It's not raining.
It's my birthday.
Two great black back gulls are
sharing a crab at the water line. It's a pretty big crab,
but they must be sharing because they're mates not
because there's plenty to go around. Gulls aren't exactly
known for sharing, especially great black backs. The
great black back pair hangs around for a long time bowing
to each other and making lots of noise before they take
off for a gull-rich spot further to the north past
Emerson rocks. A lot of herring gulls seem to be hanging
out in pairs too. Must be spring.
The first visitor I speak to wants
to know if I've seen any piping plover chicks yet.
Chicks?!? The adults are just arriving! I explain the
life cycle, unconsciously making nest scrapes in the sand
with my foot while I'm talking. She seems quite taken
with the compressed time frame of nesting, incubating,
hatching, fledging even though she says it's a bummer
that the beach is closed until they fledge. She points
out that humans take 9 months to hatch. I add that,
"Yeah, and it takes us 18 years to be able to
fly."
Another visitor announces she's
bummed at having to share the beach with the plovers and
wants to know what most people's reaction is. I tell her
most people I've talked to are happy we're doing
everything we can to help the piping plovers reproduce
and I go into my "there's so little habitat left" speech.
I stop short of giving the discourse on beach development
and on having had a spiritual awakening as a result of
viewing the Orrin
Pilkey video. I'm fired up
to talk about piping plovers. Beach "erosion" can wait
for another time. Anyway, the woman says she guesses
we'll just have to share the beach and walks away
smiling.
It's low tide. The early morning
spike in visitors is over and the midday influx hasn't
started. I hear a purple finch singing its little
brightly colored head off behind me. Then I hear the
unmistakable peep-lo call of the piping plover. I get the
binoculars on it really fast. I'm so surprised. This is
my first plover warden shift of the season (the first
three I had scheduled were rained out) and I can't
possibly have the good luck to see a piping plover right
off the bat. I'm watching it walk around the wet area
just above the waterline doing that weird "plovering"
thing with its feet (they vibrate their feet on the sand
to help stir up food). As I'm watching it, I hear the
"plaintive whistle" call, which is a little lower than
the peep-lo call, and it's not coming from the plover I'm
watching. It sounds like it's way to my right and almost
behind me. I start to search for the source of the call
methodically scanning from left to right when two more
piping plovers fly in and land by the water line. Three
of them!?! Does the universe know it's my
birthday?
All three of the piping plovers
hang around for about an hour or so feeding and calling
and running around in that bizarre zigzag way they do.
Except for the calling, they don't seem to interact with
each other. They move in separate directions. It strikes
me that they're very different from sanderlings in that
regard. Sanderlings seem to have some sort of group mind
that causes them all to turn the same direction at once
or to take off and fly three feet further north all at
once. The piping plovers are individualists. No
groupthink for them.
I call Ned on my cellphone at the
appointed Ned-calling time (yes there's a time to call
Ned, and a time not to call Ned, a time to reap, a time
to sow, a time...) and announce "It's my birthday and
we're
not in the ER!" Then I tell
him about the three piping plovers. He's suitably
impressed and reminds me that it's really great that I
can lift my binoculars and hold them steady to see this.
We decide we have to celebrate -- my birthday, the fact
that we're not in the ER, the fact that I can lift
binoculars, the first piping plovers of the season...
Then it's back to watching Condoleeza Rice testify before
the 9-11 commission for him and back to watching the
beach, which is empty of both birds and visitors, for
me.
Naturally, now that all three
piping plovers are out of sight, the stream of visitors
starts up again. A songwriter looking for inspiration
says it's a bummer that the inspiring part of the beach
is closed (Sandy Point's not inspiring?) but when I tell
him all about the piping plovers, once again
unconsciously making nest scrapes with my foot, he
becomes resigned to sharing with them. Maybe he'll write
a song about them. Who knows?
My relief is on her way sometime
around noon but she's not here yet when Deb pulls up on
the ATV, finishing her survey of the beach. I tell her
excitedly about my three piping plovers. She asks if I'm
absolutely sure. "Absolutely," I reply, "they were
calling." She writes them down.
By the time my relief arrives it's
past 12:30 and I'm starving. Lunch never looked so good.
Ned and I celebrate my birthday
with coffee at Perfecto's and reading aloud to each other
from Charles St. John as is fitting. It's not The Wild
Sports and Natural History of the Highlands, this
time but A Tour in Sutherlandshire, which has
fewer mentions of rats but way more mention of birds.
What a difference a year makes, I'm conscious for all of
the St. John reading! We're trying to figure out how to
make a Hollywood movie out of a 19th century birding
trip. The Sutherlandshire trip definitely has great
visuals with the boat on wheels drawn by horses on land
and then with the wheels unbolted for the lakes,
especially when they end up having to portage the thing
over a huge hill because of the droll Scottish
innkeeper's vagueness about how far "just over there" is.
Three piping plovers and I'm
not in the ER. This has got to be the best birthday
ever!
