Journal of a Sabbatical

May 30, 2001

they think i'm joking

Please adopt cats at the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
eastern kingbird (12)
common grackle (4)
redwinged blackbird (6)
American crow (2)
Canada goose (6)
gray catbird (4)
American robin (2)
common tern (4)
herring gull (1)
brown thrasher (3)
mourning dove (1)
mallard (20)
double-crested cormorant (2)
yellow warbler (1)
turkey vulture (1)
bobolink (2)

Today's Reading: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird, Salt Rivers of the Massachusetts Coast by Henry Howe

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

Beastly easterlies have been blowing for like a month. Roy was complaining today that officiating at the yacht club (far too grand a name) races in the late afternoon/early evening with the unremitting easterlies blowing on him and his wife is making their arthritis flare up. Folks posting on Massbird have been complaining about the easterlies holding up the warbler migrations and the hawk migrations. So, you know the next sentence here is going to be "The wind changed today." The wind changed today. Several times. With great violent force. I think this might be what Winnie the Pooh refers to as a blustery day. Pajama Woman's patio umbrella (which is huge and heavy and completely blocks my kitchen and bathroom windows when open) landed in my yard. A couple of trees on my street had limbs down. At least the hawks have come unstuck.

Usually this kind of weather makes Wilbur into a demented predator, but he was content to stay curled up on my bed this morning when I left for the cat shelter. This weather usually stirs up the shelter cats too, but other than Savannah harassing Blue, which is par for the course, they weren't particularly acting up. Sandy seems to have regained dominion over the big yellow bucket so is all sweetness and affection today. Roy has stopped giving him donuts because it turns out he can't tolerate them as much as he likes them, but he's still trying to get into Roy's pocket in search of donut crumbs.

Bianca, the shy white one who came in with the yucky frostbite boo-boos, head butted me and let me pet her today. She actually approached me. It's gratifying to see her so much less scared. She didn't even hide under the sink at all, actively exploring the whole room instead. Go Bianca.

Priscilla's getting bolder too. She walked up to me and kind of sniffed and just barely rubbed against my leg. Considering that she usually hides in a kitty condo or cubbyhole whenever she's out of her cage, this amazed me. She's such an adorable dainty little gray tabby I can't imagine how anyone can look at her and not fall in love.

Kuchina (the Hopi goddess of Italian cooking) is going home with Stacy. One of the vets from downstairs has a hold on Miss Newburyport. Spend time with these cats, take one home. Happens all the time.

Blizzard was hiding out in one of the community litter boxes so I had to skip cleaning that one. Somehow, I doubt it was dirty or Blizzard wouldn't have stayed there that long.

I didn't take any cat pictures today partly because there weren't any new cats and partly because I just didn't feel like it. To make up for it, I did lots of weed pictures later in the afternoon.

Either my taste buds are changing or the guy at Angelina's put vinegar instead of oil on my veggie sub. Vinegar soaks through bread pretty fast, not to mention tastes a lot different from olive oil. Maybe the wind is affecting sandwich making. So lunch was not quite as satisfying as it could have been. Then it was off to the refuge for a game of drive-by birding, which is fairly interesting when the wind is blowing this hard and intense little rain showers blow over every little while.

I saw a mourning dove walking in the road carrying nest materials in its beak near the spot where the pair I dubbed the suicidal mourning doves nested last year. This one did not walk in front of the car, but sure did look like it was trying to build a nest on the road shoulder.

Many birds return to the same nest site or somewhere nearby year after year. This seems to be true even in cases where the nest was not successful, like that piping plover pair near the north beach boundary who nested again and again in a spot that got washed over by the high tides. One would think that they might learn, but maybe the only "learning" that takes places is that the ones who choose poor nest sites don't reproduce, so the next generation doesn't have a chance to choose poor nest sites.

I have no idea whether the suicidal mourning dove pair succeeded in reproducing themselves last year. Remarkably, neither of the adults got flattened by a car, but I don't know what happened to the little dovelets. Not that mourning doves are in any danger of vanishing from the face of the earth. I'm just interested in whether they learn not to choose stupid dangerous nest sites or the bad chooser genes are weeded out by natural selection.

The other interesting avian spectacle today was a turkey vulture under attack by redwinged blackbirds. The blackbirds, three of them, were really going after the turkey vulture pecking at it from all directions. They kept driving it lower and lower toward the dunes. They almost forced it out of the sky. They finally chased it out over the clam flats and I lost sight of the whole thing. Some mockingbirds were attacking a crow too, but that seemed less David vs. Goliath after the blackbird/turkey vulture show.

I wanted to shower and change clothes before the board meeting and it started raining again, so I stopped searching for birds and weeds and drove home through intermittent rain showers. Same on the way back to Newburyport for the meeting: intermittent showers. At one point the rain was coming down so hard I couldn't see anything at all and the next minute I could see blue sky. No rainbows though. When I got to Newburyport, I experienced a brief moment when it was raining on one side of State Street and not the other. Strangest weather I've ever seen, and yes, the wind is still blowing like crazy.

We had a guest speaker tonight, about the role of the board in telephone fundraising. As usual, we went around the room introducing ourselves to her and describing our role in the organization. As usual I said I am committed to attaining enlightenment through washing litter boxes. They think I'm joking.

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