take two black-bellied plovers and call me in the morning

November 23, 2001

Today's Bird Sightings
Plum Island
black-bellied plover (4)
dunlin (13)
American black duck (630)
Canada goose (106)
greater yellowlegs (4)
mallard (9)
mute swan (2)
herring gull (3)
great black backed gull (3)
northern pintail (10)
green winged teal (3)
northern harrier (1)
common eider (60)
horned grebe (1)
common loon (1)
white winged scoter (many)
black scoter (many)
surf scoter (many)

This Year's Bird Sightings
2001 Plum Island Bird List

Today's Reading:
Sand Dunes and Salt Marshes by Charles Wendell Townsend

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

The sun is out. The sky is that blue that people move here for. I feel sorry for all the people who have to spend today in crowded shopping malls. It's the birder's life for me. And judging by the number of cars in the Hellcat parking lot the birding life has called a boat load of people besides me.

Everybody's looking for snowy owls but nobody's finding them, and I for one, don't really care. I am loving black-bellied plovers and dunlin and scoters and eiders and teal oh my...

And I could get positively rhapsodic about grass: beach grass, salt marsh grass, salt meadow hay, even phragmites ... well maybe not quite rhapsodic about phragmites but those plumes are magnificent this time of year...

Beach, dunes, salt marsh. My kind of landscape.