Nature & Outdoors
* Dokter, A. M. 2024 live bird migration maps; BirdCast, live bird migration map 9/26/24–Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://birdcast.info/migration-tools/migration-forecast-maps. Accessed 11/8/24.
Birds in the Storm
By Paul Laurent
As mountain communities continue to clean up and rebuild after the devastation of Hurricane Helene, I’ve gotten lots of questions about what happens to birds during storms like the one we experienced this past fall. The sad fact is that quite a few are killed, either by high winds, downed trees, or flooding. The good news is that birds and other wildlife are remarkably resilient in the face of natural disasters, and many more birds weathered the storm just fine. Some migratory birds actually took advantage of the storm to speed up their journey.
Birds have an amazing ability to sense changes in the weather. If you look at migration data from the day of the storm* (see map above), over a half-billion birds took to the sky and headed west out of the path of the hurricane, then they rode the strong, southerly winds on the western edge of the storm to make a massive push south to the Gulf of Mexico. Many of these birds likely shaved several days off their journeys to wintering grounds in the tropics!
On the other hand, hurricanes also tend to pick up tropical and pelagic birds and bring them hundreds of miles north of their usual ranges. The process is called ‘entrainment.’ Basically, the spinning winds of the storm catch soaring birds and gradually collect them in the calm of the eye. These birds will stay within the eye rather than battle the storm again, and they can remain in the eye of the storm for days or even weeks until it dissipates and breaks up, leaving them in some very unusual places. The other way to get these fallout birds is when the strong winds on the leading edge of the storm simply push birds ahead and to the side of the hurricane. In Helene’s case, lots of tropical and pelagic birds were seen in southern Florida, while others found themselves as far north as central Kentucky. Many of these birds managed to find their way back home, though some certainly were left too weak to survive the return journey.
A friend on the coast of North Carolina saw nine Magnificent Frigatebirds soaring over his house in Southport. These massive birds are far more common off the coast of Central America! While I’m sure quite a few of these tropical species passed through the mountains as well, the damage to roads and bridges made it largely impossible to go looking for them in this area.
The day after Helene came through I was able to get down to Valle Crucis Community Park to see how much damage there was. The roads were a mess, with downed trees and powerlines just barely cleared enough to allow one-way traffic. The sidewalk around the park had been lifted up by the force of the water and big chunks of it were scattered across the mowed fields. Park benches set into concrete were warped, twisted, and relocated, and someone’s SUV was crumpled up in the Watauga River next to a big shortage shed that wasn’t there the day before. The devastation was staggering to witness, until I made my way down to the natural meadow on the far end of the park. The young sycamore trees growing there all survived the storm, and while the fall wildflowers had been pushed flat by the flood waters, some were already beginning to stand themselves back upright.
I saw flocks of Palm Warblers picking through the fallen leaves; they are subdued little warblers, mostly brown with pale yellow under their tails, which they pump up and down almost continually as they forage. A Merlin swooped overhead—the small falcon was likely looking for Palm Warblers. I even saw three Pectoral Sandpipers who had been on their way from breeding grounds in northern Canada to wintering grounds in South America. They had stopped for the day to feast on the thousands of earthworms forced out of the ground by the flooding. There had never been a sighting of Pectoral Sandpipers at Valle Crucis Park before that day.
We actually get lots of shorebirds passing over the mountains during migration. If you draw a line on a map from the tundras of north-central Canada where many species of shorebirds breed down to the coast of Florida, that line goes right over these mountains. We just don’t normally get to see them, since they fly through overnight and seldom stop. When big storms flood mowed fields however, they create a temporary habitat much more suitable for sandpipers and plovers. They use their incredible sense of smell to detect the change, and in some cases large numbers of shorebirds congregate in temporarily flooded fields. The sod farms along Hooper Lane outside Hendersonville is one of the more famous stops for shorebirds in the mountains.
I noticed lots of warblers over the next few days foraging on or near the ground. These little songbirds are typically spotted flitting through the treetops, but the storm knocked lots of insects and caterpillars to the ground, and the birds quickly adapted their normal foraging techniques to the new conditions. The storm also coincided with the arrival of our overwintering sparrows, and they love the big tangles of branches, leaves, and other detritus that collected against large tree trunks during the flooding. It has created a perfect hiding place for sparrows and these snags are often full of seeds that were swept down by the floods. One such snag along the Boone Greenway had at least eight different species of sparrows seen coming in and out of it, including rare species for the area like a Lark Sparrow and a Clay-colored Sparrow. The Lark Sparrow is a striking little bird with bold harlequin markings of orange, black, and white across its face like war paint. The Clay-colored Sparrow is much drabber looking, resembling the abundant Chipping Sparrows but with a little more white on the face and a brownish rump.
The one constant in nature is change. Helene changed a lot of things here in these mountains, but the natural areas are able to bounce back from the destruction with amazing speed. Fallen trees open the canopy for new growth to spring up in newly available sunlight, while the downed trunks decompose into rich new soil as they provide habitat for beetles, grubs, salamanders and more. Ripped up root balls have created new shelters for Black Bears and other mammals who hibernate. The mountains look very different than they did before the storm, but life continues and even thrives in the transition. By observing nature, we humans can take inspiration.
Paul Laurent has been a birder and nature lover for as long as he can remember. He is the Naturalist for Valle Crucis Community Park, and owns and operates a small birding tour company called Epic Nature Tours. He also leads tours for Ventures Birding.