The Changing Seasons: Drought, Fire, Plague, and a Penguin

ummer is supposed to represent a lull, a time when birds are at their most sedentary.With many having completed their northward "springe' migration, they raise young before moving south again in "autumn."The scenario is, of course, misleading in the context of a great many spedes.The accompanying photograph of a Humboldt Penguin caught 18 July 2002 by fishermen near Noyes Island off of Prince of Wales Island, Alaska provides a needed reminder that completely unexpected birds turn up even during supposedly static seasons such as summer.Whether this bird wandered northward from the southern hemisphere under the influence of seawater currents, strayed from a coastal zoo, aquarium, or theme park, or escaped from a foreign fishing vessel on which it was kept as a"pet," we'll never know.Whatever its source, the bird turned up at a time when the extreme, even the absurd seemed to be the norm in the world of birds and birding. Climatic PatternsThis summer season was again marked by superlative climatic conditions-chiefly extreme heat and continued deought--through much of the continent.This undoubtedly led to the displacement of many birds, entire populations perhaps, by the drought and widespread fires in northern Mexico, the northern portion of the Baja California Peninsula, southern California, the arid Southwest, the Great Basin, and the Central Rockies.Few regional editors commented in detail on the displacement per se, but most regional reports in the vicinity of the deought and fires contain numerous early dates for migrants, records of wanderers at odd altitudes, and birds out of habitat and range.To back up a bit to the seasons beginnings: the cold and wet conditions in late May and June in the northern Rockies and northwestern boreal forests are believed to have delayed arrival of many migrant breeding species (Dinsmore 2002) and ultimately to have led to very poor reproductive success for a wide variety of northern-nesting species.As Michael Harrison put it, Alberta experienced "all four seasons in June and July, sometimes in one day."Snowfall in both June and July in the mountains of that province certainly must have made things difficult for montane breeding species there.In the central portion of the continent, dimate was more variable, with intra-regional differences in both heat and precipitation.Torrential rains came in northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, where flooding was a problem, while South Dakota and much of the northern Great Plains were under drought conditions, as were most of the southern Great Plains, especially Nebraska.The Great Lakes, Middlewestern Prairie, and Central Southern regions received more rain than areas to the west or east, though some areas in all three regions suffered below-normal water levels.South-central Texas experienced severe floods.

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