28-Nov-99 Cape Ann
Came the dawn, after three days of rain, fog, and drizzle, it was gorgeous. Not a cloud in the sky.
“Where would you like to go?” asked Arlene.
I replied without a moment of hesitation, “Rockport.”
“Hmm, that's what I was going to suggest,” she said.
We got off 128 at Pine Street in Manchester, took a wrong turn into a vortex of one-way streets and dead ends that dumped us out at Singing Beach (so maybe it was a good kind of wrong turn), and walked along the beach a little. It wasn't really cold, but the wind was strong and chilling. The beach was beautifully sandy, but had few shells or pebbles for beachcombing.
We got back on the road and turned off on Hesperus Ave, as in Wreck of The. The place to stop there is Hammond Castle, a replica castle that an electronics pioneer in the area built to house his collection of medieval stuff. It's a museum now, with a parking lot that birders can use and a pathway down to a spot overlooking the ocean. It's rumoured that it's a good place to find harlequin ducks. Harlequins, named for their slate-blue, chestnut, black, and white patterns, spend the summers in mountain streams in the West and near the Labrador and Greenland coast, and the winter in surf off rocky shores. We keep hoping to see them from Hammond Castle, but only once has someone pointed a few out, along some rocks so far away we had to take their word for it. There were plenty of eiders and red-breasted mergansers there today, but no harlequins.
Our next stop was along the sea wall in Gloucester, by the fisherman monument. I took a picture, but really, just look at a package of Gorton's fish sticks at the supermarket. By this point we had seen bufflehead, eiders, red-breasted mergs, cormorants, and a couple of kinds of gulls.
We stopped for lunch at Gloucester House. Our window looked out over the stern of a schooner that does 2-hour tours in the summer but was getting ready to be shrink-wrapped for the winter with plywood frames set up all along the rail and over the boom. Across the channel was the Christine Ellen, an old fishing boat with rust streaks that made the name almost unreadable. The shed of the JMJ Tuna company, beyond that, had fallen halfway down. Shredded blue tarp on the roof might be making up for the gaps that must have opened up when the building collapsed. Don't get me wrong; the view was wonderful. Too much of the New England fishing economy has disappeared completely, replaced by marinas and waterfront condos. If I had to choose, I'd rather look out over some real working boats.
We skipped East Gloucester and headed through Rockport to Pigeon Cove and Andrews point.
The essence of Andrews Point is the North wind. It's the northeasternmost point of Cape Ann, the best place to see ducks and sea birds migrating offshore. If the wind is from the northeast, the birds will be blown closer to shore. That's the time to go there. As a result, you're only ever there when there's a bone-chilling wind.
It wasn't, today. There was a good breeze, but not a cold North wind. There were no strings of ducks migrating offshore, either. The up side was, it was the warmest we've ever been at Andrews Point.
We saw more eiders off the end of the point, and then came back a block away from the end of the point and walked out a path between houses that was marked “Public walking path to Atlantic Path” It wasn't well maintained; clearly the people who live on either side wish it would go away. We got out on the rocks and looked around for more ducks. Those of you who believe in foreshadowing know what's going to happen here, but I didn't when I raised my binoculars to check some ducks off to the right. Harlequins! They were unmistakable. They were close. They were right in the surf, just the way the books say. There were about thirty of them. We looked and looked, and saw more groups of them, over forty birds total. I went down along the big flat pink granite rocks closer to the waves to get a better look. Nothing bad happened. The ducks didn't mind my being close enough to see all the detail of their patterns.
We went on to Halibut Point, a state park a little further along the coast. (another view -- Columbine's pictures of Halibut Point in summer). It has a new visitor center with displays about the granite quarries that were the principal industry of Rockport 70 to 110 years ago. We walked down to the rocky shore there, and, wouldn't you know it, saw another dozen harlequins. They were having a great time in the surf. They would dive one after another, like paratroopers hitting the silk in turn. A seal poked its head up a little farther away and looked at us. A solitary gannet flew by, close enough that you could see the yellowish head and nape.
So there was one day of good weather in our four day weekend, but it was a winner.
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