The Love Beneath Everything

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Blaise Pascal

I’ve been teasing Giantsbane and JJL a lot this season. As King & Queen of the banded population of Piping Plovers, their hatch was widely expected to be the first of 2023. So everyone was quite surprised when two of their babies from 2020, Jimin of Barnegat Light and Kookie of Holgate, pulled off an enormous upset and beat them to the honor, proving once and for all that excellence truly does grow on this family tree. They are just the most magically productive family of survivors.

But when the great race to hatch finally ended with Jimin & Kookie’s successful hatches last week, it was time again to focus on the most anticipated hatch of all: Giantsbane & Jennifer Jason Leigh’s.

I share a live cam of Giantsbane & Jennifer Jason Leigh’s nest with Kashi from New Jersey Fish & Wildlife. There is a setting somewhere in the app that pings me every time Kashi logs on to watch the cam. Of course, I should turn it off, but I never do because I enjoy seeing her check the cam so much. Every morning while drinking my coffee, I see Kashi logging on first thing to take a peek at Giantsbane & JJL’s nest, and I smile. 

Because it seems strange that she would do this. She is responsible for nests all over New Jersey. Each morning there are dozens of nests requiring her urgent attention. So why check this one nest so regularly and consistently to start her day?

I like to believe that it’s almost a religious ritual. So even though Giantsbane & JJL are just one single pair, if they are OK, if they are being adorable, loving plover parents, then maybe everything else is OK too. If nothing else, it’s a spoonful of cuteness with her coffee. 

And so I knew when my phone began blowing up in the late afternoon with alerts that Kashi was watching the cam repeatedly, Giantsbane and JJL’s nest was finally hatching. This was it. The moment everyone was waiting for. I ran right over to Plover Park for the evening to witness the tiny miracle and to estimate when the hatch might be finished so the banding of their next generation of royal babies could be planned.

When I arrived, the cam showed that one chick was out of the egg and dried already while another was just coming out of its eggshell. There was no need to disturb them, so I set up a long-distance zoom cam and simply let it run while I checked other nests around the Park, batteries be damned.

Here is a quick, intimate look at this special moment:

As I walked through the Park, enjoying the strange combination of peace and anticipation, my phone started blowing up again. I assumed it was Kashi obsessively enjoying the miracle of the hatch through the cam. But I’m glad I peeked because instead, I found this:

Another cam I have pointed to watch the top of Giantsbane’s nest exclosure for avian predators had picked up a crow. Its pose was an ominous sign it had discovered the hatch. As I sprinted over the dune, I saw the crow menacingly circling the exclosure on foot, looking for a way to get to the freshly hatched babies inside the fence. At the same time, Giantsbane, JJL, and all the other adult birds in the neighborhood were working to chase it off. The camera I had set up earlier was still running, and here is what it saw:

Exclosures are a double edge sword. While they do a great job keeping predators out, they can also draw their attention. And when a crow discovers a hatching nest, exclosures can turn the babies into sitting ducks. Eventually, each baby will need to stumble outside the cage’s safe confines, where a patient crow can pick them off one by one. Imagine their terror sitting in there, surrounded by doom, with starvation as the only option to counter the threat. Maybe they don’t even understand what’s happening. But the parents sure do.

So I stayed until nightfall, keeping the crow away, then raced home to prepare to be back before dawn. With two unhatched eggs, Giantsbane and JJL would never get the chicks safely out of the exclosure before the wisened crow returned at sunrise. 

Just before bed, I checked the live cam one last time and was relieved to see Giantsbane peacefully incubating the nest in the dark. But I fear now I will always remember that moment as the last time I saw Giantsbane.

You must rise quite early to beat a hungry, determined crow to Plover Park. So I delayed only to make a quick pot of coffee for the long morning. While waiting for the brew to finish, with bags packed the night before, I quickly checked the live cam one last time. 

I was horrified by what I saw. I abandoned my coffee completely and headed straight to the Park.

Here is what I saw on cam:

Racing through the dark toward the Park, I noticed the first crows landing along the boulevard’s median, searching for the previous night’s fresh roadkill. Despite my best efforts, I might already be too late. But mostly, I desperately tried to think up explanations for what I saw on cam. The temperature was 50 degrees. One of those chicks was still wet from the egg. It was hard to imagine they were still alive without an adult warming them, and they certainly weren’t moving on camera. The only reason I could think Giantsbane & JJL would leave their hatching nest exposed in the cold was to fend off a predator, but if so, I should have clearly heard the chaos on the cam. Yet there was only the silence of the rustling wind. Something wasn’t right.

