Journal of a Sabbatical

June 21, 2001

rainy day

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
least tern (10)
herring gull (10)
ring billed gull (7)
Bonaparte's gull (2)
great black backed gull (2)
common tern (4)
double crested cormorant (2)
Forster's tern (2)
common grackle (1)

Today's Reading: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird

Today's Starting Pitcher:
Pedro Martinez

2001 Book List
2001 Plum Island Bird List
Plum Island Life List

Photos:

Sign showing least tern with chick - raindrops clearly visible

Fat Free?

Beach - looking south

I wimped out after an hour and a half on the beach as a rain shower passed directly over me and I got soaked. I actually radioed the gate house that it was only raining on me. As I was leaving, the geologist guy I was talking to last week arrived to take over so I felt better about leaving. The beach was not busy anyway. The early shift person had not had a single visitor and I didn't have any in my hour and a half either.

Gulls and terns were the main attraction the whole time I was there. The least terns put on a good show catching little bait fish all over the place. A Forster's tern caught a fish and flew up with the fish in its beak. The wind blew the fish right out of its beak so the tern dove again after it. The wind blew the fish out again. The poor tern repeated this a third time and then finally flew off. The wind was pretty powerful.

The biologists started the survey about an hour before I left, so I don't have the most up to date information. Jean said there were about 10 chicks so far, and a couple of the unsuccessful pairs have renested.

It felt good to have the wind blowing and cooling me down, but once my long-sleeved thin cotton blouse got wet the wind felt downright cold. Strange we've been having an almost heat wave and today everybody on the beach but me (hardy to Zone 5) is wearing a jacket.

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