speaking of aliens

May 4, 2002

Today's Reading
Logbook for Grace by Robert Cushman Murphy

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

Today's Starting Pitcher
Derek Lowe

Photos

wild turkey

bluets

chickweed

dwarf cinquefoil

wild strawberry

wintercress

OK, so the wild turkey isn' technically an alien since it's a native species but you have to admit it looks alien. And to think that the founding fathers actually considered a choice between the bald eagle and the wild turkey for our national bird! Imagine Neil Armstrong exclaiming "The turkey has landed!" Picture a turkey dancing on the mound at Yankee Stadium opening the World Series - actually I kind of like that image :-)

The Pacific golden plover on the other hand is an alien and both sides of the refuge road are lined with illegally parked vehicles and birders with scopes on a stakeout at what has come to be known lately as "the Pacific golden plover spot". I elected not to join the stakeout because I'm much more interested in the local birds than in the alien visitors. Once and awhile I've chased after a rare bird here, but for the most part what I want to do is get to know the lives of the birds who live here or pass through regularly on their way north (or south as the case may be). Knowing what birds nest here, when they arrive, when they leave, and how they're doing fascinates me. I think I'd rather see a Pacific golden plover in wherever Pacific golden plovers live than here where it may be so lost it won't find its way to its nesting ground. I'm just not a twitcher I guess.

And if I can't tell the season from the bird life, I can sure tell it from the plant life. Bluets are blooming in profusion making little bluish white swaths along the sides of the road. The wild strawberries are growing in the road. Invasive aliens like dwarf Canadian cinquefoil and wintercress lend a little yellow to the scene. And I'm probably the only nutcause who even notices that the chickweed is blooming.

Kestrels seem to be everywhere. After awhile I had to stop counting them because I couldn't tell if they were the same ones I'd already seen. At one point a male and a female flew directly over my head together.

Long lines of cormorants keep arriving. There don't seem to be many gulls though. That's kind of weird. Where are the herring gulls who always hang out by the clam flats? And I don't see the suicidal mourning dove pair who nest next to the road today either. Though I did see some mourning doves in various places. And the first killdeers of the season - at least for me - are out and about.

I had to start a new notebook today because I filled up the old one last time. That would be the "everywhere else" notebook as opposed to the "Watchemoket Cove" notebook, all birding being divided into the cove and every place else including not just Plum Island but Antarctica, Hungary, China ... every place else... Flipping through the old notebook I found the picture Zsolt drew of the Prunus spinoza that saved my life in my close encounter with the loess embankment - hey maybe I was just trying to become one with the bank swallows - and the tree where my glasses ended up along with the names of the herptiles we saw at Peteri Lake. Who knows what the new notebook will record? Well, besides the wild turkey and all those kestrels and so forth... and uh oh , where is the new notebook? Grrr. I must have left it in the car. List later I guess - for those really want the list.