It was an eerie feeling hiking to the nest in the dim light, enhanced by a blood-red rising sun and the empty silence and stillness of the nesting area. I’m just thankful the cam had prepared me for something terrible, as what I was about to find was as awful as I could ever imagine.

Like the crow, a fox had discovered the sweet peeps of the hatching babies at the worst possible time. It had dug violently and furiously during the night to get into the exclosure. While the fox was unsuccessful at reaching the babies, it appears he took a much greater prize from us that night; Giantsbane and/or Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Despite the early hour, I urgently texted Kashi & Emily about the situation. Without even seeing the scene, Kashi confirmed my instinct: everything about this said “dead adult.” She asked me to photograph as much as I could while she and Emily discussed what, if anything, should be done.

As I carefully worked my way in concentric circles around and towards the exclosure, I could see many signs of a great struggle. I imagined Giantsbane bravely using his only defense, the “broken wing,” in a desperate attempt to lure the fox away. The move is always a gamble. Perhaps he was successful but at the ultimate cost.

Finally, as I arrived at the silent exclosure, it was time to photograph the nest bowl. The whole scene was heartbreaking beyond my ability to express.

Yet just as my phone dinged with instructions from Kashi, I swore I saw the tiny beak of one of the babies open and close in a faint sigh. Could they still be alive?

Kashi & Emily had decided they wanted me to break into the exclosure and check the babies. And if any were alive, to take them and warm them as quickly as possible.

As I carefully removed each chick from the nest bowl, my heart jumped as I perceived tiny signs of life despite them being so cold to the touch and almost motionless. The freshly hatched chick, still wet and the coldest of all, did appear lifeless, but I took him anyway. Because why not at this point. I left the unhatched egg as my compromise.

Abandoning all of my gear in the Park, I made my way back to the car, freezing babies cupped gently in my hand. As I slowly blew warm breath into my hands, I could suddenly feel slight movements. Soon I heard the faintest and most delicate peeps from at least one of them. 

When I reached the car, I placed the babies on some soft gauze in a small bowl from my Peregrine medical pack, cranked up the heat to 85, and drove as steadily as possible home. More movement, more peeps.

Arriving home, I quickly created a makeshift incubator from a “Crabitat” where my family’s beloved Hermit Crab “Crabby” lived for 13 long years, an old heating pad, some towels, and a little bit of Pedialyte to get them hydrated.

I suddenly remembered years ago, I invented a Piping Plover decoy capable of fooling Piping Plovers enough to be helpful here. So I tore through old boxes in the closet to find one and added it for the babies.

The transformation over those few hours from when they were found nearly lifeless until they were loaded up in a box for a long trip to TriState Bird Rescue in Deleware was, honestly, miraculous. Nature’s resiliency on full, dramatic display up close like this is humbling and amazing.

I’m still in shock from these events. However, this story is not over; and in many ways, it may only be beginning.

Kashi & Emily’s bold and compassionate decision to rescue those babies was a first step into an uncertain future. My willingness to warm and revive them, the next. TriState’s warm welcoming of them into their expert care, where they are now, the third. If that step doesn’t succeed, or the next phase of finding a foster pair to raise these babies in the wild doesn’t, I still wouldn’t have wanted to see it handled any other way. I’m grateful for Kashi & Emily’s clear, decisive focus and unshakable compassion in an emotionally charged and chaotic situation. It would have been so easy to say, “Just leave them on the beach.” You could wax intellectually with great ease about why that’s best or less cruel, and best of all, you wouldn’t have to do anything.

I’ve been getting many messages from people sympathizing with the trauma and loss. “It must have been the worst morning of your life.” While others have been asking, “How amazing did you feel? Your dream of raising Piping Plovers in your house finally came true!”

And they are both right.

I experienced almost every emotion a human is capable of experiencing on a compressed timeline, sometimes all at once. Happiness, sadness, fear, hope; when they are coming at you so fast that your mind can’t cling to or attach itself to any of them, it’s clear how thin and transient our emotions really are. When one can be replaced by another equal and opposite so quickly and thoroughly in the same morning, it’s actually quite liberating.

Because that’s when you notice there is nothing left to feel except the love that was right there beneath everything the whole time.

All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!

Carlos Castaneda