We're here on Plum Island along the coastline and only 35 miles north of Boston.

I'm surrounded here by hordes of ticks and bloodsucking horseflies and lots of poison ivy.

So what's the attraction?

You'll find out on today's windows to the wild.

(Music Playing) Hi, I'm Willem Lange, host of windows to the wild.

All around me here, as far as I can see, is the Parker River wildlife Refuge near Newburyport, Massachusetts, right here on Plum Island.

On more than 4600 acres of diverse coastal habitat, which is an ideal place for migrating birds to gather, rest and feed.

(Music Playing) This is actually a, Oh, there's a robin up there.

This is actually a good area for watching birds because it's nice and open.

You have the trees and shrubs with a lot of berries, so the birds like to flit up and down.

Nancy Pau is caretaker of the Parker River refuge.

She works for the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

You can see forever eh?

you've been here, what, six years?

About six years, yes.

And you're a biologist?

I'm a biologist of Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

Oh, so this must be for you about the world's best job, right?

It is pretty amazing what I get to do every day.

I, I do feel lucky.

What do you do?

mainly I manage the wildlife and the habitat, and mainly manage the habitat to provide for the wildlife.

But we also study wildlife, the plant communities, to make sure that we're providing the habitat they need.

Based on the bird population, Nancy and her colleagues do a pretty good job at keeping the refuge natural.

The birds must appreciate it.

At last count more than 300 bird species made this place home.

Now, why is Plum Island so particularly good for migratory species?

well, it's mainly because of our location, you know, located right along the Atlantic coast and on a barrier island itself.

and especially in the fall, a lot of the birds, and especially the young birds tend to migrate along the coast.

So we get a lot of birds that stop by eat the berries and the insects before.

And the berries.

That's a big.

Yeah.

like a gas station.

So.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah.

We have a lot of nice native maritime shrubs.

and they provide very nutritious food for the birds that migrate through.

another reason was good for the birds is we have a lot of very different habitats right adjacent to each other.

We have the coastal dunes, the maritime trail.

So we also have freshwater.

Yeah.

Well, freshwater marshes like these, we have grassland, so we get a lot of different types of birds migrating through.

(Music Playing) Well, this is just it's just lovely.

there are no big birds here.

Well, we, we have some waterfowl.

If we go, to some of our impoundments and the salt marshes, they use a lot of the salt marshes.

So your black ducks, mallards, teals, have always Canada geese, you know, big bird.

Canada geese.

Yeah.

Great.

One of our favorite big birds, is, the, snowy owl, which do show up in the winter time.

Ookpik they call them in the Canadian Arctic.

Ookpik.

Snowy Owl.

[inaudible] Beautiful bird.

But they come.

They come only in the winter.

They come in the winter.

Our marshes freeze over and it just.

It feels a lot like the Arctic when you're here in the.

In the winter.

So they feel right at home.

So they're able to find obviously something to eat here.

Yeah.

a lot of voles and mice.

(Music Playing) Good morning.

Oh, hello.

What do you.

What are you seeing out there?

Well, this is shorebird migration time.

So, I'm watching all the shorebirds right now.

There's a lot of, black bellied plovers and Dunnellon.

That's the common bird here.

I no bellied plovers.

Black bellied plovers.

They don't have any black bellies this time of year.

It's a breeding plumage thing.

Can you point to one?

Because if I see one, I can add it to my life list.

You see the birds that are along the, Yeah.

The little bar that's just sticking out in the water.

You see all those light birds?

Those are all black belly plovers, You see this white bird over here?

Yeah.

That's a black bellied plover.

Where are they headed?

They're heading down, deep south.

South America, down to Argentina.

These are long distance.

Actually.

There's a over here a little bit farther.

There's an American golden plover, which is one of the champion migrants.

They go all the way down to sierra del fuego.

Yeah.

Now will they follow the Gulf Coast around.

When they hit on, they hit the Gulf.

You know, I think most of them will cross the Gulf.

Really?

They'll go across the Caribbean.

You know, a lot of birds have no trouble at all crossing the Caribbean.

Well, just a gram of fat or two.

They got a burn as they go across.

No problems.

Even small shorebirds.

even small island birds.

What about those black ones in the foreground there?

Those are sticks.

Well, those.

I think those are just sticks.

Let me take a quick get those.

