The Weekly Chirp: Staging season

How refreshing it is to arrive back on campus and watch all the starry-eyed first-years gallivanting from class to class, excited and eager to “discover themselves” and figure out “what life is all about.” Good luck with that. Many of my observations of these new college students are derived from meals at Dewick, during which seemingly thousands of first-years seem to congregate all at the same time. It is within the realm of Dewick that we can witness first-hand the "freshman 15." Interestingly, college first-years aren’t the only species that overeat towards the end of summer into the early days of fall.

Shorebirds preparing for migration consume excessive amounts of food and accumulate fat reserves to later burn as energy on their long-distance journeys (some birds like the American golden plover head all the way down to southern South America). Ornithologists named this behavior “hyperphagia,” which literally means extreme consumption. Without these fat reserves, many shorebirds would perish from energy depletion. For instance, the bar-tailed godwit flies around 7,000 miles from its breeding grounds in Alaska to its wintering grounds in Australia without resting, — an unattainable feat without those fat reserves. As we speak, many shorebirds are staging, or eating, at nearby coastal areas as they prepare to continue their travels down the East Coast towards their wintering grounds. Undeveloped coastal reserves, like the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island in Newbury, Mass., are popular staging areas for many species of shorebirds passing through the Northeast, given the high abundance of food items available in these areas (mainly invertebrates hiding just below the surface of the sand in marshes and beaches).

Sitting in Dewick yesterday, I watched in awe as one first-year vacuumed down several pieces of pizza, a burger and chicken. I wondered both how in the world he was that hungry and how it would affect him down the road. Many of us warn of and scoff at the "freshman 15," but perhaps overeating in new environments is an inherent part of our biological processing. Maybe the extra weight is exactly the boost first-years require to adapt to their foreign environment and accelerate in the novel academic settings surrounding them. Conversely, it could simply be a product of American obesity and the increasingly common tendency for humans to overeat because they can. Whatever the reason may be, hyperphagia exists in many realms of biodiversity and in many cases can be the determining factor between life and death.

Best of luck to all you shorebirds that are about to fly down to South America — how I wish I could join you!

Love always, Henry