Journal of a Sabbatical |
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April 19, 2001 |
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the first nice day (with no snipe) |
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Plover
Warden South Today's
Bird Sightings: Coast
Guard Assets: Visitors Contacted: 18 Today's Reading: Claws and Effect by Rita Mae Brown, Budapest 1900 by John Lukacs Today's
Starting Pitcher: Plum Island Bird List |
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The guy I relieved said he'd seen three piping plovers but I didn't see or hear a single one. That's about my usual luck. It's sometimes June before I actually see one of my little charges. He also encountered a visitor trying to walk off with someone else's lobster trap (illegal and just not done) to make into a table. Law enforcement was handling that in the south parking lot when I arrived. All sorts of other bird life was active though. Gulls squabbling, brant flying back and forth, scoters loafing, gannets diving, gulls harassing an immature bald eagle, crows foraging in the wrack, a long string of eiders barreling straight north at warp speed, sanderlings doing aerobatic displays, even some Coast Guard assets doing a training exercise... everything but piping plovers, and oh yeah, still no snipe. Two groups of northern gannets, a pair off Emerson Rocks and a foursome off Crane's Beach, put on a lively show of circling and diving. I was hoping to see gannets today and got a big kick out of watching them. Hordes of visitors of the birding
persuasion told me they had seen a single common snipe
rocking in the grass next to the road at various locations.
I didn't see any such snipe on my way to my post at the
south end of the The most dramatic event of the day was
a major gull fight. A great black-back had a crab in its
beak. Three herring gulls and a second great black-back went
after it with a vengeance calling at the top of their lungs,
pecking at each other, pulling at the crab until they
dismembered it. All the gulls managed to get a piece of the
crab, including the one the rest of them grabbed it from.
These birds were violent. I thought the great black-back was
going to become lunch for the herring gulls they were
beating on him so badly. Herring gulls were definitely on the offensive today. I heard a gull commotion to the north (between lot 7 and lot 6) and trained the binoculars in the direction of it. The dustup was taking place just at the limit of the range of my binoculars so I could see the action but not id the victim with absolute certainty, but it was a large raptor type bird about the size of a bald eagle, but not in adult plumage yet. The perpetrators were a bunch of herring gulls. Now I've seen crows harass bald eagles and red-tailed hawks, and mockingbirds harass northern shrikes, but I have never seen gulls mob anything, let alone a bald eagle. It was quite dramatic.
I got in a lot of exercise walking
back and forth to the ever receding water line to intercept
people who either just walked into the closed area or were
about to walk into the closed area. Altogether I talked with
18 people, three It was such a nice day that I couldn't bear to leave when my shift was over so I returned the radio and stuff to the gatehouse and went off in search of snipe. No snipe were in evidence anywhere I looked, but I did see a whole lot of great egrets and one snowy egret at Hellcat and a tricolored heron at the Pines. I heard a bittern making that pumping sound two different times at Hellcat but could not locate it. I kept watching for a stalk of grass to move in the general vicinity of the sound because bitterns do a great imitation of grass, but I had no luck. Bitterns are amazingly loud for a bird that's so hard to locate. I really would have stayed for every last minute of daylight, except for not having eaten since 10:30 this morning, and needing to be in Cambridge by 7:30 so I finally convinced myself that the first nice day this season is not the last nice day there's ever going to be. |
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Copyright © 2001, Janet I. Egan |