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The sky is a thick gray but it doesn't feel like rain any time soon. I stop off at Bonnie's Bakery for a cup of coffee and a raspberry turnover, which I eat at the boat ramp while I scan for shorebirds. I spot two greater yellowlegs, nothing like the huge flock I saw the other day. There's a raft of what look like oldsquaws but they are too far away and the visibility is poor. The sky seems to want to settle onto the water but I it's not really foggy yet. My coffee finished, I head for the refuge. I 've allowed extra time because I am assigned to the south beach today and it can take a long time to drive there at 15 miles an hour, especially if I see any interesting birds on the way.
I check in at the gate and head for Sandy Point, with the car windows wide open despite the cold. The air is crackling with the trills of redwing blackbirds. A flock of Canada geese is foraging in the salt marsh. A great blue heron hunches its neck in the pool near the sub-headquarters. It's just sitting there stock still all contracted looking like a garden statue instead of the real thing.
When I finally get to Sandy Point, the early shift warden is in the parking lot shivering. She looks like an ice cube. She gives me the radio and the clip board and takes off.
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The view north from Sandy Point |
The view south from Sandy Point |
It doesn't feel that cold to me when I first set up at the refuge boundary but the cold sinks in progressively throughout the day.
For awhile things are fairly quiet. I keep scanning the beach for piping plovers or visitors and see neither. A huge flock of bank swallows materializes out of nowhere. They dart everywhere chasing bugs, buzzing my head, going every which way: up, down, sideways... I lose count at 28 but I think there are more than that.
Then large groups of visitors start arriving. I'm talking groups of 6 or 8 or 10 people. Most of them look at me, look at the sign, and head the other way onto the state beach at Sandy Point. One group wants to know if I've seen the plovers and if so where is the best place to look. They turn out to be a group of wives of men who work at MIT. They've formed a birdwatching club together. I find this hilariously funny but think it impolite to laugh so I suppress it and answer their questions. After I explain that the plovers are hard to spot under the best of conditions and today's visibility is not the best, I tell them about the 2 Northern gannets I saw diving a little ways off the point and send them to the best spot to look for the gannets. A woman from Ithaca, NY is friendly and wants to look through my scope, which is OK with me. I had just loaned my binoculars to another visitor from Boston safely a few minutes ago, so I'm feeling less territorial about my equipment. While I'm talking to the nice lady from Ithaca, one of the people from a foreign tour group that I've been keeping my eye on because they keep climbing all over the jetty in precarious positions decides to go for a walk on the closed side of the beach. She walks right past me and right past the sign. I leave the nice lady in mid-sentence and go chasing after the trespasser "M'am, Ma'm, excuse me Ma'm the beach is closed." Finally I get her attention and tell her it's an endangered species nesting area and please stay on the other side of the boundary. She doesn't look at me or talk to me but she does go back and rejoin her group without any further trespassing.
The swallows leave as suddenly as they appeared, and the visitors wander off around the point and exit from the other direction and I'm alone with two herring gulls who are having a feast of crabs. A juvenile herring gulls joins the feast and pecks ineptly at the crab. It seems to take 20 minutes for it to eat a crab that the adults downed in a couple of well placed pecks.
All this time there has been one Canada goose standing at the edge of the water, moving back a little as the tide comes in. It is far from any other Canada geese and it doesn't seem to be feeding on anything in the incoming tide or on the beach. It just stands there. This seems un-gooselike to me, but I can't quite put my finger on why. It almost looks as if it's daydreaming as it gazes out to sea. Finally, it leaves too.
Fifteen minutes before my shift is supposed to end it starts to rain. I start to get wet, so I radio the gatehouse that I'm packing up.
It isn't until I get home that I realize how cold I am and how tired.
The Lists
On the way to the beach:
black backed gull
2 greater yellowlegs
possible raft of oldsquaws
great blue heron
Canada geese
redwing blackbirds
common grackleAt the beach:
2 common loons
4 herring gulls
a raft of common eiders
1 Canada goose
4 red breasted mergansers
28 bank swallows
2 Northern gannets
3 double crested cormorants
10 white winged scoters
1 red throated loon
4 American crows
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