Fall 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 1999.]

Turnstones and Me

By Peter Friederici

Ecologists know that the survival of myriad wild animal species relies on their having sufficient room in which to live. I am persuaded that the health of the human species is no less dependent on our ability to experience connections to the natural world. I know in my bones that it's especially important for children to be able to witness some of the countless other glimmers of consciousness that exist in wild animals. In looking back on my own childhood, in the Chicago suburbs, I remember a few incidents that stand out as defining moments, as mileposts that help me to understand not only how I became a naturalist, but how I indeed came to chart the course of my life by the workings of the natural world around me. I want to revisit two of those incidents, not because they are any more significant than others but because they illustrate the importance of having places nearby where such experiences can be lived.

I remember my father taking me on a nature walk in the Chicago Botanic Garden. He was not a naturalist but he did enjoy a good walk, and some organization offered a group outing early one spring morning. The garden was new then and I remember scraped hills and raw earth. In my memory this experience consists of a few silent snapshots.

Down along a marshy section Canada geese were nesting. Back then it was still a rare experience to see geese in the Chicago area and, for me, a transfixing one. Snap: we see those impossibly large birds surprisingly close to us. Snap: suddenly a red fox — the first I've ever seen, a glowing ember of an animal, is running toward one of the goose nests. Snap: two geese lunge toward the fox, necks outstretched. Snap: wings beating, ferocious, they drive the intruder away. Snap: we stand there, awestruck.

I'm sure I'd seen episodes of Wild Kingdom or other animal television shows by then, I'd been reading my copies of Ranger Rick, and I think I was powerfully impressed by knowing that the same dramas I watched on TV or saw photographed in the magazine existed only a mile from my home. I have thought about it ever since.

The next episode occurred on the lakefront. One spring weekend the fog rolled in and made the Lake Michigan beach seem endless. It continued on forever into nothing, which in my eyes only increased its appeal, even if the fog reduced my chances of seeing birds. I had walked to the beach that day with a pair of binoculars because I had been reading about birds and bird watching — the Golden Guide Birds of North America was my newly discovered bible, those days.

Out of nothing, suddenly, I saw movement at the edge of the water. Four little birds. I crouched on the sand and stalked slowly forward. I didn't recognize them. They were small birds on long legs. They ran swiftly but comically, seeming to move their bodies hardly at all as their legs flicked. Then they stopped and investigated the spaces between pebbles. This behavior was nothing new — spotted sandpipers and sanderlings were common visitors to the beach. But I had never seen anything like the color pattern on these birds. Their legs were orange, their bellies pure white as the snow of the Arctic to which, I found out later, they were migrating. Their brown backs were riven with patches of cinnamon orange. But most arresting were their heads, which were splotched with a complex pattern of white and black — a dark eyeline like a glowering brow, another faint dark line below it that stretched to the nape, and a large black bib.

I was mesmerized. I had always accepted, unconsciously, the appearance of the common backyard birds — the brilliant red of the male cardinal, the yellow of the goldfinch, the glossy speckled plumage of the noisy starling. These were the looks of the world into which I had been born and I never questioned them. And now here were these strangers, and I found myself fascinated by their bizarrely complex plumage. No matter how much I drank it in, I was unable to look at it closely enough. I wanted to imprint on my mind the way every feather lay. What possible purpose could those colors serve? I wondered. For what audience were these garish feathers intended? All too soon the birds vanished for good into the fog.

I soon learned from the field guide that these were ruddy turnstones — a beautiful name for a beautiful bird, I thought. I felt proud of myself for having identified them. It was one of the first times I had seen an unknown bird, noted its markings, and successfully looked it up later in the guide. I still have the bird list I later drew up, and I turn to the page where ruddy turnstone is listed, between piping plover and Bonaparte's gull. I even included the Golden Guide's accents that guided my fumbling tongue over the scientific name: Aren?ia intérpres.

It was years before I saw others of the same species. But it didn't matter. Those brilliant shorebirds stayed alive in my memory. I found myself almost pleased that I had only seen them once, and that they had run off so swiftly into the fog. Their seeming rarity made the experience of seeing them that much more valuable. I began reading up on the mysteries of migration and evolution. I prowled the beach in subsequent springs and autumns and got to know other migrants. With new eyes I began appreciating the more common resident birds, whose plumage and behavior proved equally complex and unfathomable. Those four little birds were no more important ecologically than any others, but to me they became an entree into the infinite world of animals and of nature, an introduction to a world of wings and color and far distances that has fascinated me ever since.

These unexpected encounters with the natural world etched themselves deeply into my memory. There were wonders, I learned, right on my doorstep. And they were there because there was room for them: because the turnstones were able to find food on the beach, because the fox could find sufficient refuge from people in the ravines and brushy edges of the North Shore. Looking back, I am struck in equal parts by the potency of these experiences, resonating still after some 30 years, and by their tenuousness: in a place booming with new roads and houses and strip malls, we could easily wipe out the possibility of such experiences. It is my hope that we as a species can be wiser than that. It is my hope that we recognize no greater gift to our children and grandchildren than the ability to learn, in their own backyards and in natural places nearby, that they constitute only one sort of animal among many.

Peter Friederici grew up in the Chicago suburbs and now works as a field biologist and freelance writer. The Suburban Wild, a collection of his essays exploring the importance of our connection with the natural world, history, and memory will be published by the University of Georgia Press. Copies will be available at local bookstores or from the University of Georgia Press ($22.95 hardcover). Call (800)266-5842.