I Owe a Life Debt to an Ancient Murrelet
by Madison Luken
On Wednesday, October 28th 2026, I was standing on the Cape May Hawkwatch Platform ignoring the urge to check the live count data for Avalon Seawatch as I felt the wind shift gradually from Northeast to East—unideal conditions for viewing raptor migration on Cape May Point, but ideal for seawatching out on the coast. Black and Surf Scoters have historically migrated past Avalon in the greatest numbers during late October, and with a big flight yet to occur, there was a good chance if I checked my phone, nothing would stop me from abandoning the platform. As an Interpretive Naturalist with Cape May Bird Observatory’s fall migration counts, I was eager to maintain a reputation for reliability, and was relieved when the magnitude of what was happening at Avalon prompted my manager to simply dismiss me from my post at the Hawkwatch for the rest of the day: “Enjoy the flight!”
That day, the Avalon Seawatch counted 105,309 birds, including over 70,000 Black Scoters and nearly 20,000 Surf Scoters. Counting was led by the Avalon Seawatch Counter Ryan Zucker, but when I got there I found all of my other current roommates with clickers in hand or calling out birds: my fellow Interpretive Naturalist Josh Davidson, the Morning Flight Counter Aaron Reb, and the Cape May Hawkwatch Counter David Benvent. With their impressive backgrounds in ornithology and my relative newness to migration in the Atlantic Flyway, I have occasionally felt out of place beside them, but I was nonetheless promptly handed a clicker for Northern Gannets, and in the last hour of the count, just as the light was draining from the sky in muted pinks and yellows, I spotted the first Black-legged Kittiwake of the season and the only two Parasitic Jaegers of the day. Identifying the kittiwake was a collaborative effort, and I can only be credited with the spotting, but it felt gratifying. The
jaegers—a pair of angular shadows cutting across the surface of the water with falcon-like force—seemed to arrest time, stealing our attention from the scoters for mere seconds that somehow seemed to stretch on forever. It was at the end of that day’s count that I felt, certainly not for the first time, a crashing wave of gratitude for Point Pinos Seawatch.
I started paying closer attention to birds soon after graduating college in 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns motivated me to start spending more time outside trail running and enjoying nature. However, it wasn’t until about three years later in the summer of 2023, when I bought my first pair of binoculars and a Sibley field guide, that birding began to shift from a casual hobby into something more vital. By that summer, I had recently moved back home to Cincinnati and was struggling to get a diagnosis for a mysterious orthostatic condition that made it difficult to stand up for long periods of time. As a result, I was frequently having panic attacks arising from worsening health anxiety and OCD. I was also feeling increasingly alienated from my conservative family, emerging from conversations about topics like climate change and LGBTQ+ rights feeling disheartened and alone. The limits on my physical mobility made me feel especially powerless, and it was only when I was birding—often from a bench in my backyard—that I felt hopeful. Then, in August of 2023, I was offered a full-time teaching position at North Salinas High School and moved to Monterey, where my growing interest in birds was suddenly supercharged by the inclusive, passionate birding and nature journaling community I was welcomed into. I got very lucky. And everything changed.
When I first visited Point Pinos Seawatch in November of 2023, I had completed the training to be an outreach volunteer, but wanted to get a sense for how other volunteers interpreted the count before I signed up for a shift. Amanda Preece was on outreach duty when I arrived, wielding a laminated map of Monterey Bay in front of two tourists. I slowly walked up to listen, completely oblivious to the reporter from the Monterey Herald that was taking photos of us, documenting arguably one of the most important days in my life. Not only was the information Amanda shared about loons on their way south from the arctic and shearwaters straying from faraway Australia and New Zealand completely novel and entrancing to a relatively new birder fresh from the Midwest, her animation and welcoming attitude made me feel like this was a friendly, comfortable space to learn about and enjoy birds. Alison Világ and many of the regular bird
ers at Point Pinos reinforced this feeling, frequently lending me their own spotting scopes and generously sharing their knowledge about bird identification and ecology.
One bird that particularly stood out to me that fall was the Ancient Murrelet, a roughly sweet-potato-sized seabird in the Alcid family that spends its entire life, save a couple days after hatching, entirely at sea. Unless you are looking for them, Ancient Murrelets can be quite difficult to notice due to their small size and soft gray plumage, either zooming low across the surface of the ocean or bobbing in the swell. For some reason, the idea that I may never have noticed this particular North Pacific seabird on my own has been of indelible importance to me in my work as an interpreter, revealing that—by sharing my knowledge as generously as birders at Point Pinos have—I have the power to enchant the natural world for others, to reveal things to them that they might never be able to see and enjoy on their own.
