all the birds July 30, 2005
One thing that's always been a conflict for me as a birder and a computer geek is that birders are morning people and geeks are night people. Fortunately, since my interest is mainly in shorebirds and seabirds, my birding trips usually depend more on the tide than on the dawn. Hence the small number of warblers on my life list. So all summer, I've worried that I would oversleep on a Saturday and miss my shift at PRNWR. You guessed it, this morning I woke up at 8:20! It took me a minute to realize what time it was and where I was supposed to be but then I called the gatehouse, who answered the phone "Gatehouse!' much like on the radio and I replied "North Plover Warden, I'm not there." We had a good laugh. I managed to get there before 9:30 so had about a half hour before the beach started to get busy. There was some kind of family reunion type gathering on the beach and the people were pretty much interested in each other and their activities, hence not bothering the birds. I kind of got a kick out of watching the people and trying to figure out their relationships: the social structure of their flock I guess. At one point they lined up all the little kids for a foot race. The finish line was a big pink ribbon held by two of the adults. The kids took off, running like little sanderlings, and just as they got close to the ribbon, the adults started running down the beach with the finish line. The kids just kept running after it until the adults finally stopped and the kids all crossed the finish like at once. Speaking of sanderlings, I saw my first ones of the fall this morning. That's how I know it's fall. The shorebird migration is starting. The same half dozen sanderlings worked the water line back and forth for the entire shift. Other than the sanderlings, there wasn't much doing on the beach. The gulls were mostly sitting around in the sand looking like mirages in the shimmering heat. A couple of ring billed gulls boldly approached my backpack but found nothing of interest. Did they think I had a supply of greenheads secreted in outside pocket? Who knows? There are no greenheads in evidence at all, thank the Higher Power and the change of season! Another group with a lot of little kids showed up who were frustrated with the beach closure. I explained the reasons and how very important it is to protect the chicks while they are getting ready to fly. Now is t he crucial time. I must have said that a dozen times. one little girl got very interested in the piping plover life cycle so I gave her one of the brochures that describe what people can do to help. One of the strangest human behaviors of this group was an older woman, possibly the grandmother, who told a little boy toddler to go catch a great black back gull. Problem #1, the gull is in the closed area. Problem #2, great black backs are about the meanest of the mean -- probably the only meaner gull on the planet is the great skua, which we don't have here but I've seen on the Antarctica trip (back when I had leisure and money to travel). So the kid runs into the closed area and I go after him. I don't know if I was more furious about the danger to kid, the birds, or the trespassing in general. I snapped at the kid: "Leave the birds alone!" Then the grandmother, or whoever she was, says "Oh, he's just a kid, he didn't mean anything by it!" This puzzles me because she was the one who told him to do it in the first place. Do people think real live birds are just cute little stuffies? What up with that? I have seen a great black back snap the spine of a mourning dove so I have no doubt it could have hurt the kid. I kept an eye on both kid and grandma the rest of the morning. A litle girl about 8, to whom I had explained all about piping plovers earlier came over and wanted to know if she could see them with my binoculars. I told her there weren't any within binocular range right now. Then she told me she'd been looking at the seagulls to try to see if there were any smaller birds among them and she noticed that the gulls were three different sizes. She wanted to know if they were all seagulls and were they different kinds. I explained that the very large ones with the black backs are calld great black backs -- great name -- and the not quite as large ones with grey backs are herring gulls (I didn't go into the different plumages for the different ages), and the small ones with the black stripe on the bill are ring billed gulls. She was impressed and curious. She asks: "Did it take you a long time to know all the birds?" "I'm still learning! There are almost 10000 kinds of birds in the world and I only know the ones who come here." By the time we finished our conversation, she was excited to go to the library and get a bird book. I was thrilled. The notion that I've influenced one little kid to want to know the birds justifies every greenhead bite, every sunburn, every freezing cold or burning hot sandblasted day of the whole season. Jean came by at the end of the shift and she was excited too when I told her about the conversation with the incipient little birder girl. She pointed out that these days it's hard for nature to compete with video games and the Internet and all that so this kid is lucky to have encountered me to encourage her interest. But hey, it ain't me, it's the birds! Go outside. See a bird. Presto! You are a birdwatcher. This is my last shift of the season because I'm going to a family reunion next Saturday for my aunt's 80th birthday and the chicks will likely have fledged by the week after that, so it's nice to end the season feeling good about the quest to know "all the birds."		Todays' Bird Sightings Newburyport turkey vulture 4 Plum Island sanderling 6 least tern 2 double crested cormorant 3 ring billed gull 12 herring gull 6 great black backed gull 3 tree swallow 10 common tern 2 purple martin 1 Butterflies monarch cabbage white clouded sulphur American copper Mammals visitors 16 refuge staff (Unit 3) Coast Guard Assets none Today's Reading The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron This Year's Reading 2005 Booklist Today's Starting Pitcher David Wells
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