Two common terns chase a herring
gull. A woman in a black bathing suit does the dance of
the greenheads on her way down to the water. Someone has
written "Stop" and "Closed" in the sand along the
boundary this morning. The tide is going out. A thick
white haze obliterates the horizon.
A huge bundle of white balloons
lands on top of the dune near the board walk. Just as I
start thinking I should probably do something about it, a
lull in the breeze causes the greenheads to swarm around
me and I start doing the dance of the greenheads. It
ain't pretty. Then I end up talking to visitors, who are
once again more interested in greenheads than in piping
plovers. The wind changes and picks up speed and by the
time I look back at the dune the balloons are gone. I see
the whole white bundle of them scudding down the beach
toward parking lot 5. At least the wind keeps the
greenheads down for the rest of the shift.
A brown thrasher slides down the
dune onto the beach creating a miniature avalanche of
sand. I've never seen anything like that before. Why not
just fly down from the top of the dune? I think this is
the first time I've seen a brown thrasher actually on the
beach. I often see them in the dunes and sometimes
accidentally scare them up from under the boardwalk, but
I don't think I remember any hanging around the wrack
line. Maybe this one has developed a taste for
seaweed.
Not much is happening visitor-wise
and if there are any trespassers in the mystery zone I
wouldn't be able to see them because it's so hazy. They'd
just blend in to the vast expanse of white.
Two ringbilled gulls hang out in my
general vicinity for most of the shift. They don't do any
interesting flycatching behavior despite the greenheads.
Come to think of it, when the wind lets up enough for the
greenheads to fly I'm paying more attention to their
trying to bite me than to whatever the ringbilled gulls
might be doing to them. I found a used copy of
Seabirds: their biology and ecology by Bryan
Nelson (the gannet guy) at Rodney's
in Central Square last night, which has a great chart
showing the different feeding styles of different
seabirds. It doesn't mention the ringbilled gull's
hawking for flies though. After I mentioned
their flycatching and
playing catch with reeds I half thought legions of
ornithologist readers would tell me I'm nuts (well, I am
nuts, but I meant about my observations of ringbilled
gull behavior) so I checked the web and found that the
Cornell
Laboratory of Ornithology
has this to say about ringbilled gulls' feeding
habits:
"Forages
while walking on land, dips for food on surface
of water, skims shallow water for small fish,
hawks for flying insects. "
and this about playing
catch:
Ring-billed
Gulls "play" by dropping objects while in
flight, then swooping down to catch them. This
playful behavior may be practice for catching
and retrieving prey.
I even found a
photo of a ringbill playing
catch. There was nothing specifically about their eating
greenheads though. I definitely think about gulls far too
much :-).
As the morning goes on, not only
does the haze burn off but the weather turns positivley
great. It's suddenly a beautiful summer day. Who
knew?
I'm counting a big flock of
sanderlings that has just arrived when I see pale white
movement out of the corner of my left eye and quickly get
the binoculars on it. Aha! A piping plover! I thought so!
What's this? Another one? I scan and take in the whole
picture. I am looking at a flock of 7 piping plovers.
Some are adults and some are fledglings . And they're
flocking. I usually only see them flock when it's almost
time for them to leave. Come to think of it, July is
almost over. Where has the summer gone? The flock forages
for some time between me and the 5.6 (or 5.d) mile marker
and then flies a little bit south and closer to the water
but still in sight between lots 6 and 7.
I'm sitting here thinking "I can't
believe I saw 7 piping plovers." when I hear peep-lo
peep-lo coming from behnd me. Here's another one! That
one sticks around for awhile foraging along the high tide
line just to my right -- well within naked eye
identification range. Eventually it too moves further
south. A few minutes later another one arrives landing
even closer to me. I'm regretting having left the camera
in the car, but who needs a photo? I have just seen 9
piping plovers.
The plovers leave. Visitors come.
Some are really interested in piping plovers and ask
about the immature plumage. They didn't see the flock of
7 although they came from the direction the flock went.
Mostly the visitors noticed the sanderlings. It's hard to
miss some seventy-odd sanderlings streaming down the
beach.
Before I know it, the morning is
gone and the radio battery is so low that the gatehouse
sounds like she's whispering. Where did the time go? And
can I watch the Red Sox play the Yankees and read about
seabird biology at the same time?
