Good News for Millions of Birds that Call Seal River Their Home
Both greater yellowlegs, like the one in this photo, and its close relative the lesser yellowlegs, can be found in the Seal River Watershed of northern Manitoba - and also here in Maine. Courtesy of Jeff Wells.
Blackpoll warblers migrate north in spring from their northern South American wintering grounds, arriving in our area in late May. They are an abundant nesting bird in the Seal River Watershed of northern Manitoba. Courtesy of Jeff Wells.
Both greater yellowlegs, like the one in this photo, and its close relative the lesser yellowlegs, can be found in the Seal River Watershed of northern Manitoba - and also here in Maine. Courtesy of Jeff Wells.
Blackpoll warblers migrate north in spring from their northern South American wintering grounds, arriving in our area in late May. They are an abundant nesting bird in the Seal River Watershed of northern Manitoba. Courtesy of Jeff Wells.
There’s still at least three or four feet of snow on the ground in the Seal River Watershed. It’s located in northern Manitoba, but already there are perhaps twenty million birds or more migrating north toward the impressive landscape they’ll call home for the summer. Some are potentially coming from places as far south as Chile and Argentina. Some portion of the population of species like greater and lesser yellowlegs (widespread migrants here in Maine) and American golden-plover winter that far south and nest in the Seal River Watershed.
But, more species that breed in the Seal River Watershed come up from northern South America and Central America. That includes not just shorebirds like short-billed dowitchers that will be arriving here in Maine in May on their way to their Boreal bog breeding ground. It also includes the secretive gray-cheeked thrush, active little blackpoll warblers, wetland-loving northern waterthrushes, and many others.
The number of species that nest in the Seal River Watershed and winter in the U.S. is even more impressive. This list includes white-crowned sparrow, fox sparrow, dark-eyed junco, yellow-rumped warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet, common and red-throated loons, among many more. Bohemian waxwings, those crested gems with their distinctive rufous undertails, have been hanging around in the thousands here in Maine this winter. Guess what? They nest in the Seal River Watershed. Some years they return by mid-April. Hopefully they are a little delayed this year given the snowy conditions still prevailing there.
Last week, this impressive landscape that is home to so many millions of birds, moved a momentous step closer to being protected forever. That’s because on Friday, April 18, the four First Nation governments of the watershed, together with the provincial government of Manitoba and the government of Canada, unveiled the long-awaited plan for how to protect this incredible 12-million-acre pristine watershed.
The announcement included a commitment of significant funding so that the Indigenous governments can co-manage what is proposed to be a national park reserve on the eastern side and one or more provincial parks on the western side of the watershed.
We’ve written about the Seal River Watershed in these pages a number of times over the years because we know from bird tracking data that birds that winter and migrate through Maine actually go to and through the Seal River Watershed. Black scoters, those gorgeous sea ducks that spend the winter up and down out coast, are among those that have been tracked between Maine and the Seal River Watershed, for example. Those of us who live in Maine have a clear, shared interest in seeing these species protected and cared for in perpetuity.
As part of the protection effort, many Indigenous Guardians from the Seal River Watershed have come to Maine to visit and be part of National Audubon’s Hog Island Camp experience in Bremen. Those visits have provided great opportunity for sharing knowledge.
Now that the negotiated protected area plan has been announced, the public is being asked its opinion about whether they support it. While the decision, of course, ultimately rests with Canadians and especially Manitobans, the governments of Manitoba and Canada are welcoming submissions from all of us who share the birds together across the hemisphere.
You can learn more and find a link to add your thoughts here: https://www.sealriverwatershed.ca/srwa-ipa-proposal
Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).
