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In the morning we had breakfast at Rue de L'Espoir and headed to Watchamocket Cove to check on the cygnets. The cygnets are just about adult size - maybe a tinch smaller - but still have grey plumage. It's a paler grey with a few white streaks but still mainly grey. They followed their parents in solemn procession back and forth along the edge of the cove.
I started a new project. I keep a notebook where I write down what we see at Watchamocket Cove each visit so I can figure out when certain species arrive and follow the changing seasons. I counted:
... and a partridge in a pear tree :-) Just kidding about the partridge. Across the street we saw a huge raft of ducks that I couldn't see well enough to identify even with my binoculars. They had black tail feathers and some white near their rumps but the way the sun was on them I really couldn't make out the patterns on their heads or wings. I also couldn't get close enough to them 'cause they were way out in the middle of the inlet equidistant from the road and the golf course. Gotta get a really powerful set of binoculars or a nice scope for situations like this. I was excited at noticing an out of the ordinary raft of visitors but bumming that I couldn't identify them. A woman pulled off the road in a van and I briefly fantasized that she was an expert birder with a scope but she was just a lost motorist wanting directions to someplace in Riverside.
There were quite a few rosa rugosa blossoms still in full bloom on the side of the road where the raft of ducks were.
After the cove, we headed south to Beach Road Extension - my favorite totally wrecked trashy urban beach. I picked up more glass for my Beach Road Extension project while Nancy stayed in the car and listened to Schickele Mix on WGBH. When my bucket started to get heavy and I started to cough again, I went back to the car and pointed it south again. We ended up at Easton's Beach in Newport where we encountered a fair number of herring gulls, 1 black back gull, and 4 sanderlings. The wind at Easton's was fierce and we couldn't stay out very long.
This was the first weekend we got to wear our Icelandic sweaters since we got back from Iceland. When we stopped at Ocean Coffee Roasters in Middletown on the way back, the waitress told us she loved the sweaters and wanted to know where we got 'em.
The Newport/Middletown area is about a month behind North Conway in the progress of autumn. We even saw some maples that still had a few green leaves among the yellow and orange. Asters are still prevalent, lots of rosa rugosa still blooming (more than in Providence, which is only about 75 miles or so north). It was interesting to see the difference a few hundred miles makes.
Not a bad weekend's outing for a couple of people still suffering from the cold from hell.
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