About midnight, as the tide neared the full, the cork line bobbed as the first of the migrating shad struck the gill net. The line vibrated and several of the cork floats disappeared under the water. The shad, a four-pound roe, had thrust her head through one of the meshes of the net and was struggling to free herself. The taut circle of twine that had slipped under the gill covers cut deeper into the delicate gill filaments as the fish lunged against the net; lunged again to free herself from something that was like a burning, choking collar; something that held her in an invisible vise and would neither let her go on upstream nor turn and seek sanctuary in the sea she had left.
The cork line bobbed many times that night and many fish were gilled. Most of them died slowly of suffocation, for the twine interfered with the rhythmic respiratory movements of the gill covers by which fish draw streams of water in through the mouth and pass them over the gills. Once the line bobbed very hard and for ten minutes was pulled below the surface. That was when a grebe, swimming fast five feet under water after a fish, went through the net to its shoulders and in its violent struggles with wings and lobed feet became hopelessly entangled. The grebe soon drowned. Its body hung limply from the net, along with a score of silvery fish bodies with heads pointing upstream in the direction of the spawning grounds where the early-run shad awaited their coming.
By the time the first half-dozen shad had been caught in the net, the eels that lived in the estuary had become aware that a feast was in the offing. Since dusk they had glided with sinuating motion along the banks, thrusting their snouts into crabholes and seizing whatever they could catch in the way of small water creatures. The eels lived partly by their own industry but were also robbers who plundered the fishermen’s gill nets when they could.
Almost without exception the eels of the estuary were males. When the young eels come in from the sea, where they are born, the females press far up into rivers and streams, but the males wait about the river mouths until their mates-to-be, grown sleek and fat, rejoin them for the return journey to the sea.
As the eels poked their heads out of the holes under the roots of the marsh grasses and swayed gently back and forth, savoring eagerly the water that they drew into their mouths, their keen senses caught the taste of fish blood which was diffusing slowly through the water as the gilled shad struggled to escape. One by one they slipped out of their holes and followed the taste trail through the water to the net.
The eels feasted royally that night, since most of the fish caught by the net were roe shad. The eels bit into the abdomens with sharp teeth and ate out the roe. Sometimes they ate out all the flesh as well, so that nothing remained but a bag of skin, with an eel or two inside. The marauders could not catch a live shad free in the river, so their only chance for such a meal was to rob the gill nets.
As the night wore on and the tide passed the flood, fewer shad came upstream and no more were caught by the gill net. A few of those that had been caught and insecurely gilled just before the tide turned were released by the return flow of water to the sea. Of those that escaped the gill net, some had been diverted by the leader of the pound net and had followed along the walls of small-meshed netting into the heart of the pound and thence into the pocket, where they were trapped; but most had gone on upstream for several miles and were resting now until the next tide.
The posts of the wharf on the north shore of the island showed two inches of wet water-mark when the fisherman came down with a lantern and a pair of oars. The silence of the waiting night was broken by the thud of his boots on the wharf; the grating of oars fitting into oarlocks; the splash of water from the oars as he pulled out into the gutter and headed toward the town docks to pick up his partner. Then the island settled to silence again and to waiting.
Although there was as yet no light in the east, the blackness of water and air was perceptibly lessening, as though the darkness that remained were something less solid and impenetrable than that of midnight. A freshening air moved across the sound from the east and, blowing across the receding water, sent little wavelets splashing on the beach.
Most of the black skimmers had already left the sound and returned by way of the inlet to the outer banks. Only Rynchops remained. Seemingly he would never tire of circling the island, of making wide sorties out over the marshes or up the estuary of the river where the shad nets were set. As he crossed the gutter and started up the estuary once more, there was enough light to see the two fishermen maneuvering their boat into position beside the cork line of the gill net. White mist was moving over the water and swirling around the fishermen, who were standing in their boat and straining to raise the anchor line at the end of the net. The anchor came up, dragging with it a clump of widgeon grass, and was dropped in the bottom of the boat.
The skimmer passed upstream about a mile, flying low to the water, then turned by circling widely over the marshes and came down to the estuary again. There was a strong smell of fish and of water weeds in the air which came to him through the morning mists, and the voices of the fishermen were borne clearly over the water. The men were cursing as they worked to raise the gill net, disentangling the fish before they piled the dripping net on the flat bottom of the skiff.
As Rynchops passed about half a dozen wing beats from the boat, one of the fishermen flung something violently over his shoulder—a fish head with what looked like a stout white cord attached. It was the skeleton of a fine roe shad, all that remained, save the head, after the feast of the eels.
The next time Rynchops flew up the estuary he met the fishermen coming downstream on the ebbing tide, net piled in the boat over some half-dozen shad. All the others had been gutted or reduced to skeletons by the eels. Already gulls were gathering on the water where the gill net had been set, screaming their pleasure over the refuse which the fishermen had thrown overboard.
The tide was ebbing fast, surging through the gutter and running out to sea. As the sun’s rays broke through the clouds in the east and sped across the sound, Rynchops turned to follow the racing water seaward.
