The Wildlife of New England: A Viewer's Guide

Introduction

introduction Nestled in an especially picturesque setting beneath Mount Katahdin and neighboring South Turner Mountain, Maine’s Sandy Stream Pond offers an ideal combination of scenery and wildlife viewing opportunities. As I followed a trail along its west shores on one sunny late June morning, a solitary cow moose was just exiting the water after a breakfast of aquatic plants. Over the next hour, there was plenty to observe: a white-tailed buck made a brief appearance to take a drink at the pond’s outlet, a group of red-breasted mergansers cruised back and forth across the shallow water, two belted kingfishers staged a whirling territorial duel, and darner dragonflies hovered above the vegetation along the shore. Around midmorning, two female moose with calves appeared on opposite edges of the pond. One of the youngsters, whose newborn status was evident by its light tan coat and unsteady legs, dropped out of sight into the vegetation and rocks along the shoreline, while the other tentatively followed its mother into the water. Soon a young bull, whose stubby antlers had a coating of velvet, emerged from the woods and began working his way around the pond. The calf that had been drinking returned quickly to the shore, while his enraged mother chased the bull three-quarters of the way across the pond. When the mother returned, she couldn’t find her calf and waded over to the other female, who was now with her own offspring , and the two engaged in a tense stare-down for several minutes. By morning’s end, no fewer than 11 moose, including a large bull and a pair of female yearlings, had made appearances to escape the summer heat and ubiquitous insects. Several weeks later, I rode in a small tour boat as it navigated the sandbars of Monomoy Point at Cape Cod’s elbow amid groups of basking gray and harbor seals. Just a matter of hours from central Maine, this was an altogether different environment of mudflats, salt marshes, tidal creeks, and gentle topography where elevations of a few feet changed the natural communities . We then landed on one of the islands, where there were large colonies of terns and gulls. The late-summer migrations were well under way, and mixed groups of shorebirds joined uncommon residents such as American oystercatchers in feeding forays along the tidal flats. xiv introduction It’s indeed an exciting time to be a wildlife watcher in the Northeast, as many species have recently rebounded to levels unseen in previous centuries and decades. Today, sightings of moose, white-tailed deer, beavers, great blue herons, wild turkeys, humpback whales, and gray and harbor seals are commonplace, but these encounters aren’t to be taken for granted. Indeed, only a matter of decades ago one could travel throughout much of the region and have little or no chance of seeing these and other iconic species. New England’s wildlife populations have undergone a remarkable series of changes over the past 400 years, reflecting the change in the region’s landscape. In the period prior to European settlement, the region was largely forested, with abundant wildlife and inhabited by a variety of Native peoples, some of whom practiced agriculture by rotating fields on cycles. When colonists arrived from the seventeenth century onward, they rapidly transformed this landscape by clearing extensive areas for permanent agricultural use. At the height of this activity, it is estimated, roughly threequarters of the region was cleared, especially in the southern and central regions. Though farming wasn’t as widespread in the rugged north woods, much of the area was logged, and very little virgin forest remains today. As a result, many species were deprived of their food and cover source. At the same time, unregulated hunting and trapping, motivated by markets (beavers and whales, for example), predator control (wolves and mountain lions), subsistence (deer and wild turkeys), or merely sport, further decimated populations of many species, to the point that many were greatly reduced or entirely eliminated. Asthenineteenthcenturyprogressedandthendrewtowardaclose,many New England farms were abandoned, and the region’s forests and wildlife began to gradually recover. However, during the mid-twentieth century, the widespread use of pesticides such as ddt had devastating consequences for bald eagles, peregrine falcons, osprey, and other species. The one benefit from this unfortunate episode was that it triggered studies and conservation efforts that were part of an increased environmental awareness. Thanks to the regrowth of the woodlands and many successful reintroduction projects...