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amidst yankee homecoming July 28, 2001 |
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Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society Today's
Bird Sightings: This
Year's Bird List: Today's
Reading: This
Year's Reading: Today's
Starting Pitcher: Photos: Foxy Lyla Queen Anne's Lace Common Tansy |
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What a different place this is today! Not only have the rabies room and the sick room finally swapped places, but some long time residents have finally found homes: Seamus, Blue, and Stormy (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I sure hope Stormy's home works out this time. I joke to Cindy that we ought to have a party if Stormy is still in her new home in three months. A bunch of names on the list I don't even recognize, including a number of cats named after vegetables. Carrots and asparagus - not things I usually associate with cats. And of course I am immediately drawn
to a new orange tabby named Foxy. Foxy is asleep with his
front paws wrapped around the cage door. He looks like he's
trying to hold it closed. Sure enough when I open the door
to take his picture, he reaches out with his paw and pulls
it closed For some reason, I get the idea that Lyla also needs to be photographed. My eye just skipped over her totally on the list of cats the press photographer already did. That could be because I am still trying to figure out all these conflicting Jasmines. There's a Jasmine on the web site, one listed on the adoptions board, one on the list of cats the press photographer did, and one in the shelter yet none of them seem to match up. How many Jasmines are there? No wonder I got confused at J and amnesiac by the time I got to L... Lyla is shy and doesn't particularly want me near her. She's so pretty though... Now the question (besides how many
Jasmines there are) is do I brave the crowds of Yankee
Homecoming in order to get some Fowle's coffee? I figure if
I can find a parking space on the first try, I'll do it.
Remarkably, I do. Sheer luck. Downtown Newburyport is
jam-packed and buzzing with tourists, buskers, stage
performers, booths full of the usual festival junk, food
vendors, a live auction, everything but the giant chess set
(they always have a giant chess set - where did it go?). I
give all my change to a violin player who stares down at the
boardwalk while making beautiful music. By the time I make
my way to Fowle's I'm feeling crowded. I order a
With coffee in hand I head to the refuge to attempt a game of drive-by birding. It's high tide and there's not a single bird of any kind at the salt pannes. American goldfinches play in the tree tops and crisscross the road in that bouncy way of flight that makes them instantly recognizable. Catbirds are all over the place. The suicidal mourning dove pair (at least I think it's them) fly over and land somewhere in the dunes. Are they tired of the road? The purple loosestrife is in full frightening invasive bloom. I overhear tourists exclaiming how beautiful it is. The thing of it is ... it is beautiful. Beautiful, introduced, and invasive. It's mentioned in Hamlet. It's described in a 2000 year old Greek medical text. Darwin studied it. And it has taken over acres of New England wet lands. End of purple loosestrife discussion for now. Stay tuned for an all purple loosestrife entry sometime in the future.
A cloud of blackbirds rises from the marsh and forms itself into a funnel looking exactly like a tornado, a mixed blackbird tornado. A northern harrier charges into the blackbird tornado and the cloud deforms around it. I can follow the harrier's path by watching the shape of the cloud. People all over the place stop to watch this phenomenon. I've never seen anything like it. The birds seem to be redwinged blackbirds, starlings, grackles, and possibly other things but they're swirling around too fast for me to get really good identifications. The blackbirds eventually land and vanish into the grass while the harrier, left all alone, takes off over the dunes. Quite the show. I watch the ospreys for a long time from the observation platform at the Pines Trail. The two young stretch their wings repeatedly and kind of hop above the edge of the nest but do not fly. The adult male leaves his nearby perch and joins the female and young on the nest. How do all those big birds fit there? There's not that much space. I watch the ospreys until I start to feel sunburned. Oops, forgot the sunscreen - out of the habit after only two weeks at a desk job. Eek! Anyway, on of the young ospreys looks like it gets a little air and the wind ripples its wings but it doesn't go anywhere. An older couple who've watched ospreys fledge before comes over and we talk about ospreys. Several groups of visitors come and go and don't even glance toward the osprey nest. So I guess even a bird as impressive as the osprey doesn't get everybody's attention. Ever since I read Return of the Osprey I've been thinking about how ospreys are so much more popular than piping plovers. Gessner could rely on a whole bevy of osprey experts and a wealth of book length literature to write his osprey opus. It's just my luck that I had to become obsessed with a tiny shorebird the color of dry sand instead of a dramatic bird of prey that nests in the open where people can see it. If there's going to be piping plover literature, I'm going to have to write it. All this and Yankee Homecoming too. Maybe we should celebrate osprey homecoming. |
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Copyright © 2001, Janet I. Egan |
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I
open the door of the cat shelter and hear a kitten's urgent
meow, so loud it penetrates my eardrums despite the fact
that I'm at the foot of the stairs and it's upstairs in the
office with the door closed. A little white kitten just
wants to be held so badly he can't stand it for one more
minute. I open the cage door and he climbs into my arms. He
sits on my chest and purrs - extra loud. He wraps himself
around my neck like a scarf - a tiny scarf. Not till he's
had his fill of touching and being touched do I check my
snail mail box, check the adoptions notebook so I can list
who's been adopted in the past two weeks, and photograph a
couple of new cats. It's amazing how clearly that kitten
communicates its needs!
again. Then he notices the lens cap dangling from its little
string, What fun! He amuses himself while making it
impossible for me to get far enough away for a picture. He
finally poses with Cindy holding him then goes for the lens
cap again. Foxy just wants to have fun. What a
guy!
large
dark roast and a pound of dark roast ground for flat filter.
"There are entirely too many people out there" says I. "I
hate tourists," says the coffee kid. Pause. "I hope you're
not one." I laugh. "Nope. Not a tourist, but not a
Newburyport resident either." How do I explain to the kid
that I have this greater-Newburyport focused life without
living there? Same as I have this Providence focused life,
and y'know I don't even think of myself as a tourist in
Budapest anymore ...
At
Hellcat a beginning birder approaches me to ask the identity
of the bird with astoundingly yellow legs. A lesser
yellowlegs. I point out a slew of semipalmated plovers and
some short billed dowitchers. She asks about the gulls.
"Gulls are hard" says she. Boy has she ever hit the nail on
the head. That's why some people are so into them - for the
challenge. Anyway, all I see out there today are herring
gulls and great black backs today. One of the dowitchers
might be long billed but I can't really tell even with the
scope. It's just too far away to get a really good view and
it doesn't oblige me by calling so I can get it by ear.