2
Spring Flight
THE NIGHT WHEN the great run of shad was passing through the inlet and into the river estuary was a night, too, of vast movements of birds into the sound country.
At daybreak and the half tide two small sanderlings ran beside the dark water on the ocean beach of the barrier island, keeping in the thin film at the edge of the ebbing surf. They were trim little birds in rust and gray plumage, and they ran with a twinkle of black feet over the hard-packed sand, where puffs of blown spume or sea froth rolled like thistledown. They belonged to a flock of several hundred shore birds that had arrived from the south during the night. The migrants had rested in the lee of the great dunes while darkness remained; now growing light and ebbing water were drawing them to the sea’s edge.
As the two sanderlings probed the wet sand for small, thin-shelled crustaceans, they forgot the long flight of the night before in the excitement of the hunt. For the moment they forgot, too, that faraway place which they must reach before many days had passed—a place of vast tundras, of snow-fed lakes, and midnight sun. Blackfoot, leader of the migrant flock, was making his fourth journey from the southernmost tip of South America to the Arctic nesting grounds of his kind. In his short lifetime he had traveled more than sixty thousand miles, following the sun north and south across the globe, some eight thousand miles spring and fall. The little hen sanderling that ran beside him on the beach was a yearling, returning for the first time to the Arctic she had left as a fledgling nine months before. Like the older sanderlings, Silverbar had changed her winter plumage of pearly gray for a mantle heavily splashed with cinnamon and rust, the colors worn by all sanderlings on their return to their first home.
In the fringe of the surf, Blackfoot and Silverbar sought the sand bugs or Hippa crabs that honeycombed the ocean beach with their burrowings. Of all the food of the tide zone they loved best these small, egg-shaped crabs. After the retreat of each w
ave the wet sand bubbled with the air released from the shallow crab burrows, and a sanderling could, if he were quick and sure of foot, insert his bill and draw out the crab before the next wave came tumbling in. Many of the crabs were washed out by the swift rushes of the waves and left kicking in liquefying sand. Often the sanderlings seized these crabs in the moment of their confusion, before they could bury themselves by furious scrambling.
Pressing close to the backwash, Silverbar saw two shining air bubbles pushing away the sand grains and she knew that a crab was beneath. Even as she watched the bubbles her bright eyes saw that a wave was taking form in the tumbling confusion of the surf. She gauged the speed of the mound of water as it ran, toppling, up the beach. Above the deeper undertones of moving water she heard the lighter hiss that came as the crest began to spill. Almost in the same instant the feathered antennae of the crab appeared above the sand. Running under the very crest of the green water hill, Silverbar probed vigorously in the wet sand with opened bill and drew out the crab. Before the water could so much as wet her legs she turned and fled up the beach.
While the sun still came in level rays across the water, others of the sanderling flock joined Blackfoot and Silverbar and the beach was soon dotted with small shore birds.
A tern came flying along the surf line, his black-capped head bent and his eyes alert for the movement of fish in the water. He watched the sanderlings closely, for sometimes a small beach bird could be frightened into giving up its catch. When the tern saw Blackfoot run swiftly into the path of a wave and seize a crab he slanted down menacingly, screaming threats in a shrill, grating voice.
Tee-ar-r-r! Tee-ar-r-r! rattled the tern.
The swoop of the white-winged bird, which was twice as large as the sanderling, took Blackfoot by surprise, for his senses had been occupied with eluding the onrush of water and preventing the escape of the large crab held in his bill. He sprang into the air with a sharp Keet! Keet! and circled out over the surf. The tern whirled after him in pursuit, crying loudly.
In his ability to bank and pivot in the air Blackfoot was fully the equal of the tern. The two birds, darting and twisting and turning, coming up sharply together and falling away again into the wave troughs, passed out beyond the breakers and the sound of their voices was lost to the sanderling flock on the beach.
As he rose steeply into the air in pursuit of Blackfoot, the tern caught sight of a glint of silver in the water below. He bent his head to mark the new prey more certainly and saw the green water spangled with silver streaks as the sun struck the flanks of a school of feeding silversides. Instantly the tern tipped his body steeply into a plane perpendicular to the water. He fell like a stone, although his body could not have weighed more than a few ounces, struck the water with a splash and a shower of spray, and in a matter of seconds emerged with a fish curling in his bill. By this time Blackfoot, forgotten by the tern in the excitement engendered by the bright flashes in the water, had reached the shore and dropped down among the feeding sanderlings, where he was running and probing busily as before.
After the tide turned, the water pressed stronger from the sea. The waves came in with a deeper swell and a heavier crash, warning the sanderlings that feeding on the ocean beach was no longer safe. The flock wheeled out over the sea, with a flashing of the white wing bars that distinguished them from other sandpipers. They flew low over the crests of the waves as they traveled up the beach. So they came to the point of land called Ship’s Shoal, where the sea had broken through the barrier island to the sound years before.
At the point the inlet beach lay level as a floor from the sea on the south side to the sound on the north. The wide sand flat was a favorite resting place for sandpipers, plovers, and other shore birds; and it was loved, too, by the terns, the skimmers, and the gulls, who make their living from the sea, but gather to rest on shores and sandspits.
