
Tahoe,” Richardson said.
For
Richardson, the booby’s last journey holds a
note of hope. “It’s very sad that the bird found
itself lost somewhere it couldn’t survive, but
in a lot of ways, getting lost is important to
the species’ survival,” he said. “Go make a
wrong turn. That is how they are able to fairly
quickly adapt to changing environmental
conditions and push the boundaries of their
range. That’s going to be very important in the
next century.”
I’ve
been mulling over Richardson’s words and how
they speak to an apparent contradiction inherent
in so many sentient species, including ours: the
urge to stay rooted in place, in habits, versus
the urge to wander, to explore new places and
ways to be. While both urges are valid, it seems
to me that, as the world changes around us, we
have to be more open to pushing the boundaries
of where we call home and who we call
neighbors. |