Anyone who’s been a birder for a little while will likely know that this isn’t always the attitude of other birders. Exclusivity, competition, and elitism pervade many birding communities, and your value at a migration count in particular can feel inextricably tied to your identification skills. Even at Point Pinos, there have been a handful of times where I have felt like I’m in the way or haven’t truly earned the opportunity to watch migration there, especially when I’m surrounded by folks with expensive equipment and exceptional identification skills. However, after having now volunteered with or worked three fall migration count seasons, I am more inclined than ever to assert: Migration is for everyone. Migration is for me.
Identifying birds, although it is certainly part of the work (and a significant part of the fun), is not what leads to their protection or to the protection of the habitats they depend on. Instead, I believe it is the opportunity for people to develop a meaningful connection with birds and their environment that will change our collective relationship to the earth, to its life-giving resources and rhythms. As an outreach volunteer at Point Pinos and as an interpreter with Cape May Bird Observatory, I’ve had visitors try to convince me that cameras and artificial intelligence should replace the counter. Regardless of whether technology can or ever will be more successful at migration counting, my response will always be the same. Migration counts give people the chance to give their undivided attention to birds, to take notice of the miraculous, difficult journeys they undertake each year in order to survive. I believe this makes people more likely to think deeply about the interconnectedness of ecosystems across our planet and to consider birds and other wildlife when they are making choices about how to live. In the case of Point Pinos Seawatch or the Cape May Hawkwatch, these sites become gathering places where people can connect with one another and learn from each other. Although the data collected at migration counts is invaluable, the possibility for humans to have a space to gather to celebrate birds is equally important. In this way, a migration count is a scientific project as much as it is a cultural one.
I hope that I am living evidence of that project. As a member of Gen Z, I’ve grown up amidst staggering changes in our media landscape, where companies can profit from our attention, which is commodified as a scarce and limited resource, and have developed algorithmic internet feeds that exert unprecedented control on what we pay attention to. This system has revealed to me just how valuable our attention is, and how in many ways, it is all that we have. That what we pay attention to is ultimately who we are. By spending countless hours at the Point, my attention trained fully on birds, migration, my surrounding environment, and the people who care about this work—my identity was reshaped, reconstructed by towers of loons and walls of scoters angling south for the winter. Since that fall, I have been steadily working toward a career path in helping to protect and celebrate birds, as well as the habitats they depend on. From 2025-2026, I was an Interpreter and California Climate Action Fellow at Elkhorn Slough Reserve, where I led or provided significant support to over 70 public events, with a focus on birding events and volunteer events conducting native habitat restoration at coastal grassland and large-scale estuarine restoration sites in Elkhorn Slough. I proposed and executed five new public birding programs, including a Winter Waterfowl Walk, accessible Great Backyard Bird Count events, a Global Big Day and World Migratory Bird Day event, as well as a California Breeding Bird Atlas and eBird training workshop I developed with my colleague Rachel Lyon. In my current position with Cape May Bird Observatory, I get to conduct interpretation and public programming at three fall migration counts, where I engage hundreds of visitors daily with the importance of avian conservation research and long-term migration monitoring, in addition to providing raptor, songbird, and waterbird identification.
As I’m writing this, it’s also Birdability Week 2026, a celebration of accessible, inclusive, and welcoming birding for those with disabilities and other health concerns. There is a growing body of research illuminating the mental and physical health benefits of birding, and undoubtedly, going on birding walks with the Monterey Audubon Society, attending Morgan Lewis’s Field Sketch Club gatherings, and being at Point Pinos in 2023 played a huge role in helping me successfully manage my anxiety. I have been lucky enough to co-lead a Birdability event at Elkhorn Slough with the Monterey Audubon Society, and I am thankful for Birdability and its Birdability Captains for advocating for birding that makes space for everyone. I often think about how the world humans have built, which has resulted in the loss of 1/3 of our total bird population in the last half century, was not built with them in mind. Similarly, we have not often built systems with all people in mind.
To me, migration counts and birding in general have represented a rejection of that world. As I reach the end of my season with Cape May Bird Observatory and a fall filled with falcons (the Cape May Hawkwatch counted a record number of Merlins this year, surpassing 3,000 for the first time in the count's 51 year history), I am filled with gratitude for every moment I have been able to declare—often quite loudly, as I was responsible for calling out birds—that migration is worthy of our attention. I am also grateful for all the people I've met in this field who work to make birding more accessible and enjoyable for everyone, to cultivate a comfortable environment to learn and to welcome birders with decades of experience just as warmly as a beginner learning to recognize their backyard birds. Especially right now, when the biodiversity and climate crises seem dire and can easily lead us to despair, I believe birding is an essential way to sustain hope and build collective energy in the direction of change. Whether you’re able to bird every daylight hour this fall or just a few minutes here and there, I’m wishing everyone a wonderful migration season!
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