Nothing's Small! Birds and Butterflies in Cape May

A monarch caught our attention, flying across our line of vision as we sat on a bench facing Our Lady Star of the Sea cathedral after Sunday morning mass. This was a good sign, as our next stop was the Monarch Festival in Cape May, where we didn't know exactly what to expect but hoped to see large numbers of monarch butterflies take off on their migratory path to Mexico.

When we arrived at the Nature Center, we saw a woman leaving the festival, and we asked what she had seen. She said, "They aren't releasing butterflies today. The hurricane screwed everything up!" Based on that interaction, we lowered our expectations. As we joined the next tagging demonstration, we were taught by some amazing people, including a citizen-scientist expert on monarch migration from PA. We learned that much of what we thought we already knew about monarchs was not true. We thought that the monarchs we had seen in PA would be hanging out at Cape May, waiting for a favorable westerly wind. We learned that this is false: the monarchs that we see near our homestead head southwest to Mexico. When we were children, we had been taught that if we touched the wings and rubbed off the monarch's scales, they wouldn't be able to fly. That is also false; in fact, rubbing off the scales is part of the tagging process. After the demonstration, the three tagged butterflies were released to proceed with their migration whenever they were ready to leave for their long trip.

In addition to butterflies, we knew that Cape May is a good place to see migrating birds, and we took our binoculars along on our afternoon adventures. On our walk at South Cape May Meadows, we saw Mallards, a solitary Lesser Yellowlegs, a flock of Greater Yellowlegs, and a pair of Mute Swans. We then headed to the Cape May Lighthouse and the Hawk Watch at Bunker Pond, where we saw more swans, a few Glossy Ibises, a Yellow Warbler, and a congregation of more birders than we had ever seen in one place.

However, it was when we left our binoculars behind that we had our most exciting sighting. Walking on the beach after dinner, we saw another group of birders with scopes and binoculars in the distance. The group started to disperse, and one of them came toward us. She told us that there was a large flock of Black Skimmers on the beach by the water. By the time we reached the spot, the group had left with their scopes, and we were reliant on our naked eyes to see the birds. There was a considerable distance between us, but we did not want to walk into the sand and startle them. We stood and watched the flock. We started to count: 100, 200, 300, 350, maybe even 4.

Comparing our experience with the monarchs and the skimmers, this excerpt comes to mind from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh:

And truly, I reiterate, nothing's small!

No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,

But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;

No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;

No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim;

And (glancing on my own thin, veinèd wrist),

In such a little tremor of the blood

The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul

Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush is afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,

And daub their natural faces unaware

More and more from the first similitude.

We went to Cape May to see hundreds, thousands, or millions of butterflies fly away to Mexico. We left Cape May having seen only a handful of butterflies but having learned much about what we think we know and what we are able to see.

With peace and love ~ Vicki and Dean