Sorry.

Those are sticks.

Stick us.

Stick a stub.

Okay.

Oh, by the way I'm sorry my name is Will I will my name is Tom.

Glad to meet you.

Nice to meet you.

you must you do this a lot.

I come out here very often.

Yeah.

I'm a a very regular visitor here.

You must be retired.

Right.

Well.

I'm semi-retired.

I try to do a little bit of work for my home, but I arranged it so that I could still have plenty of time to come out here, even when I was working.

That's great.

Yeah.

That's great.

So you come out here winter and summer, both winter and summer.

Because, one of the great things about this place is it doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's something different going on.

every month, every week of the year.

have you seen the great snowy owl here?

Oh, yeah.

It's a great bird.

Yeah.

This is one of the best spots in the country to see them.

In the lower 48.

Anyway.

(Music Playing) This area right here is actually the only area where we really have forested, you know, trees.

So the oaks, the maples, you see, most of the refuge are moisture up area.

What?

The cherries are the canopy.

So it's a lot shorter.

But again, the shrubs are really great because most plants in the shrub community produce berries and, songbirds, when they migrate naturally, switch from an insect diet to a fruit diet because they can load up in so much food, you know, at the same time we've seen so far shorebirds like big ones.

Yeah.

And a lot of little birds that are some migrating through.

Yep, yep.

Warblers.

And I haven't seen the fabled green towhee, but, you know, we might not see that that's, that's very rare.

They call them vagrants.

They come occasionally.

Once every ten years or 20 years.

They'll show up.

Now, why would why would a bird like that get to a place like that?

What would happen?

Well, Plum Island is on the coast.

And, sometimes during storms, birds just get blown off course.

They're migrating and big wind knocks them over, and then they find a new migratory route so usually when they, along the coast, when they see water, they just turn and go south or north, depending on which direction they're going.

So we do get a lot of birds from the West coast, Europe, the Arctic that show up here, they get blown east or west depending on the storm itself.

Yeah.

Well, they'll find their way home eventually.

Eventually.

Yes, we we believe so.

(Sounds of wind and waves) Now let's see.

What is that?

That's a stick.

That's another stick.

There's a couple of cormorants flying by.

Well, yeah, like right over the dike there.

That.

Yeah, that looks like a duck.

Yeah.

So you come out here a lot?

What is that?

I mean, I'm sure you have to.

You have a wife at home, right?

Yes.

So she would know how much time you spend out here.

I come out here a lot, but we have a pretty good arrangement.

Which is?

She sleeps fairly late and I get up really early.

So if I'm out here at 530 in the spring and I'm getting home at 9 or 10, I've gotten 4 or 5 good hours of birding in and she doesn't even know it.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah.

I come out here a lot.

I probably come out here.

I don't know if I would even figure it out.

I probably come out here 300 times a year or more.

It means a lot to me.

It means a lot to me.

I buy my conservation stamp every, July 1st, and it's the best deal in town, let me tell you.

That's me and you going to have your ashes scattered here someday.

Well, I can't say that with refuge people around because it's against the rules.

But I happen to know that it has happened.

And I've been thinking about it.

And I know what bird calls I want to have playing in the background on that tape at the time those ashes get get spread.

yeah.

This is a wonderful place.

I, it's kind of my second home, and it's, wonderful to be out here very early in the morning when there's very few people, very few things going on, and then you see things, I mean, one of the joys of this is you always see something new.

You have no idea what it's going to be.

You don't you don't even look for it.

You just come out and you just start experiencing what's out here, and suddenly you see something you ever seen before, a mink pop up and stare at you, or a weasel will run across the trail, or you'll see a bird doing something you've not seen before.

So.

(Music Playing) Now at some point, somebody made a decision to preserve this, instead of letting it develop in to housing.

Yeah.

Who did that?

well, initially, this, there was a Audubon bird sanctuary, at, actually, right where we're standing right now, I believe it was about 600 acres.

and Audubon owned the property.

Audubon had owned the property.

It was the Annie Brown Bird Sanctuary.

Annie Brown passed away, and she left money in her will for a bird sanctuary, actually, specifically.

And then, in the 1930s and 40s, the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service was looking to protect lands just like this, all along the flyways, right after the Dust Bowl.

