has begun to draw great quantities of birds—in particular, flocks of snow geese numbering 25,000 or more arrive each October, jetting around the valley in their tight Vs, and settling in on a few fields that line the state two-lane. “It’s the premier wildlife spectacle in the state—sometimes there are a hundred cars parked along the roadside watching,” Warren says; he’s been known to set up his spotting scope and stand there all day so that others could take a gander at the geese. “Overall, Dead Creek is a pretty significant bird hotspot,” he continues. “The fields are planted to some kind of goose food, like buckwheat or corn, and then they’re instructed to do a careless job harvesting so there are plenty of kernels left on the ground. The fields are off limits to hunters, but the marsh is extensive and in good shape. It was designed as a waterfowl refuge, so hunting is encouraged”—indeed, near the main goose flyway the reeds are filled with blinds where hunters sit all afternoon, waiting for a careless bird. “But the birds very quickly get a knowledge of how far the guns can fire,” he says.
So we might begin the muddle this way: Vermont’spremier wildlife spectacle comes about because managers plant fields in order to lure geese so that hunters can shoot them. Which might strike an environmentalist as a little crazy, except that without the hunters the snow geese might not be here. On the other hand, we’ve created such fine goose havens in the lower forty-eight that their numbers have exploded, and so when they return to the Arctic to breed they do massive damage, tearing up sedge grass by its roots and destroying the tundra. So maybe more hunting is the sane response. Or maybe not.
If we’re going to talk about wildness, and believe me we are, we have to face the truth that it’s a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we’re planting our feet. For instance: this afternoon Warren and I are standing on a little bridge above Dead Creek a few miles south of the waterfowl refuge. “You notice how the water is kind of mocha here?” he asks. “One reason is the clay soils—the particles can stay in suspension almost forever. And those particles get stirred up all the way along the creek by carp fanning their tails.” But carp are an exotic species, introduced from afar. So is the mocha color “right”?
A walk with Warren is an ambling, happy disquisition, interrupted frequently by sightings of one thing or another, often things with wings. “There’s a black-crowned night heron,” he’ll say. “At this point we don’t know where in Vermont they nest. Isn’t it nice to have some pieces of information still out there to discover?”Or, “Look, there’s a yellow warbler. As bright as any taxicab you’ll ever see, but with brown and red streaks on the chest.” Or, “Oh my, there’s a red-spotted purple. That’s a white admiral subspecies. Butterflies are kind of a new thing for me.”
But over and over we kept returning to the same kind of philosophical conundrums. It wasn’t just carp: Dead Creek was also host to a variety of other exotic and invasive species. “Ooh, water chestnut,” said Warren. “We’ve gotten rid of that on the Lemon Fair River [that is, Warren and Barry spent weeks pulling the plants up by the roots], but there’s still a little population over here in Dead Creek. The nut is an extraordinarily vicious-looking thing, like a caltrop. It gets stuck on the plumage and feet webbing of geese and ducks, and they carry it from one body of water to the next.” The scrubby meadows and hedgerows around Dead Creek were also filled with plants that, strictly speaking, Shouldn’t Be There. Honeysuckle. Wild parsnip. “Oh, there’s an interesting battle going on here. This is a Eurasian buckthorn, an invasive species. And this is a gray dogwood, which is supposed to be here. Over here the
So we might begin the muddle this way: Vermont’spremier wildlife spectacle comes about because managers plant fields in order to lure geese so that hunters can shoot them. Which might strike an environmentalist as a little crazy, except that without the hunters the snow geese might not be here. On the other hand, we’ve created such fine goose havens in the lower forty-eight that their numbers have exploded, and so when they return to the Arctic to breed they do massive damage, tearing up sedge grass by its roots and destroying the tundra. So maybe more hunting is the sane response. Or maybe not.
If we’re going to talk about wildness, and believe me we are, we have to face the truth that it’s a little hard to separate out the natural and the artificial, a little hard to figure out exactly where we’re planting our feet. For instance: this afternoon Warren and I are standing on a little bridge above Dead Creek a few miles south of the waterfowl refuge. “You notice how the water is kind of mocha here?” he asks. “One reason is the clay soils—the particles can stay in suspension almost forever. And those particles get stirred up all the way along the creek by carp fanning their tails.” But carp are an exotic species, introduced from afar. So is the mocha color “right”?
A walk with Warren is an ambling, happy disquisition, interrupted frequently by sightings of one thing or another, often things with wings. “There’s a black-crowned night heron,” he’ll say. “At this point we don’t know where in Vermont they nest. Isn’t it nice to have some pieces of information still out there to discover?”Or, “Look, there’s a yellow warbler. As bright as any taxicab you’ll ever see, but with brown and red streaks on the chest.” Or, “Oh my, there’s a red-spotted purple. That’s a white admiral subspecies. Butterflies are kind of a new thing for me.”
But over and over we kept returning to the same kind of philosophical conundrums. It wasn’t just carp: Dead Creek was also host to a variety of other exotic and invasive species. “Ooh, water chestnut,” said Warren. “We’ve gotten rid of that on the Lemon Fair River [that is, Warren and Barry spent weeks pulling the plants up by the roots], but there’s still a little population over here in Dead Creek. The nut is an extraordinarily vicious-looking thing, like a caltrop. It gets stuck on the plumage and feet webbing of geese and ducks, and they carry it from one body of water to the next.” The scrubby meadows and hedgerows around Dead Creek were also filled with plants that, strictly speaking, Shouldn’t Be There. Honeysuckle. Wild parsnip. “Oh, there’s an interesting battle going on here. This is a Eurasian buckthorn, an invasive species. And this is a gray dogwood, which is supposed to be here. Over here the
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