Each year at this time, something primal and fundamental happens in certain of our ponds and streams. As we speak, river herring are fighting currents and a gauntlet of anthropogenic barriers in an epic annual struggle to make more of themselves. And many of our newly arriving birds are depending on them.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of our herring runs here on the Cape. The runs involve an inscrutable mix of blueback herring and alewives returning from the ocean to spawn in local ponds each spring. These fish bring the ocean’s riches well inland, at least by Cape standards, in bodies built with oceanic plankton. Ponds with herring runs are objectively better than those without – they have more fish, more birds, more otters, more turtles. They are more likely to have loons and Common Mergansers, Bald Eagles and Osprey.

https://www.capeandislands.org/in-this-place/2022-04-06/the-importance-of-herring-runs-for-birds-and-for-cape-cod

In the spring, the annual alewife migration up the fish ladders of Stony Brook is awe-inspiring, and was the subject of The Run, a nature classic written by John Hay. Footpaths along the edges of the brook are a wonderful vantage point to view the fish, which journey from Cape Cod Bay to the freshwater ponds of West Brewster in order to spawn. The herring run starts in mid-March (depending on air and water temperatures) and continues through early May.

https://www.brewster-ma.gov/stony-brook-mill-sites-committee/pages/stony-brook-gristmill-and-museum