between you and me

July 9, 2004


The weather did not look promising this morning. In fact it was raining at my house, but only a little. I'd heard it was supposed to clear up so I drove up to PI to do the human signpost (aka plover warden) thing anyway. I was a little late because the road is torn up around Perfecto's where I stopped for coffee. The gatehouse was skeptical about how long I'd last. The guy who was suposed to be north had already called in to cancel.

 After I'd been there about an hour, the weather cleared up spectaculary. It turned into one of those glorious days that people move here for. There's a steady trickle of visitors. This is the first time this year I've gotten the "Is the beach closure new? We used to be able to walk the whole length of the beach!" question. I point out it's been like this for at least 9 years. Then there's "where are the greenheads?" "are they bad yet?" "what keeps them away?" All the usual questions that have little to do with piping plovers. I have to kick one woman out of the closed area, but at least she's polite and sort of embarrassed when I confront her.

There are no greenheads today. Not a one.

For most of the shift (at least three hours) there's a great black backed gull working on a fish just at the water line. It shares with one other great black back but scolds other great black backs and other gull species when they get close. One is working on the fish all the time. The other comes and goes. When the one it shares with comes by it greets the other gbb with head bobbing and a slightly different cry. Just call me Niko Tinbergen.

The coolest bird sighting of the day is a bunch of Wilson's storm petrels following a lobster boat. Watching them dip like swallows over the boat wake was so much fun! This is the first time I have seen storm petrels from shore. It's weird not to have a boat pitching and rolling underneath me while looking at storm petrels. A unique experience. Add these little guys to my list of sea birds seen from shore. Too cool.

I periodically interrupt my intense study of gulls to scan the beach as I'm supposed to. I'm looking at some Bonaparte's gulls on the closed area of beach when I lift my binoculars a little higher and spot two people in the distance on the closed area of beach. I radio the gatehouse who sends Unit 63 to investigate. Through my binoculars in the heat haze the people look like they are near lot 5. I watch them for awhile and see them walk into the dunes and disappear. Unit 63 radios me from the top of the boardwalk at lot 5, where I can just see him, and asks if the place where the people went into the dunes is "past me" or "between you and me". I say "between you and me", so he commences walking toward me looking for the footprints leading into the dunes. He gets to the spot where I think I saw them, radios me, and asks where I saw them go into the dunes. "Right where you are" I say stupidly. I am forgetting two very important principles of optics: foreshortening and looming. From where I am lot 5, Sea Haven, and points north all look the same distance -- flattened. Plus there's just enough heat haze to create looming, which causes things on the horizon to look bigger and closer and things past the horizon to be reflected up above the horizon. None of this occurs to me while I'm talking to 63. He keeps walking toward me at lot 6 searching for the footprints.

Jean comes by to witness this whole search and say she's surprised I can even see as far as lot 5. I hand her my 10x wide angle binoculars and she marvels at them. I start to tell her the story of how Pete Dunne himself told me my binoculars are too heavy. (Oddly my account of the Pete Dunne binocular lecture does not include his comments on my heavy binoculars, which he made multiple times in Chile and once when was pulling me out of the mud on South Georgia. -- not that the binoculars were the reason I sank in the mud or anyt hing.) We get sidetracked with a discussion of binoculars in general and Jean's praise of Deb's binoculars (crystal clear) makes me want to rush out and buy Bausch and Lomb Elites or Swarovskis or something in the 4 digit price range (yeah, like I have the money for that).

On the piping plover front, Jean says there are 8 fledglings, 4 chicks that are fledgling wannabes, and 2 chicks hatching right now today - biological staff says they've got some good pictures of today's chicks. It looks like this is going to be a very good year. Awesome.

Jean hangs around to give Unit 63 a ride back to his vehicle once he gets to us. We discuss the funky 5.6 mile marker, which looks more like it says 5d. In fact the second digit looks nothing like a 6 no matter how you rotate your head or adjust your binoculars. Unit 63 arrives muttering "between you and me... between you and me... between you and me." He says he found no footprints anywhere between lot 5 and here. Mysterious disappearing people leave no footprints. I must have judged the distance wrong. 63 got to do some law enforcement activity anyway though, 'cause here on the open part of the beach a group of boys has climbed up into the dunes (no trespassing in the dunes--they're fragile -- regardless of beach closure) and somebody is about to launch a kite (no kite-flying on national wildlife refuge). Jean offers him a ride and they take off. Unit 63 says "between you and me" one last time.

A visitor asks me about predation on piping plovers. He wants to know if it's mainly eagles that eat them. Eagles? Nope. "Gulls" I tell him, "Gulls?" "Yes, gulls. Great black backs are extremely mean predators." Then I tell him about crows and about mammalian predators and humans stepping on nests and chicks and all the disasters than can befall a piping plover before it fledges. The visitor answers "It's a wonder there are any of them at all!" There used to be tons of them before people shot them to wear on hats and developed the beaches so there's so few places for them to breed safely, then a little predation didn't matter. Their reproductive strategy hasn't caught up with modern realities.

The gatehouse attendent radios that my relief will meet me at the gatehouse, so I pack up my stuff and end another day in the land of gulls and radios.

Today's Bird Sightings
Plum Island

mourning dove 7
brown thrasher 2
gray catbird 5
ringbilled gull 12
eastern kingbird 4
common tern 6
herring gull 4
great black back gul 4
double crested cormorant 29
tree swallow 2
mallard 1
least tern 3
Bonaparte's gull 1
Wilson's storm petrel 8

Mammal Sightings

Refuge biological staff 0
Refuge other staff 2
Visitors 13

Coast Guard Assets 0

Today's Reading
Eastward the Sea by Charles F. Heywood

This Year's Reading
2004 Booklist

Today's Starting Pitcher
Bronson Arroyo


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Copyright © 2004, Janet I. Egan