The Tune Without the Words

Charcoal gray gulls fill the air with a rush of wings on the last evening of April at Westward Beach. This species, Larus heermanni, or Heermann's gull, is abundant on Malibu's beaches in late spring, but it's also near threatened, with a population estimated at just 150,000 breeding pairs. It's a reminder that many of the things we take for granted here in Malibu are rare and remarkable. All photos © 2015 S. Guldimann

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul, 

And sings the tune without the words, 

And never stops at all, 

And sweetest in the gale is heard; 

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm. 

 I’ve heard it in the chillest land, 

And on the strangest sea; 

Yet, never, in extremity, 

It asked a crumb of me.

—Emily Dickinson

The tune without the words, the song of hope, is everywhere in Malibu in May. In the garden, morning is a symphony—and sometimes a cacophony—of bird calls: the oriole ticks and clicks like an overactive geiger counter, the parrots in the neighbor's palm tree exchange opinions with the crows in the eucalyptus tree and the oak titmouse alternates between announcing "sweet, I'm sweet!" and scolding the resident blue jay with a cry that sounds like "cheater, cheater, cheater." At dusk the sky is full of the rush of swallow wings and the silent acrobatics of the bats. 

The beautiful hooded oriole is a frequent garden bird, but it is shy and often more likely to be heard than seen. Its call is a combination of ticks and twitters that sound like a geiger counter.

All along Westward Beach and Surfrider, thousands of  elegant terns swirl and call, transforming the scene into a tableau from a snow globe, and the pelicans have returned, too, graceful, huge and pterodactyl-like.

A flock of California brown pelicans takes to the sky. You can see the little puffs of sand kicked up as they launch themselves into the air with powerful wings. Brown pelicans really are giants, their wingspan ranges from six to eight feet.

Last week, it seemed that there were just a few of each, this week, hundreds have gathered at Zuma and Surfrider. Flights of pelicans can be spotted all along the coast and the clamor of cries from the huge convention of terns at Surfrider can be heard from PCH.

The sky fills with the sleek white wings of the aptly-named elegant terns.

Like the Heermann's gulls, the terns have returned from their breeding grounds in Baja. And like the gulls, the elegant tern  is also listed by the IUCN (the International Union of Conservation for Nature) as near threatened, although you wouldn't know it to look at the numbers currently present in Malibu. 

A group of elegant terns gather on the sand at Westward Beach.

May is also a good time to look for more unusual species. There were stilts in the main channel of Malibu Creek this week—wading birds with impossibly long, thin, pink legs, and a pair of white-faced ibises—a species this bird watcher had never seen in person before. The brants were there, too—small wild geese stopping for a rest on their way north, but the terns and the pelicans are the most conspicuous harbingers of summer. 

A trio of brants—small, short-billed wild geese—dabble in the main channel of Malibu Creek. 

These are white-faced ibises. The photo doesn't do their spectacular iridescent plumage and bright pink eyes and legs justice. I know the ibis is the symbol of the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, but they looked more like something out of Lewis Carroll to me.

While I was trying to get a good shot of the ibises I was photobombed by an black-necked stilt, another candidate for a Wonderland native.

The pelicans and terns were late this year. The crash in the sardine population that is being blamed for the sea lion unusual mortality event may be responsible for that, but its grunion season now, and the tiny silver fish that spawn on the beach at the new moon in spring and summer are essential for marine mammals and sea birds.

Grunion will be running almost every night during the first week of May this year, thanks to the full moon. The May grunion run is an opportunity for to observe, not join the feast.  The first three months of the grunion breeding season are off limits to human fishers to give the fish a break. It's a bonanza for birds and marine mammals, with many diurnal species showing up in the middle of the night to take advantage of an all-you-can-eat fish dinner. 

Raccoon footprints in the mud near the mouth of Malibu Creek indicate grunion may have been on the menu for more than sea birds.

