So I have a lot of sequences which
are impossible to read at an event like this.
But one of the sequences is called Field Studies.
And it comes from Grand Manan Island
in the Canadian Maritimes, where I've spent summers
since I was a child.
A few of the students have been there for our field studies
program and had the opportunity to go out to Kent Island, which
is a research station for Bowdoin College,
and encounter the Leach's storm petrels.
So I think I'll read you two of the poems about Leach's storm
petrels.
This is a very small pelagic bird.
It digs a burrow in the forest where it nests.
Otherwise it lives entirely at sea.
It's a pelagic bird.
And it's a remarkable little bird.
And well, the parents, they're pair bonded
and they'll raise their chick in this burrow,
taking turns to fly as far as 500 miles.
They'll fly as far as Cape Cod to get
the krill and the fat resources to bring in
for the little baby chick in the burrow until it's grown.
So I'm going to read you two of these poems.
I'm absolutely in love with this marvelous little bird, which,
of course, is endangered and our grandchildren probably
will never get to meet one.
Navigation of the Leach's Storm Petrel.
Science wanted to know what they knew.
Sooty little tube-nosed ocean runner, fork-tailed forest
burrower, night wanderer.
Transient in the sweet musk of woods.
How do they find their way?
What's their sense of place?
Do they know a sense of belonging
when they return from a year at sea to breed in the forest
where they hatched?
Or is it just work to repair the burrow?
| stagger around at night on forest paths.
They don't understand the land, though they need it.
A man has studied the colony for half a century.
Took some petrels to Ireland to see
if they could find a way back.
First bird returned before the man did.
Was it 9 days or 13?
Do the numbers matter when the bird just
knew its inner compass, reading longitude and latitude,
skirting open ocean swells to arrive
where it knew it should be?