books and brant in the mist

November 6, 2005

 

 

 

$5 a bag day at the Rochambeau Library book sale, a Eurasian wigeon at the cove, lots of brant, and a very noisy kingfisher. Not bad for a hazy, misty November day.

My most interesting find at the library book sale was a memoir of the American woman hired to be Prince Akihito's tutor immediately after the war. Most the "American woman in Japan" memoirs in my library are from the 19th and early 20th centuries -- well before the war. Windows for the Crown Prince makes an interesting addition to my growing collection in the genre. Other finds were a paperback copy of George Schaller's Stones of Silence (I can never get enough Himalayas and yaks), a beatup paperback of Irving Adler's Thinking Machines (one of those little Signet Science Library tomes that sold for 60 cents back a grillion years ago), Dag Hammarskjold's Markings (translated into English of course!), a pocket size copy of the big book and a matching pocket size 12 and 12 (for miniature pocket sized alcoholics, I guess), and a couple more things. Quite the haul for five bucks.

The most interesting find among the waterfowl at the cove was not the Eurasian wigeon, although that's the rarest, but the small flock of brant dabbling in a spot where -- when they visit the cove at all -- they don't usually feed. The few times we've seen brant at the cove they've been feeding on Uva lactuca along the rocks of the railroad/bike path embankment. These guys were closer to the other shore where the great blue heron hangs out and nowhere near any Uva lactuca. With the visibility reduced by the mist, and looking at them from the bike path, I really couldn't tell what they were eating. The kingfisher was perched on the very top of a huge well-weathered fallen branch in the midst of where the brant were dabbling. It was making quiet a racket but never moved off the branch. Didn't dive once. There were also quite a few lesser yellowlegs around on both shores in small groups of 5 or 2 or 3. Something the size and coloring of some kind of phalarope flew by but the mist had thickened to the point where I couldn't identify it. Sigh. There was probably at least one common black-headed gull in with the Bonaparte's gulls but every one whose beak and legs I could see was a Bonaparte's. A fair number of Bonaparte's-sized gulls were sleeping on the mudflat with heads tucked and facing away from me so they looked like unidentifiable white blobs. Blobs in the mist.

The mist and the setting sun drove us off the bike path so we headed over to Myopic Books before getting dinner at Minerva's. Why we had to gild the lily by used book shopping after the library book sale can best be explained as addiction. Hey, there are worse addictions than used books. Books in the mist. Brant in the mist. Gulls in the mist. Mist in the mist. And then the drive home in the mist.

 

Today's Bird Sightings
Watchemoket Cove
Eurasian wigeon 1
American wigeon 120
mute swan 35
hooded merganser 6
ring billed gull 5
Bonaparte's gull 13
lesser yellowlegs 12
double crested cormorant 1
mallard 32
domestic goose 1
herring gul 12
great black back gull 2
Canada goose 2
great blue heron 1
brant 24
belted kingfisher 1

Today's Reading
Down the Bay
by Wallace P. Stanley, Windows for the Crown Price by Vining, The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh by Chiang Yee

This Year's Reading
2005 Booklist

 

 

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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan