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Journal of a Sabbatical |
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June 29, 2000 |
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at the least tern show |
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North Plover Warden Today's Bird Sightings: Today's Reading: Summer: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, The Herring Gull's World by Niko Tinbergen, The Sea and the Ice by Louis J. Halle Today's Starting Pitcher: 2000
Book List
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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Weird sky today. It was raining early this morning when I
got up but stopped pretty quickly. It looks like it's
clearing in the west and north first. Directly
east Least terns are all over the place. A pair lands on the sand directly in front of me and I watch one carefully pass a large fish (well, large in proportion to a least tern) to the other who takes it in its beak and flies off toward an area that seems to be an incipient least tern colony. I count 6 of them coming and going from that area but there may be more. They move around so much. They attack the refuge biologists when they go to check it out. No word on whether there are any eggs. Killdeer there too. A regular hot spot. Especially when the piping plovers show up. It's not every day you get to see two endangered species right in the same spot. But a piping plover flies by me and lands among the least terns. Later I see another, then both fly directly in front of me together making that distinctive peep-lo call. Mournful? Deep? Piercing? Just as I'm handing over the radio and clipboard to the midday shift warden one of the piping plovers flies past us low over the sand within naked eye ID range and I stop in mid sentence to utter "there goes one now". I think this is the latest into the season that I've ever seen my first piping plover. This year they always seemed to be at the opposite end of the beach from where I was. If I was north, they were south. If I was south, they were north. Finally we converge. Now I don't have to take it on faith that they're there. It occurs to me that this is probably the same pair that Bob (of the cat shelter) was talking about seeing when he was assigned to the north. They're in the same spot he described, which is where there was a nest last year that got abandoned. By this time last year I'd seen 85 species on Plum Island. This year I'm up to 92. My life list for Plum Island is only at 138 species, way less than the 305 on the checklist or the 320 recorded by Ludlow Griscom (did he count that great auk?). |
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The
gull skull looks like it's been run over by the ATV a few
more times since I was last stationed at the north end of
the beach. I almost walk right past it without noticing, but
then I spot it. Weird landmark. It's a little cooler than I
expected based on yesterday's weather and on the radio
weather reports. I'm glad I left my jacket in the trunk so I
have it with me without planning. 
of where I'm standing it's a weird blue-gray overcast with
tiny gaps that let in little droplets of sun that shimmer
and dance off the surface of the water. Every once in a
while the wind shifts around and comes over the water,
cooling me off and requiring the jacket again. As soon as I
start to put the jacket on, the wind changes and it's
stagnant heat again. A patch of sky actually clears enough
that I'm suddenly very hot. It just keeps changing.