And they realized we were losing a lot of our waterfowl because of the droughts.

so they were looking for areas to protect for waterfowl, mainly.

they also provided benefits to all the other birds and all the other wildlife that take advantage of this.

(Music Playing) What mammals do you have here besides deer?

there's actually quite a few in the.

In the weasel family.

There's, weasels.

There's, mink, there's fishers.

there's, otters.

then there's, raccoons and squirrels and a whole bunch of rodents and, and beavers.

You have beavers?

There's beavers.

Yeah, there's a couple of beaver lodges down in North Pool.

There's a lot of, muskrats.

And the muskrats do a lot of good here.

They keep a lot of the channels open.

Oh, yeah, and all of the areas.

And they do a lot to, clean things out.

(Music Playing) Being this close to so much population, you're kind of in a nutcracker here.

you must get a lot of visitors.

We do.

We get about a quarter of a million visitors a year.

We we do, Yeah, we have a lot of attractions, you know, in addition to all the boats that we get here.

Very popular for the bird watchers obviously, but we also have over six miles of a very pristine beach habitat that's undeveloped.

And in the summertime, it's extremely popular with the beach visitors as well.

They swim and everything.

They swim and sunbathe and yeah, enjoy.

Just enjoy being outside, you know, being out in nature.

I think it's very I mean, like I said, being so close to Boston to have undeveloped beach areas like we do here, (Sounds of the wind) I'm talking with Kara Moody, who's a biologist here at the refuge.

And this is her beach right here.

Six and a half miles.

Right?

Six and a half miles.

Yeah.

and what do you do with your six and a half miles of beach?

Well, we do a lot of different stuff, but our main focus is shorebirds.

we have a lot of migratory shorebirds that use this beach during their migration.

So we take surveys to census how many birds are here and what types of birds we have using the beach.

And we also try to measure how the birds are affected by the presence of humans on the beach.

okay.

And there are a lot of humans here to affect them or not until usually mid-August.

Up until then, the beach is closed to people, then once the piping plover are done nesting and have moved out, they'll open the beach up to to pedestrians only.

And then starting September 1st, they let vehicles on the beach.

(Sounds of wind and waves) Now, how do you manage to keep it from being despoiled by all these people?

you know, the refuge, having been here for over 60 years, there has been kind of an education of at least the locals and even, let's say, everybody within an hour drive of here.

people know this as a special area, that it's a place for wildlife.

So they do respect a lot of the signs and, our rules and regulations.

We also have put in boardwalks through a lot of our trails and especially out to the beach.

And that keeps people from the dunes.

it kind of concentrates the use on the beach, on the road and on the trails.

(Sounds of wind and waves) Now this is a federal wildlife refuge, right?

That's correct.

Yeah.

Which we always thought was inviolate until it came to the north slope of Alaska somewhere.

We get nervous.

could that happen here, or would it.

Or is it happening?

Well, I I'm not a pessimist, so I believe that, we're pretty good stewards of the land now, and I don't really have any fear that the National Wildlife Refuge is going to give this place up.

Yeah.

and they they manage it well for the different species.

The refuge sometimes is faulted because they're always a water fowl centric organization, you know, but they have been, they have been, expanding as, endangered species in other areas are found and they've, they've grown to manage for more species, more than just birds, for the plants, the, reptiles, the mammals that are here.

And I think they they're doing a good job.

I don't have much fear that we're going to lose this place.

I know this isn't fair.

You're not even 20 years old yet, but, what is kind of.

How's it going to look here in 100 years?

wow.

I think it will look pretty similar.

We're kind of at the climax of succession right now.

you know, the shrubs aren't really going to get much taller because we get the wind and the soil and keeps it kind of short.

the dunes will still be dunes because we'll get the occasional wash over in the storms.

They'll just wipe everything out.

And the beach grass and the beach heather will come back and colonize it.

So what kind of get a nice equilibrium right now?

So I think it will look similar, surrounding us, around the refuge, that'll probably change a lot.

And I think that the refuge will become more important.

And places like the refuge will become more important as we lose more of our natural areas to development.

(Music Playing) Well, it's got to be that part of the show.

That's my least favorite time to say goodbye.

I hope you enjoyed our little trip here today to Plum Island.

Golly I know, I sure did.

I'm Willem Lange and I hope to see you again on windows to the wild.

(Music Playing)