x
x
n
Changeable skies: looking east from the north beach
Somebody once asked me what part of the piping plover was the piping. I guess they were picturing something like you'd sew onto a band uniform or something. Actually, they're named for the sound of their call, a high-pitched pipe-pipe-pipe-pipe-pipe . It's a very distinctive call and you can often hear it before you see the bird. During courtship the males just pipe on and on and on while they fly aerobatics missions over their territories. As I was walking to my post at the north end of the beach this morning I could hear the piping before I even got over the dunes. When I got to my post I asked the early shift warden if she had seen any plovers. She wasn't sure, but had heard them. In fact she said she heard them going on and on so much she thought she was hallucinating. I laughed because it is sort of weird to be "guarding" something so hard to see but so easy to hear.
It wasn't long before I saw the birds from which this particular piping was coming though. Two of them were doing aerial displays a short distance south of where I was standing, near two huge driftwood trees that had washed ashore over the winter. Mostly, piping plovers scurry along the sand where their pale coloring camouflages them so well it's hard to observe them. However, the display flights are exactly the opposite. It's hard not to notice them during the display flights. They kind of tilt sideways so their bright white underside is very visible. The flashes of white and the piping certainly attracted my attention, I can only imagine what it does for the female plover.
I was absorbed in watching the display when a dog ran into the closed beach area. I tried to shoo it out and then to find its person. The person saw me shooing the dog and came over to fetch it. Turns out the guy and his wife and dog were looking at a rental property a little ways north of the refuge and he'd taken the dog for a run while the wife talked to the realtor. Once I explained the beach closure, he was very cooperative and friendly.
The next batch of visitors was less cooperative and friendly. A group of 5 kids (today is a holiday in Massachusetts and its also school vacation week) were playing a game involving throwing a stick in the water and trying to be the first one to catch it when the surf washed it back in. Kind of like playing fetch with the waves. They kept getting closer and closer to the closed area. One kind went into the closed area and I told him very politely to leave. He said he knew he wasn't supposed to be there. They moved the game about 5 feet further north - not far enough because on the next throw the stick washed up well into the protected area. I stopped the kid who was running after it. He said "but my stick!" so I told him to get the stick and take the game much further down the beach. This made the whole batch of them sulky. They stomped off looking aggrieved.
After the kids left, I started to worry that they'd tell their parents some big mean lady from Fish & Wildlife kicked them off their own beach. Don't know why I started to get so paranoid. I guess I've heard too many stories about how much the island residents hate the refuge staff - all from one source though. I've actually overheard people in coffee shops talking about how the refuge was the best thing that ever happened to the island. So opinion is not unanimous. So after awhile I returned to normal.
There were no more visitors for the whole rest of the shift. I began to think of the two common loons and two white winged scoters who were hanging around just offshore for my entire shift as close personal friends. I watched herring gulls eat crabs. I spent what seemed like a long time watching an amphipod bury itself. It was kind of cool. It hopped into a shallow depression in the sand and started digging. My time sense must have slowed down because normally sand hoppers (beach hoppers) are pretty fast at digging, but I watched the whole thing as if it was in a slow motion newsreel. Couldn't tell you exactly what species it was as I don't have a field guide to amphipods of the North Atlantic (does anybody?). I looked it up in my Marine Life of the North Atlantic when I got home but the section on amphipods was really skimpy and didn't have this particular fella in it.
By the end of my shift even the loons and scoters had deserted me and the piping plovers were no longer displaying. The sun was beginning to come out after heavy clouds all day, and I was able to take off both jacket and sweatshirt when I got to my car for the drive home.
The List
2 common loons
2 white winged scoters
4 Northern gannets
1 double crested cormorant
2 piping plovers
1 red throated loon
1 kestrel
2 black backed gulls
a huge flock of shorebirds too far away to identify
x
x
