Journal of a Sabbatical

June 28, 2001

hot a lot

Today's Bird Sightings
Plum Island
ring billed gull (10)
herring gull (3)
great black back gull (3)
least tern (4)
common tern (5)
double crested cormorant (10)
Coast Guard Assets
helicopter (1)

Today's Reading: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan by Isabella Bird, A Flora of Essex County by Stuart K. Harris

Today's Starting Pitcher:
Frank Castillo

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

Photos:

Beach - looking south

Barnacles

Blue mussel shell

I have a steady stream of visitors all day long. All of them are nice, cooperative, and genuinely interested in the piping plover. In this heat I'm darn glad to be out on the beach explaining the lives and loves of piping plovers. At least there's a breeze.

It's so hot the fish aren't biting and the birds aren't even stirring. The gulls, three species, just sit on the sand. A couple of small flocks of cormorants skim over the surface of the water. Small numbers of terns fly back and forth but don't dive after bait fish. The terns and cormorants just keep cruising.

No biologists appear and there's no report attached to the clipboard so I have no idea how many chicks in what stage of development are out there. I keep my eyes and ears peeled but don't see or hear any piping plovers. Don't even hear willets or terns or killdeers. Just the occasional drone of a small plane or the whir of the Coast Guard helicopter that's cruising back and forth just offshore.

Shimmery silver lines hover above the surface of the sand like a thick curtain of heat. It's a summer day if ever there were one. Too hot to think.

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