WEBVTT

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So I have a lot
of sequences which

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are impossible to read
at an event like this.

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But one of the sequences
is called Field Studies.

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And it comes from
Grand Manan Island

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in the Canadian Maritimes,
where I've spent summers

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since I was a child.

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A few of the students have been
there for our field studies

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program and had the opportunity
to go out to Kent Island, which

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is a research station
for Bowdoin College,

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and encounter the
Leach's storm petrels.

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So I think I'll read you two of
the poems about Leach's storm

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petrels.

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This is a very
small pelagic bird.

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It digs a burrow in the
forest where it nests.

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Otherwise it lives
entirely at sea.

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It's a pelagic bird.

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And it's a remarkable
little bird.

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And well, the parents,
they're pair bonded

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and they'll raise their
chick in this burrow,

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taking turns to fly
as far as 500 miles.

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They'll fly as far
as Cape Cod to get

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the krill and the fat
resources to bring in

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for the little baby chick in
the burrow until it's grown.

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So I'm going to read
you two of these poems.

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I'm absolutely in love with this
marvelous little bird, which,

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of course, is endangered and
our grandchildren probably

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will never get to meet one.

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Navigation of the
Leach's Storm Petrel.

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Science wanted to
know what they knew.

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Sooty little tube-nosed ocean
runner, fork-tailed forest

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burrower, night wanderer.

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Transient in the
sweet musk of woods.

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How do they find their way?

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What's their sense of place?

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Do they know a
sense of belonging

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when they return from a year
at sea to breed in the forest

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where they hatched?

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Or is it just work
to repair the burrow?

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| stagger around at
night on forest paths.

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They don't understand the
land, though they need it.

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A man has studied the
colony for half a century.

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Took some petrels
to Ireland to see

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if they could find a way back.

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First bird returned
before the man did.

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Was it 9 days or 13?

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Do the numbers matter
when the bird just

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knew its inner compass,
reading longitude and latitude,

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skirting open ocean
swells to arrive

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where it knew it should be?