Courtship Medley à la Albatross

It begins with a prance dance,
a tiptoe head-bob waddle
and a wing fluff.  Then, fake a preen,
shake out a sideways
head-breaking shriek,
a chair-leg-floor-scrape scream,
and sidle into a crooked raga
with fast and furious tabla drums,
and applause, applause, wait –

it’s a drill-hammer fixing
a squeaky door behind the beak,
a flanking feather-grab tease
to a show of chocolate origami wings,
quick switcheroo to a bass kazoo,
throw the head up high, trumpet
to blow the clouds from the sky,
it’s a match, it’s a mate, a pact
to hatch an egg, raise a chick,

then bid adieu until next season,
dancing days forever over
in favor of a lifelong bond.

~Victoria Sloan Jordan

 

photo: kris krug

Filmed and edited by Joe Schweers
Narrated by Chris Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Filmed and edited by Jan Vozenilek

Music by Christen Lien

Filmed by Victoria Sloan Jordan
Music by Christen Lien

Video by: Jan Vozenilek.  Voiceover: Victoria Sloan Jordan.

Music by Christen Lien

I’m confused by the abundant life and abundant plastic pollution here.  It’s easy to slip into a fantasy that a sort of balance has been achieved on Midway Atoll.  Birds nesting amidst plastic cigarette lighters, bottle caps, toys, umpteen bits and pieces of plastic; turtles pulling up on the beach to rest among plastic buoys and ghost nets and fuel containers; seals frolicking under the pier with discarded shampoo bottles – all of it getting along, or so it seems from a cartoon view.  But then you begin to encounter the decaying bodies of albatross, almost all of them containing some amount of plastic, and some completely choked with it that there’s no mystery how this bird died.

How can I possibly continue to contribute to the stream of plastic into our waterways and oceans after seeing the albatross stuffed with plastic?   Matches, people.  Glass, metal.  Re-use!  Forget recycling, it’s not happening, and when it’s plastic it’s called down-cycling, anyway.  What happens when we are up to our eyeballs in fleece and carpet and plastic decking?

I will go home a changed person after this trip.  I’ve been an uber-recycler for most of my adult life.  But now I can see that recycling is not the answer.  We just need to stop making so much plastic.  From here forward, my own consumption of it, especially disposables, will be under a high-power microscope.  I’ll be considering every way in which I use plastic in my life, examining my wasteful habits more deeply, and asking myself what’s really important – a quick, disposable convenience or something with enduring value?  It’s a good lesson for me on how to use stuff, and also how to enrich my life.

Consider joining the discussion about plastics on our Facebook group by clicking on the Discussion tab.

~Victoria Sloan Jordan

It’s the end of Day 3 for us on Pihemanu (Midway Atoll) in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Pihemanu – “the loud din of birds” in Hawaiian – is relatively quiet now that the nearly 800,000 albatross are out to sea for the next few months.  Other seabirds are easier to notice now.  Terns, petrels, tropicbirds, frigatebirds and noddies are busy dancing and courting, feeding and raising their chicks.  But their sound and motion is punctuated by the thousands of lifeless albatross scattered about the island, slowly revealing their cargo of plastic.

According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife rangers, albatross bring almost five tons of plastic to Pihemanu/Midway every year.  The ocean is permeated with plastic and, like dust floating in the air, it’s mostly invisible to us.  Albatross concentrate this plastic junk in their bodies and deposit it on land when they die.  A Hawaiian elder counseled us not to view the albatross or the islands as victims of plastic pollution.  They have called this problem to them, she said, to deliver us a message.  We are hit with this message every day.  When can we say we’re receiving it?

Victoria Sloan Jordan