Here is the May grunion run schedule. Click here to see the Department of Fish and Wildlife's entire 2015 grunion run time chart. 

4 5 6 7 18 19 20 21

Mo 10:00 p.m. - Midnight Tu 10:30 p.m. - 12:30 a.m. We 11:05 p.m. - 1:05 a.m. Th 11:45 p.m. - 1:45 a.m. Mo 10:00 p.m. - Midnight Tu 10:40 p.m. - 12:40 a.m. We 11:20 p.m. - 1:20 a.m. Th 12:05 a.m. - 2:05 a.m.*

For the struggling sea lion population, the arrival of the grunion couldn't come too soon, and the tiny silver fish also attract common and bottlenose dolphins—absent for much of the spring due to the lack of bait fish, back to the Malibu coast. 

Sea lion pups rescued by the California Wildlife Center, being treated for malnutrition and dehydration in March.

Two of the same CWC sea lions, healthy again and headed back to the ocean for a second chance. You can read about the release event, and view more photos here.

Grunion are an essential food source for the Malibu Country Mart's colony of egrets and herons, too. Raccoons, coyotes and the ever opportunistic crows joining in on the fish feast. You never know what you'll see on a grunion night, darkness and silence, or something extraordinary. 

Harried egret parents are taking advantage of the spring grunion run to provide food for their young. Nesting real estate at the Malibu Country Mart was at a premium this year. The ficus trees at the shopping center that are the favorite rookery—or heronry—for snowy and great egrets and black-crowned night herons, were pruned hard over the winter. The foliage is just starting to grow back, but there's at least a few nests like this one, which is already full of hungry and vociferous nestlings. 

May is the time of rebirth, of love and joy and exuberance, of hope, but in Malibu it also brings a sense of loss. It's the end of the gray whale migration. All through the winter there’s the chance—and the hope—that a morning walk or a trip to the beach at sunset will offer a sight of whales. When the last few stragglers have left the warm southern seas and sailed past Point Dume on their way home to the arctic it feels as if some essential magic has gone with them. 

A gray whale and her calf pause at Zuma Beach on the long journey north to the arctic circle.

For me, part of that is grounded in the fact that when I was a child there was the very real fear that the whales would go and not come back. Whales still need protection, they face serious threats that range from pollution to ship strikes and Navy sonar, but they are still here, thanks to passionate conservation advocates who fought and continue to fight for their right to live.

There's an added poignancy in Malibu, since Point Dume was the location of the last commercial whaling operation in California. A total of 250 California gray whales were caught, killed and diced into dog food off Paradise Cove. 

In 2014, the City of Malibu passed a proclamation supporting the safe passage of Marine Mammals:

Whereas, whales and dolphins are known to be highly intelligent and emotional creatures that live in families and other social groupings, associations that last for most, if not all, of their lives and therefore deserve the right to their own freedom and lives.

The proclamation was a purely symbolic gesture, since the city has no authority over anything below the mean high tide line, but it was the first time an American city has officially recognized the right of cetaceans to live undisturbed.

A pair of bottlenose dolphins swim past Point Dume, enjoying freedom and life.

May is a reminder that that things can change for the better. The California brown pelican, the snowy and great egret and the gray whale have all been snatched back from the edge of extinction. The tern's fate is less certain, despite special protections in California, but there's hope for it. There's hope for everything. The "tune without the words" is the anthem of the conservation movement.  

While it's fun and interesting to observe the natural world, it can also be important. We have to know what is there if we are going to protect it. And appreciating it isn't enough, we have to fight for it, too. So there will continue to be grunion, and sea lions, and dolphins, and so there will still be terns in May, and the whales will return in December—this year, and next year, and a hundred years from now. 

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

― Jane Goodall  

Suzanne Guldimann

1 May 2015

Grunion Hunters

Although this scene looks as calm and peaceful as a Chinese brush painting, some high stakes fishy business is about to unfold at Surfrider Beach. All photos © 2014 S. Guldimann

Alive without breath;

as cold as death;

never thirsting, ever drinking;

clad in mail, never clinking.

