Long Live the King of the Meadow
/Today I published a 39-tweet story over the course of 6 hours: a day in the life of a meadowbird researcher in the Netherlands. Here it is fully assembled.
This is a story about a day in the farm fields of Friesland, a province in the Netherlands… 1/39 pic.twitter.com/FP4oCIfFkm
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…where I helped study a threatened bird: the Black-tailed Godwit, also known as “King of the Meadow.” 2/39 pic.twitter.com/ftX6NPCYaE
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
It’s early on a spring morning. There's a chill in the air as we wheel our bikes from the barn and set off. 3/39 pic.twitter.com/MsJa5nnEMh
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
The researcher I'm shadowing is American, like me. In fact, she’s my sister, Alice. 4/39 pic.twitter.com/Cr6H8iDqOa
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Alice's mission is to find, study, and protect nesting godwits. 5/39 pic.twitter.com/dpWX7L2LpM
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
In the last 40 years this subspecies has dropped from 120,000 breeding pairs to 35,000. 6/39 pic.twitter.com/C6hpANoTTe
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Why? Because godwits nest in wet meadows, which are being converted to vast fields of grass to feed dairy cows. 7/39 pic.twitter.com/QjUOf60F0W
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
It’s a struggle to figure out how to help these birds. 8/39 pic.twitter.com/kKHnD2iXnm
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
At the moment, we’re struggling against the ever-present wind as we pedal to our first field site. 9/39 pic.twitter.com/L59BWjDvNB
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
@sketchbiologist Erratum: you'll be relieved to learn that we in fact pedaled rather than peddled
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
We pass by farmhouses and canals and tulips starting to bloom… 10/39 pic.twitter.com/iZjHy3vYwg
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…and a pair of Friesian horses… 11/39 pic.twitter.com/o1rl0FZjw8
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…and everywhere the sounds of meadowbirds, here in Friesland to breed. 12/39 pic.twitter.com/7XM3P5qTbB
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
The godwits have been here for a month or so, after spending the winter in western Africa and Spain. 13/39 pic.twitter.com/yRCDFDNcZc
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
And Alice has been watching them closely ever since they arrived. 14/39 pic.twitter.com/OA3S0UdRNT
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
So she knows roughly where they're starting to nest—but actually finding the nests is another story. 15/39 pic.twitter.com/BLb6p9tjvD
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
As we approach our first field, we stop and drop our bikes. 16/39 pic.twitter.com/eJgWII6wpR
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
We walk cautiously into the field, and suddenly a bird flies up—a godwit that probably came off a nest. 17/39 pic.twitter.com/hRZv4xQxpB
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
We search the area it came from, but all we find is grass. Godwits are maddeningly good at nest camouflage. 18/39 pic.twitter.com/omNd4klOx4
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
So we hide in a ditch for a while, waiting for the bird to make its way secretively back to its nest site. 19/39 pic.twitter.com/M8JkoSUzR5
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
We come out of hiding with a better idea where to look. Now when the bird flies up, Alice pinpoints the nest. 20/39 pic.twitter.com/NGlzAylss8
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
First order of business is marking the nest with the tall sticks we've been carrying around on our bikes. 21/39 pic.twitter.com/FEld8kQk4b
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Not just so we can find it again, but so it won’t get run over with a mower or a liquid manure injector. 22/39 pic.twitter.com/24RumV6eG4
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Next Alice collects some data. 23/39 pic.twitter.com/JMLq3ej8f3
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
When the eggs hatch, the godwit chicks will be dodging machinery and predators… 24/39 pic.twitter.com/WhXkzxK5KN
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…and fighting to move around in the grass, which grows dense and high from all of the fertilizer. 25/39 pic.twitter.com/75kIWyKmD2
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
They’ll also be hungry (bugs are sparse in these grass-only fields). 26/39 pic.twitter.com/JaeAAW4XKQ
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
But that will come later. For now, we go nest-searching from field to field as the sun gets high in the sky. 27/39 pic.twitter.com/UJsDvgbQXv
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Sometimes we have to improvise a hiding place… 28/39 pic.twitter.com/Sx6llSIMkT
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…and getting to the nests isn’t always easy. You can see why the regional sport is pole vaulting over canals. 29/39 pic.twitter.com/mkhxfwKf5h
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
We break for lunch at this lake called the IJsselmeer (yes, spelled IJsselmeer) and hang out with some sheep. 30/39 pic.twitter.com/O6YbW3xEPk
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
It’s definitely not a bad way to spend the day… 31/39 pic.twitter.com/iQhUD5QftH
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
But the findings of this long-term study are a bit of a downer. 32/39 pic.twitter.com/oLpj6rTaIh
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Current protection measures aren't doing enough for the godwits, and it's a battle to put new ones into place. 33/39 pic.twitter.com/MUlFEID1Qp
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
Worse yet, there's more at stake than the meadowbirds alone. 34/39 pic.twitter.com/HmO1GObGIu
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
As we near the end of our route, we pass by the field that Alice calls Mordor… 35/39 pic.twitter.com/MVTAV89Kho
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…a dusty reminder that this industry is on track to cause its own collapse, taking a whole ecosystem with it. 36/39 pic.twitter.com/OGNkE0ZmDb
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
The upshot? Research and conservation are more important than ever. 37/39 pic.twitter.com/btcgoyM3wP
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
But right now, evening is coming on. It's time to get back to the field station and enter our data… 38/39 pic.twitter.com/6qnSe8Oc14
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016
…so we can renew our efforts tomorrow. Long live the King of the Meadow. THE END. 39/39 pic.twitter.com/aSRTU2pnhb
— Abby McBride (@sketchbiologist) May 3, 2016