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Journal of a Sabbatical |
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August 4, 2000 |
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the new scope |
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Today's Bird Sightings: American goldfinch (7) Today's Reading: The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau edited by Torrey and Allen Today's Starting Pitcher: Jeff Fassero
Plum Island Bird List
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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I'm bustling about the kitchen cleaning up the breakfast dishes and emptying out the coffee pot when Martha from The Birdwatcher of Newburyport calls. The new scope has arrived. Viva UPS! They manage to deliver in spite of Yankee Homecoming! I am WAY excited. Now I can hook up that Nikon Field Imaging System, which besides making it easier for Nancy to see distant birds with her strange visual field will make me the most popular birder at the salt pannes - at least until everybody else empties their bank accounts for the next latest high tech gizmo. Chores, what chores? I gotta go get that scope NOW! I think better of it and take care of Wilbur's litter box, the trash, the breakfast dishes, dropping off the laundry and stuff in a haze. Finally I drive to Newburyport, careful to avoid the downtown because of Yankee Homecoming. This is the first day that it hasn't been too gray, drizzly, or downright rainy for those Yankees to be coming home. Not that anybody actually comes home for Yankee Homecoming - it's not like 4th of July in Bristol or anything - but tourists galore browse the outdoor booths, which used to have juried arts and crafts but now are clearance sales for the shops, tourist kitsch craft items, macramé hats (just kidding), bad paintings ... Where was I? Oh, yeah, Newburyport my third home (North Andover is one and Providence is two, so that makes Newburyport/Salisbury #3). So the CCD camera and the monitor need batteries. A total of a dozen batteries. No problem, there's a photo store next door. Photo stores always have batteries. I zip next door. They are all out of batteries. Not a single AA battery in the store. Plan B is to get to the Nbpt CVS without going through downtown. This takes longer than expected, but I finally return with the batteries. Between Martha and myself the scope gets connected to the camera, the camera gets connected to the monitor, and everything gets connected to the tripod. I peer into the window of the shop across the parking lot on my cool little LCD screen. This is amazing. The CCD camera screws into the scope body where the eyepiece would be. It connects to the monitor with a cable. The monitor clips onto the tripod or anything else you might want to clip it onto. I'm so confident (or dumb) that this is all I'll need that I didn't bother to order an eyepiece for the scope, figuring I'll have the camera connected all the time. Now, off to the refuge to try this out in a real field situation. It's all well and good to try it in the store. There's a report of a garganey at the salt pannes. Martha says Steve Haydock was in earlier and said he'd seen it and it's probably an escapee. Probably. But I'm here with a new scope/imaging system to try out so why not try it out on a rare duck. Birders are gathered at the salt pannes so the garganey must still be there. I set up the amazing high tech gizmo and can't see a thing. The sun is glaring into my face. They lighting is terrible even for a normal scope. I have trouble focusing. Working this is like playing a video game. It requires more hand-eye coordination that I have. Somehow, looking at the screen instead of through the eyepiece throws me way off. Sympathetic birders let me look through their scopes. These must be the friendly ones. I get a good look at him (the garganey that is) so I know what I'm looking for. Finally I get him on the screen, between two black ducks. With the way the sun is, they all look like shadows. At least the garganey stands out from the black ducks because he's smaller. I'm told he was in with some gadwalls earlier, which he is about the size of. Greenheads start biting me. What?!? Yesterday on the beach no greenheads. Today greenheads. Just then one of the birders comments on what a nice day it is without greenheads. Excuse me? They're eating me alive! Of course I'm wearing shorts, and everybody else is wearing long pants. But I didn't really plan this expedition. It just sort of happened. I was actually going to spend the day hanging out drinking coffee and shopping for a birthday present for Lizzy (who is now back to being Elizabeth since I've finally trained myself to call her Lizzy). But the scope's arrival was a drop everything kind of event for me and the garganey is a drop everything event for most normal birders. Normal birders? Is that an oxymoron? So I jabber to people about the greenheads and about how cool this new gizmo is even though I'm having trouble getting used to using it and my whole sob story about my car and my old binoculars and scope and on and on turning into an absolute social geek. I'm wired out of my mind. Yikes. The garganey flies up and disappears. I don't think it went far, but nobody saw which way it went. Probably because I distracted them. All of them? No, I'm probably not that powerful. And the whole thing about telling my story was because somebody asked if I'd gotten the scope at the other birding supply place in Newburyport (yes, there are two - this is a birding intensive town). They all frequent that other one so I felt like I should put in a plug for Carl and Martha who have been exceptionally nice to me since all my stuff got stolen. That's how that came up. No point in my standing around getting bitten while NOT seeing a garganey so I impulsively decide to drive the length of the refuge and then bird it backwards starting at the south end. Goldfinches are all over the place on the south end. They take baths in puddles in the parking lot. The car scares them into the trees, but when I slow down to take a look at them they go right back to bathing in the puddle. I whip out the camera and take a picture of them through the windshield (that blur in the bottom of the picture is my dashboard). I watch the goldfinch show for awhile and then drive back birding along the way. Almost as many goldfinches as catbirds cross my path. That's somewhat unusual, as catbirds are usually more numerous and goldfinches less so. Nothing else really entertaining goes on. I notice more cars have arrived at the salt pannes and theorize the garganey has reappeared but I don't stop. I decide to try the gizmo again at Joppa Flats, looking out over the river where the light will be better and I'll be in some shade. I start to get the hang of it, focusing on a distant sailboat. A flock of semipalmated sandpipers lands in front of me and I manage to focus on them so I feel a little better about actually using this thing. I also suddenly realize that I have not eaten since breakfast and it is now after 5:00 PM. No wonder I feel strange. I pack up the gizmo and plan a quick stop for Chinese food on the way home. Ooh, what a day! I get home from playing high tech scope at Plum Island and there's a big box in my kitchen (the cleaning lady must have brought it in) from a used book shop in NY. Inside the box is a package wrapped in corrugated cardboard. Inside the cardboard is a package wrapped in white tissue paper. Inside the tissue paper is a slipcase with two quarto size books. Thoreau's journals! The fourteen volumes bound as two. Yahoo!!!! I've been in withdrawal since the H.G.O. Blake edition summer volume ended on July 10. Although Cape Cod gave me a hefty dose, I'd been missing going day by day through the journals. Now I've got 'em all. All I have to do is figure out how to curl up in bed with a quarto sized book... |
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The
sun is out. Pinch me, I must be dreaming.