Drowns on dry land,

thinks an island

is a mountain;

thinks a fountain

is a puff of air.

So sleek, so fair!

What a joy to meet!

We only wish

to catch a fish,

so juicy-sweet!

—J.R.R. Tolkien, "Gollum's Song"

It's the May new moon this week, and the grunion are running. This small silvery fish is off limits to human hunters in April and May, but it's open season for the local shore birds, who, like Gollum, "only wish to catch a fish, so juicy sweet."

From March until August, grunion come ashore at night to spawn, taking advantage of the highest full moon and new moon tides to lay their eggs in the sand. The eggs hatch 10 days later, the next high tide carrying the hatchlings back out to sea.
When conditions are right, in the dead of night, certain beaches can be covered in living silver as hundreds of fish come ashore, but it's rare to see even one lone grunion during the day. However, the same tides that help the fish reach the sand can strand them. At the Malibu Lagoon, any fish swept over the berm by the tide is fair game for the shorebirds.

This season, the lagoon extends in a long, narrow inlet all the way to the bottom of the Adamson House. While the water doesn't look appealing to humans, it was a kind of cross between bouillabaisse and a sushi dinner for an enterprising egret, taking advantage of fish left behind by the previous night's new moon.

The egret waits at the edge of the inlet, for all the world like a cat at a mouse hole. This is a common egret, also called a great egret. It has black feet—unlike its much smaller cousin the snowy egret, which has yellow feet. Great egrets stand more than three feet tall and can have a six-foot wing span. They are master fishers with good eyesight, boundless patience and lightning fast reflexes.

Pounce!

Apparently the fish wasn't oriented for optimum swallowing. The egret carefully spit it out, caught it in mid-air, flipped it around and gulped in down head-first, all in about three seconds. However, that quick flash of silver was enough to attract the attention of a passing Caspian tern. 

"Grunion? I want a grunion." 

That water can't be more that a foot deep, but the tern spots a fish and dives for it. Splash!

The most impressive part of the feat was how quickly the bird surfaced and transferred itself from the water back into the air.

This fish was also swallowed head first, gulp! Within seconds the tern was back in the air searching for more grunion, diving into the shallow inlet, and emerging again and again with a succession of silvery fishes.

I've described Surfrider and the lagoon in the past as a sort of Jurassic Park where humans have a chance to encounter the living descendants of the dinosaurs, but what struck me today was the evident intelligence of the birds I watched. I have no idea if anyone has ever attempted to evaluate the intelligence of the great egret—although the green heron, a member of the same family, has been documented using twigs, worms, and even bread crumbs cadged from humans as fish bait (you can watch a video of one fishing with crumbs here)—but their patience and speed are impressive, and this particular heron seemed to have figured out that if it put itself between the grunion and the end of the inlet it would have an all-you-can-eat fish dinner.

The tern and I both saw the egret at about the same time. Neither one of us could see what was in the water until we moved closer. It appeared that the tern recognized that the egret was successfully hunting something and that it flew in to investigate, and instantly took advantage of the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel opportunity. It's easy to anthropomorphize, but they both seemed extremely well pleased with themselves, and with life in general. Alas, it wasn't a good time or place to be a grunion.

The grunion run during the four nights following the new or full moon. Surfrider, Zuma and Leo Carrillo are good beaches to catch a sight of this fishy phenomenon, although there's no way of knowing if the fish will appear on any given night, even when all of the conditions appear to be right. Officials warn that bright lights and loud noises can scare the fish away—Flashlights should be used only to safely traverse the beach, not to illuminate the fish. It's a good idea to bring warm clothes and plenty of patience.

For anyone interested in addition grunion information, I wrote a more indepth article for the May 13 issue of the Malibu Surfside News. Dates and times and vast quantities of information on the 2014 grunion run are available at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife website.