That morning the inlet beach was thronged with birds, resting and waiting for the tide turn that they might feed again, fueling small bodies for the northward journey. It was the month of May, and the great spring migration of the shore birds was at its height. Weeks before, the waterfowl had left the sounds. Two spring tides and two neap tides had passed since the last skein of snow geese had drifted to the north, like wisps of cloud in the sky. The mergansers had gone in February, looking for the first breaking up of the ice in the northern lakes, and soon after them the canvasbacks had left the wild celery beds of the estuary and followed the retreating winter to the north. So, too, the brant, eaters of the eel grass that carpeted the shallows of the sound, the swift blue-winged teal, and the whistling swans, filling the skies with their soft trumpetings.
Then the bell notes of the plovers had begun to ring among the sand hills and the liquid whistle of the curlew throbbed in the salt marshes. Shadowy forms moved through the night skies and pipings so soft as barely to be audible drifted down to fishing villages sleeping below, as the birds of shore and marsh poured northward along ancestral air lanes, seeking their nesting places.
Now while the shore birds slept on the inlet beach the sands belonged to other hunters. After the last bird had settled to rest, a ghost crab came out of his burrow in the loose white sand above the high-water mark. He sped along the beach, running swiftly on the tips of his eight legs. He paused at a mass of sea wrack left by the night tide not a dozen paces from the spot where Silverbar stood on the edge of the sanderling flock. The crab was a creamy tan, matching the sand so closely that he was all but invisible when he stood still. Only his eyes, like two black shoe buttons on stalks, showed color. Silverbar saw the crab crouch behind the litter of sea-oats stubble, leaves of beach grass, and pieces of sea lettuce. He was waiting for a sand hopper or beach flea to show itself by an unwary movement. As the ghost crabs knew, the beach fleas hid in the seaweeds when the tide was out, browsing on them and picking up bits of decaying refuse.
Before the tide had risen another hand’s breadth, a beach flea crept out from under a green frond of sea lettuce and leaped with an agile flexing of its legs across a stem of sea oats, as large to it as a fallen pine. The ghost crab sprang like a pouncing cat and seized the flea in his large crushing claw, or chela, and devoured it. During the next hour he caught and ate many of the beach hoppers, stealing on silent feet from one vantage point to another as he stalked his prey.
After an hour the wind changed and blew in across the inlet channel, obliquely from the sea. One by one the birds shifted their position so that they faced the wind. Above the surf at the point they saw a flock of several hundred terns fishing. A shoal of small silvery fish was passing seaward around the point, and the air was filled with the white wing flashes of diving terns.
At intervals the birds on the beach at Ship’s Shoal heard the flight music of hurrying flocks of black-bellied plovers, high in the sky; and twice they saw long lines of dowitchers passing northward.
At noon white wings sailed over the sand dunes and a snowy egret swung down long black legs. The bird alighted at the margin of a pond that lay, half encircled by marsh, between the eastern end of the dunes and the inlet beach. The pond was called Mullet Pond, a name given to it years before when it had been larger and mullet had sometimes come into it from the sea. Every day the small white heron came to fish the pond, seeking the killifish and other minnows that darted in its shallows. Sometimes, too, he found the young of larger fishes, for the highest tides of each month cut through the beach on the ocean side and brought in fish from the sea.
The pond slept in noonday quiet. Against the green of the marsh grass the heron was a snow-white figure on slim black stilts, tense and motionless. Not a ripple nor the shadow of a ripple passed beneath his sharp eyes. Then eight pale minnows swam single file above the muddy bottom, and eight black shadows moved beneath them.
With a snakelike contortion of its neck, the heron jabbed violently, but missed the leader of the solemn little parade of fish. The minnows scattered in sudden panic as the clear water was churned to mud
dy chaos by the feet of the heron, who darted one way and another, skipping and flapping his wings in excitement. In spite of his efforts, he captured only one of the minnows.
The heron had been fishing for an hour and the sanderlings, sandpipers, and plovers had been sleeping for three hours when a boat’s bottom grated on the sound beach near the point. Two men jumped out into the water and made ready to drag a haul seine through the shallows on the rising tide. The heron lifted his head and listened. Through the fringe of sea oats on the sound side of the pond he saw a man walking down the beach toward the inlet. Alarmed, he thrust his feet hard against the mud and with a flapping of wings took off over the dunes toward the heron rookery in the cedar thickets a mile away. Some of the shore birds ran twittering across the beach toward the sea. Already the terns were milling about overhead in a noisy cloud, like hundreds of scraps of paper flung to the wind. The sanderlings took flight and crossed the point, wheeling and turning almost as one bird, and passed down the ocean beach about a mile.
The ghost crab, still at his hunting of beach fleas, was alarmed by the turmoil of birds overhead, by the many racing shadows that sped over the sand. By now he was far from his own burrow. When he saw the fisherman walking across the beach he dashed into the surf, preferring this refuge to flight. But a large channel bass was lurking near by, and in a twinkling the crab was seized and eaten. Later in the same day, the bass was attacked by sharks and what was left of it was cast up by the tide onto the sand. There the beach fleas, scavengers of the shore, swarmed over it and devoured it.