a duopod?

July 13, 2002

Today's Reading
Eye of the Albatross by Carl Safina

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

Today's Bird Sightings
Plum Island

purple martin
house sparrow
willet
northern mockingbird
American crow
common grackle
starling
redwinged blackbird
great blue heron
snowy egret
herring gull
great black back gull
glossy ibis
killdeer
semipalmated sandpiper
least tern
Forster's tern
short-billed dowitcher
eastern kingbird
gray catbird
American robin
bobolink
osprey
American goldfinch
northern cardinal
song sparrow
cedar waxwing
great egret
American black duck
Canada goose
gadwall
double crested cormorant
piping plover (6!!!)
greater yellowlegs
mourning dove
brown thrasher
semipalmated plover
tree swallow
least sandpiper

Joppa Flats
little blue heron
mallard

This Year's Bird Sightings
Plum Island Year List

I've been having serious piping plover withdrawal, and it's a beautiful day, and I feel like I've been missing summer entirely what with the starship and other compelling stuff.... sooo... I arranged to meet a friend at Parking Lot 1 and search the whole darn island for piping plovers and oh by the way see how many bird species we could see without getting a greenhead bite.

I pulled into the parking lot just after 8:00 AM and the only other car in lot 1 looks like Bob's so I am guessing he must be north plover warden today. While I wait for my friend I drink my coffee (dark roast black, but you knew that) and watch a whole mess of purple martins darting all over the place.

Across the road a flock of great blue herons flies by with willets in hot pursuit. The herons land en masse and the willets harass them for awhile and then go on about their willet business. How come I never read accounts of willets doing mobbing behavior like crows and blackbirds do? I've seen this more than once. Anyway, the great blues are gorgeous and some of them are clearly young. Neat.

On the dunes next to the boardwalk I watch a mockingbird taunting a crow. The mocker repeatedly flies as close to the crow as it can get without touching it, then loops away as soon as the crow tries to peck at it. The crow stays put on the branch, periodically cawing in an annoyed kind of way (ok so I'm anthropomorphizing but that crow really did sound annoyed), until the mockingbird gets bored with its game and goes off to chase the great blue heron flock.

When my friend arrives, we decide to start at the north boundary of the closed beach area to see if we can see the two piping plovers that re-nested at the north end of the beach after the unusually high tide washed over their first nests a few weeks ago. The predator exclosures are clearly visible and there's something in one of them that looks like it could be a piping plover, but it could be a stick. And down closer to the tide line is a plover warden with white hair who could be Bob, judging by the back of his head. It is Bob so we chat a little and ask him about the plover shaped thing in the exclosure. He says he thought it was a plover too but it hasn't moved in two weeks so he's pretty sure it's a stick.

The morning has been remarkably free of greenheads until we're standing there talking to Bob and they start swarming all around us. I've taken the precaution of wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt but Bob is in shorts. He quickly pulls long pants and a long sleeved shirt out of his pack and yanks them on as the greenheads close in. We leave Bob to the greenheads and start making our way toward Sandy Point.

It takes forever to get to Sandy Point when you stop for every bird along the way. But that's the fun of it. How slowly can you go 6 miles? Pretty darn slowly when there are this many catbirds sitting in the road. What is it with catbirds today? They seem to have taken a cue from the suicidal mourning dove pair. And every salt pan and pool seems to have short-billed dowitchers, least sandpipers, and semipalmated sandpipers in profusion. I guess the shorebird migration is starting.

At Sandy Point, the least terns are making a fuss. Are we too close to their nest? One is sitting on the sand but I'm not convinced it actually has an egg. The rest of them are flying way too close to my head. I start worrying about getting pooped on - the least tern's secret (and effective) weapon. As I'm scoping out the tern territory I spy a piping plover, adult, sitting stock still on a berm of sand. Its cryptic camouflage doesn't hide it when it's the tallest thing sticking up from the sand and the background I'm viewing it against is the green water rather than the pale sand. "Bingo!" I exclaim. My friend knows exactly what I mean. She has it in focus in about 10 seconds. As we watch, a chick hops by just beyond the adult. Then further to the right there are three more piping plovers - little fluffy ones - feeding in the wrack. To top it off, another adult lands in the wrack near the foraging chicks. Six piping plovers in one day! Bingo, indeed.

My scope is shaking. I notice a screw missing from the tripod. I scan the sand for the missing screw but don't find it. Who knows when it fell out? When we're done looking at the plover chicks, I pick up the scope and tripod (I keep the scope mounted on the tripod and carry the whole thing around with me) and one leg falls off. If a leg falls off a tripod does that make it a duopod?

With the two-legged tripod - scope still mounted - in one hand and the third leg in the other, I head back to the car totally fulfilled having seen not one, not two, but 6 of the little invisi-birds! We pick up a few more species on the way back toward the entrance and head for a lunch and coffee break at Middle Street Foods.

Fortified with the coffee formerly known as Fowle's, we backtrack to Joppa flats where there's not much happening - just a few mallards - until, improbably, a little blue heron flies by. This is turning out to be a very good birding day, but we're still not satisfied with the species count and the greenheads are lying low as the wind picks up, so it's back to the refuge for a second look. We end up with 41 species on the list and not a single greenhead bite.

As if the day hasn't been fabulous enough, I pick up Nancy at the bus station and head to Waltham for dinner at New Mother India. Their Kashmiri mushrooms appetizer alone is worth the trip, never mind the vegetable vindaloo etc. And it's so convenient that New Mother India is just a couple of blocks from the Embassy Cinema, which is one of the only two places in the Boston area that's showing Atanarjuat/The Fast Runner.

Talk about fabulous! Atanarjuat is 3 hours long but I hardly noticed the time, I was so caught up in the story. The Canadian Arctic is gorgeous, with plenty of footage of Artic terns, and the story of evil entering a small village and setting up a cycle of revenge is gripping. I love this movie. The theater was packed, so I guess it's getting good word of mouth. The audience actually applauded at the end and sat stunned in their seats through the credits. Wow.