because i'm old and wearing shoesJuly 15, 2006
The beach is teeming with swallows. Tree swallows. Bank swallows. A purple martin. Those are just the ones I can identify in the non-stop motion that surrounds me. There are probably also barn swallows and northern rough-winged swallows, but I'm not keying in on them. It's like the swallows are a whole new layer of the atmosphere about 6 inches over the beach. Everywhere I look, they're there -- and all at the same low altitude. Must be good bugs in the wrack.The massing of swallows reminds me that fall is coming. Wait didn't summer just start like last week? A monarch butterfly passes by. The swallows ignore it. More monarchs appear. OK, now I'm really thinking it's fall. Massing swallows? Migrating monarchs? Time must be accelerating rapidly.
Visitors start massing too. People want to be on the beach. They don't want to miss summer either.
There's a family with a bunch of kids headed into the closed area at the water line, so I walk down and try to engage the kids with my brilliant line "Do you know what an endangered species is? Do you learn about that in pre-school?" The Dad says "They're a little young for that." "How old are they?" The two I'm talking with are 3 and 5. Guess that approach isn't going to work. So I explain piping plovers and least terns to the Dad and he attempts to get the kids out of the closed area. They keep going back. He tells them to please not go past "the nice lady". I'm about to look around for the nice lady. :-)
A slightly older kid, a girl of maybe 6 or 7, is playing tag with the waves. She starts talking to "the nice lady" and we have a pleasant conversation. She's not quite sure what an endangered species is, but she gets the idea of not going where I tell her not to go. I'm standing in wet sand and sinking a little bit. A wave is coming in. I ask the kid, playfully: "Do you think I can get away from that wave?" "No," she answers thoughtfully, "You're old and wearing shoes."
On the way back to the gatehouse I spot way more monarchs among the milkweed. Time must indeed be accelerating rapidly, because I'm old and wearing shoes.
Plum Island
great
blue heron 2
great egret 2
short billed dowitcher 1
brown thrasher 3
gray catbird 4
redwinged blackbird 5
northern mockingbird 3
mourning dove 3
cedar waxwing 3
tree swallow 40+
purple martin 1
great black back gull 3
herring gull 9
bank swallow 1
semipalmated plover 1
double crested cormorant 8
little gull 1
sanderling 25
semipalmated sandpiper 2
ring billed gull 4
osprey 1
Other sightings:
monarch
butterfly 7
eastern cottontail rabbit 1
Today's Reading
The Bird of Light by John Hay
2006 Booklist
Ignore this thing below if you are reading the Plover Warden Diaries.
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Copyright © 2006, Janet I. Egan