Journal of a Sabbatical

November 7, 2000

colors

I voted.

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
northern mockingbird (3)
northern shrike (1)
purple finch (5)
yellow-rumped warbler (5)
sanderling (250)
great black back gull (4)
herring gull (15)
Mammals
white tailed deer (1)

Today's Reading: Circling the Sacred Mountain by Robert Thurman and Tad Wise, Autumn from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake

There's still an amazing amount of color around for November, and even more amazing are the wildflowers still in bloom. I have no idea what this particular flower is though. It's tiny (the photo is an extreme close-up) and bluish, in fact, it looked to me an awful lot like a bluet. There's only one problem with that. This is November. Bluets are a spring wildflower and they've been done and gone for months. I pulled off the road to photograph this little bluet-like thing because I was so astonished to see it. What if it is a bluet? Evidence of global warming?

Yellow is always the color I miss most in winter and am most grateful to see again in the spring. The late afternoon sun on patches of celandine among red leaves and brown grasses made the thickets alongside the refuge road alive with yellow, almost like somebody had splashed yellow paint in among the bushes. Winterberries, and rose hips, and all kinds of red berries bring plenty of the seasonally expected reds to the dunes, and the grasses bring gold of course. I feel saturated in color despite the low lying fog that's starting to form over the water. This is particularly pleasurable after yesterday's (and Sunday's) grayness.

Despite some cold weather and even some snow, we haven't had a hard frost yet. Clover is still in bloom. To my surprise, evening lychnis (white campion) is still in bloom too. The low sun highlights it like a spotlight. I started getting down on my knees to photograph everything that was still in bloom because I was so astounded at how much there was. The whole reason I started noticing all the flowers today was because I wanted to get a picture of yarrow to illustrate yesterday's entry. I didn't have the camera with me yesterday. So looking for the perfect yarrow plant, I found all these other things in bloom.

Despite the fact that except for the northern shrike who was being chased by a mockingbird there weren't very many birds around, I spent three hours on the refuge without even going for a long walk on the beach. I just kept seeing more and more colors. As the sun started to go down the leaves started to glow with a magical saturated light. I wanted to hang around and appreciate every last ray of sun.

The water in the Stage Island Pool was calm and flat just before sunset and the fog or mist (I used to know the technical name for this kind of fog - it'll come to me again) made the whole landscape (waterscape?) look layered, as if shades of gray and blue were stacked on top of each other. I saw a deer in the mist too, grazing in the field by the Pines Trail. It looked more like a watercolor of autumn deer grazing than an actual deer in an actual field.

The setting sun highlighted this little nest for me. I don't think I would have noticed it otherwise. I wonder how many baby birds were raised in this nest? What species were they? When did they leave? Will they come back to this same nest next year?