$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.
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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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