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February 1, 1998
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After staying home yesterday, I was ready for an outing today in the spectacular spring weather. I picked up Nancy in Providence and drove down the bay to Beavertail State Park in Jamestown. It felt wonderful to stand on the point and see the ocean on three sides, the surf crashing against the rocks, herring gulls, red breasted mergansers, buffleheads, the occasional loon, birds and birders in profusion. We walked around on the rocks by the lighthouse until we got cold and hungry then headed back into downtown Jamestown for lunch at the East Ferry Deli . We walked around the waterfront a little bit after lunch and saw more buffleheads and more red breasted mergansers. Then we headed back over the bridge and up to Wickford 'cause we hadn't been there in awhile. It was just starting to be twilight when we got there. A huge flock of mallards was quacking up a storm in the harbor partly to repel an intrusion by a small group of buffleheads and partly in response to the quacking of an old guy who was feeding them cracked corn. Nancy was watching the buffleheads when she noticed a group of red breasted mergansers surfacing among them . It seemed like everywhere we went, red breasted mergansers were sure to follow. Most of the shops in Wickford close at 5 in the winter, but I managed to spend money at the one shop I went into while Nancy was listening to Ellen Kushner's radio show Sound and Spirit, on the car radio. I bought a book about waterfowl of the world and a Droll Yankee tape of a swamp in June. Back in Providence we sipped hot chai at the Gallery Cafe and looked up various ducks in the book, which is written in a strange British style. The ducks don't sleep or rest, they loaf. When they are tame and willing to come near humans, he describes them as confiding. My favorite line was about the pygmy geese who exhibit a "close attachment to water-lilies". I listened to the Droll Yankee tape on the way home in the car. Hearing green frogs, pickerel frogs, redwing blackbirds, chickadees, beavers splashing, crickets chirping and the slow drawl of the two narrators describing what they heard in the swamp made the drive home just fly by quite pleasantly. | |
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