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Feb. 11, 1854 - For how many aeons did the willow shed its yellow pollen annually before man was created? -- Henry D. Thoreau |
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February 11, 1999 |
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more bald eagles |
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February 11 along the Merrimack River
Copyright © 1998, Janet I. Egan |
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What I actually meant to do today, planned even, was to go to the BPL and search for grants. However, it turned out to be far too nice a day to go to library. With the sky bright blue and mild temperatures why bother working? I thought I'd compromise and maybe just take an hour or so and follow the river to the sea. Despite the fact that this is not very far it can take hours if you have to stop for every duck, not to mention bald eagles. Once I started on this trek to the sea, work was a doomed enterprise. Besides that, since I'm not getting paid and have no formal employer (no matter what Zsolt thinks about my being his personal Windows 98 support person), it ain't work. So I ain't playing hooky. Before I even left the house I watched the local starling flock whirl onto a shrub at the edge of the parking lot. Their beaks are yellow no. I noticed this a week ago on a few, but now most all adults have the breeding season yellow coloring. Spring for starlings, if not for us yet. That brings to mind last week's starlings improbably floating down river on an ice floe. I'd seen tons of gulls on ice floes and that sort of made sense to me. But when I saw a flock of starlings fly out over the river and land on a relatively small chunk of ice, I was puzzled. There was nothing to eat there. They're not water going birds. Their feet must have been cold. Yet they sat there almost like they were joyriding on a cruise down the Merrimack. This week there's still ice left despite mild temperatures but I haven't seen any joyriding starlings. Well, the short drive along the Merrimack stretched into hours. Every place I could see the water, I could see ducks: buffleheads, mallards, three kinds of mergansers, goldeneyes ... I was just sort of driving along figuring I'd be sure to find bald eagles when I got to the Chain Bridge, when I spotted two large dark shapes out of the corner of my eye. I pulled over at Larry's Marina and spotted 2 immature bald eagles across the river. As I walked a little ways onto the boat ramp I startled a great blue heron who took off remarkably fast. The 2 great black backed gulls and a crow stayed put on the ramp while I stared mesmerized through my binoculars at the eagles. After a few minutes I decided this wasn't the best place to be parked so I continued down the road a hundred yards or so to a city park with like legal parking spaces and a couple of benches and picnic tables etc. A guy with binoculars was looking in the general direction of the two eagles, who had landed on trees on the opposite riverbank. After a few minutes, he asks "Are those immature bald eagles?" to which I said yes and asked if they were his first. "First of the year" he replies. Turns out he lives down the street from this park and had never seen the eagles here. As we're watching one crosses the river and stages a dramatic flyby right in front of me. I couldn't have asked for anything better. I mean this bird was within spitting distance. I watched both birds until they were out of sight. I have no idea how long I was there. Time stopped. Sometime later, after a half dozen more stops for various ducks and one stop for a blue jay inexplicably standing nonchalantly in the middle of the road, I finally got to the famous Chain Bridge. It seemed like a magical place, with a small salt marsh bordering on a tiny forest of old trees. Really big old trees, some dead, some still living. It's like this oasis of New England that time forgot, right in the middle of the bridge. I spotted 3 bald eagles circling in the distance to the east. They were pretty far away, but identifiable. With the eagles circling and the mallards quacking, mergansers diving and the sun glinting off the water I felt like I'd been transported back to a time before we white folks arrived on this continent. That illusion didn't last long. A helicopter panics mallards and red-breasted mergansers. They fly up in a single flock mallards, mergansers, Canada geese, and skim low over the water before they settled down again. A single greater scaup stayed put oblivious. Do greater scaups travel alone? This one appeared to have no companion and kept its distance from the other species. A Coast Guard boat came through with a big wake, eliminating the last vestige of the illusion of untouched wilderness. The ducks mostly rode out the wake. On the way home I sat by the river along the Buttonwood Trail in Haverhill watching hooded mergansers doing their thing while drinking ice cold Coke at picnic table - despite warm spell this is not really picnic time - would've been better off with warm beverage like coffee or at least thinking to wear gloves... hooded mergansers brilliant in the sun putting heads back - touching back with back of head -how do they do it and why can't we? Besides being steeped in Thoreau, I've been steeped in John Marquand's account of Timothy Dexter all week. I realize that I forgot to write about acquiring Timothy Dexter Revisited at Avenue Victor Hugo on Saturday night after our anniversary dinner at Trident Booksellers Cafe. So I'd been wondering if the Chain Bridge was the Essex-Merrimack Bridge that Timothy Dexter was involved in financing. He's got a long stream of consciousness thing about bridges over the Merrimack in A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. The bridge that is currently there, from which I was watching the three bald eagles circling and the helicopter scaring the ducks (except scaup), is built on the same spot as the one that Dexter calls the Essex-Merrimack Bridge. The original was built in 1792. Timothy Dexter gave an incoherent speech at the dedication and then wrote a letter to the editor of the Impartial Herald afterwards claiming he was speaking French. Thoreau mentions the Chain Bridge in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. That reminds me that I forgot to write about Domino showing me Thoreau's journal in the basement of Olde Port Bookshop. The reason why I am constantly quoting Thoreau these days is Winter edited by H.G.O. Blake. I read the corresponding days' entries aloud to Nancy every night. I also forgot to write in Tuesday's entry that Fluffy, Mrs. Littlefield's cat, died. Fluffy was the original reason we started the nursing home cat program. Mrs. L had to give her up when she went into the nursing home and surrendered her to us for adoption. In the meanwhile we started bringing Fluffy and other cats for visits. Fluffy found a nice home and continued to visit Mrs. L even after she was adopted. She had a nice life. |
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