Journal of a Sabbatical

January 26, 1999

and again failure to find the lark sparrow

OK, now I really am compulsive. I was sitting in Starbucks having my lunch (from the Earth Food Store) after therapy when Dan and Geri came in. Geri asked me if I was going to work this afternoon or go to another movie - she's been teasing me since I went to the movies on Friday. Since the sky was bright blue without a cloud in sight, I replied "Neither: I'm going to look for the lark sparrow." and swilled down the last of my coffee, threw on my jacket and headed for Salisbury Beach. Did I really think I'd find the lark sparrow? I don't know. I just knew I had to have some excuse to be outside on the beach on a beautiful clear day.

I checked every shrub and every scrubby pine tree in all three parking lots, the entrance road, and the campground. No sparrows of any kind. In fact there were hardly any birds except two great black backed gulls and a mockingbird. Where are the hordes of gulls that were here yesterday?

I stopped by the rocks just seaward of Butler's Toothpick and counted 5 seals hauled out. One of them was huge. Must be a bull. I've always wondered how far upriver they swim and whether they ever get stranded by the tide. I've seen seals in Newburyport Harbor, but do they come as far inland as say the Lawrence Dam? I doubt they could come to Lowell 'cause they wouldn't be able to get past the Lawrence Dam, but do they come to Lawrence? Haverhill? Inquiring minds want to know.

I made another pass around the parking lots in case the lark sparrow had shown up. It hadn't.

Since I could not waste a bright blue afternoon, I went over to the refuge for a long long walk on the beach. The eiders were in their usual spot near Emerson Rocks in a huge flock. Why are eiders so social? They seem to prefer to be in large groups and they are often very close together. I remember Ernesto, our guide in the Galapagos, telling us sea lions exhibited something called thigmotaxis - an involuntary response to touch - or thigmotropism - a need to be touched by other sea lions. The dictionary doesn't quite describe it the way Ernesto did, but I did notice that the sea lions definitely moved toward touching and being touched, often with their whole bodies. So I started wondering if eiders have some physical need to touch other eiders. None of my reference books cover this of course. Any ornithologists out there want to research this and get back to me in a couple of years?

Besides the eiders, I saw a small group (7) of sanderlings clustered on a rock out just far enough into the ocean that I couldn't really see them well enough to be positive about the identification. They were pale gray on top and white underneath and had black beaks, so they were probably sanderlings. The way they were hunkered down on the rock reminded me of purple sandpipers, which these guys definitely weren't.

I walked so long on the beach that it was getting to be sunset when I left. The deer come out at dusk - well the ones that didn't get killed in the annual deer hunt. A group of about 5 of them were grazing really close to the road next to the subheadquarters. With the sun setting behind them and the gleaming ice in the marsh, this would have have made a great photo but I'd already used up the rest of my film on things buried in the sand.