Journal of a Sabbatical

May 26, 2000

bright blue

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
3 great egrets
2 snowy egrets
2 American black ducks (with 10 ducklings so I guess that makes 12!)
24 redwinged blackbirds
2 least terns
7 gray catbirds
1 great blue heron
2 common grackles
9 mallards
4 gadwalls
3 killdeer
5 American robins
7 eastern kingbirds
9 tree swallows
5 bobolinks
1 spotted sandpiper
18 double crested cormorants
2 more American black ducks at Hellcat
8 Canada geese
4 mute swans
1 Baltimore oriole
1 northern rough-winged swallow
12 herring gulls
3 black-bellied plovers
2 yellow warblers
5 mourning doves
2 brown thrashers

Herptiles:
4 eastern painted turtles
Mammals:
1 muskrat

Today's Reading: The Birds of Brewery Creek by Malcolm MacDonald,
Uttermost Part of the Earth by E. Lucas Bridges

Today's Starting Pitcher:
Ramón Martinez

The water level at Hellcat is very low as they refuge staff have let a lot of water out of the impoundment. This creates a huge mud flat, which attracts a variety of shorebirds. The shorebirds attract birders. Me, I was just out to take advantage of the blue sky for a change. It's been raining forever and I'm so thrilled to have blue sky that the only way I can think to celebrate it is to look for birds at the refuge. To heck with whatever I was supposed to do today.

Standing on the Hellcat dike being scolded by bobolinks and looking out over a vast sea of shorebirds, I really really wish I had a scope. I also really really wish I'd studied the field guide a little harder. Some people say they have a reeve in sight. With my binoculars all I can tell is there's a shorebird there. I scan the birds that are in a little closer and see one with pink legs and a pink bill and streaked breast looking for all the world like a northern water thrush. I make the mistake of saying this out loud. The reeve people refocus their scopes. The bird moves closer and takes flight. It's a spotted sandpiper. Boy is my face red.

They get the reeve in their scopes again. Much discussion of the reeve's movements relative to a pair of mallards on the edge of the mud ensues. I peer and peer through binoculars and see no reeve. There are tons of peeps of every kind. There are tons of cormorants drying their wings. The bobolinks are protesting the presence of the birders on their dike. The redwinged blackbirds are protesting the presence of the bobolinks on their dike.

A muskrat swims by. I hear a German tourist identify it as a beaver.

It isn't until I get home that insight dawns on me.

There really is no such thing as a reeve. Reported reeve sightings are just an elaborate practical joke perpetrated on ordinary birders by the really experienced Attu level birders. It's only when you reach Attu level yourself that they let you in on the joke. That has to be the explanation.

The sighting of the day has to be the two flamingos in the Merrimack. Who'd've thunk it? Flamingos in the Merrimack.