30 Jan 2000 - Daniel Webster Audubon Sanctuary
We've been reading on the MASSBIRD listserv about wonderful hawks and owls that people have been seeing at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield. We decided it was time to investigate. We posted a request for driving directions, and voila, an answer.
But first, Anne was over in the morning. She had a potential buyer for some of the model horses she's selling who turned out to be from the next town over, and arranged for that person to come over here around ten this morning. In honor of Anne's being here for breakfast, I got extra bagels and two kinds of smoked fish (whitefish chub and smoked sable) at the Delitizer. Also some herring in sour cream. Bagels, cream cheese, and smoked salmon, whitefish, and sable is our idea of a luxurious breakfast around here. Well anyway! Not only that customer, but a friend, and three or four (I lost count!) preteen daughters of theirs came over. Anne had a great time negotiating with them and did sell several models. When they left she said, “I hope they appreciate what great bargains I gave them.” Whether or not they do, I appreciate not having to take six or so cartons to the post office to mail off to distant customers.
The Daniel Webster Sanctuary turns out not to be so much farther than World's End. On the map it's farther, but it's not so far from the highway, so the time to get there is only a little more. It has a huge field and swampy woods with boardwalks. The first stop was an observation blind looking over a small frozen pond. Someone had seen a bittern there, and we haven't seen one of them in years. They're relatives of herons, streaked yellow and brown, perfectly colored to blend in with dry cattails and grasses. That's what this one was doing. A somewhat popeyed woman whom we had seen at Dunback Meadows several weeks ago was in the observation blind looking at the bittern, and with much difficulty she pointed it out to us. It's hard to describe where a bird is when it would rather not be seen and has excellent camouflage. It was much farther from the water's edge than I expected it to be, but most of it was visible. Check, and onwards.
Since the fields are perfect hunting areas for hawks and owls, the Audubon society has built an observation platform on the top of a rise in the middle of the field. Before we got there we spotted a shrike on the top of a tree off to the left of the path. There were eight or ten people on the observation platform when we got to it. They had settled in for the long haul, with lunch set out on the benches in the middle of the platform and spotting scopes set up to check out the distant hawks. We saw a couple of rough-legged hawks, an immature red-tail, and several harriers. Then we set off down the trail through the woods in search of owls. We didn't see any, well, except that someone was looking at a birdhouse which he said contained a screech owl. We could see one or two pointy feathers which could easily have been on the top of a screech owl's head, but you couldn't prove it by us. We stopped back at the bittern blind and fortunately, again there were people there looking at the bird. It had moved and was even harder to spot than before. This time it was deep in tall grass and the streaks on its plumage were aligned with the shadows and stalks of the grass, except for its neck, head, and bill. The tipoff was that the streaks were at an angle to the pattern of the grass.
At the edge of the sanctuary was a house with multitudes of bird feeders. A clay-colored sparrow had been reported to be at the feeders. We're not that excited about clay-colored sparrows, but they're not expected in these parts, so birders are expected to pay attention. We tried to be good. After looking at the feeders and all the birds around them for some time, we thought we picked out one that didn't look like other kinds of sparrow and that did match the bird book's description of the clay-colored. We'll say we saw it.
When we got home Anne had been out horseback riding and had come back to study for the LSAT at our house, where she wouldn't be disturbed by her cats. The three of us went out for sushi at Azuma in Newton Centre.
After reading some e-mail, I sat down to watch the end of the Super Bowl. What a surprise! It was a wonderfully close football game. Say what you will about football, there's something interesting about people putting out all their effort for a cause, even a silly, artificial cause like moving a football a hundred yards. I was working on an eraser carving most of the time I was watching, but got caught up in the excitement of the last couple of minutes of the game. This was probably the only Super Bowl I've watched that lived up to the promise of being a good game.
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