Today I woke up at dawn. The stripes of orange sunrise looked like a painting. I went back to sleep until Nancy woke me for the drive to Galilee to meet up with the much anticipated RI Audubon annual winter waterfowl caravan.
Worth getting up early for. Driving around South County from birding spot to birding spot along the coast in the midst of a huge line of cars full of people on a mission is a trip.
Galilee : We started at Salty Brine State Beach where we spotted a huge raft of common eiders. Also a sanderling and two cormorants.
Point Judith: More common eiders, a couple of loons, and an immature male king eider at the Coast Guard station.
East Matunuck: A snow bunting in the state beach parking lot. Just sitting there pecking at something in the gravel and fluffing its feathers. Real pretty bird. My first snow bunting.
Moonstone Beach: a bonanza. Red breasted mergansers, common mergansers, more Canada geese than you can shake a stick at, goldeneye, canvasback, ruddy ducks, Bonaparte's gulls, and a horned grebe.
Not having packed a lunch, we dropped out of the caravan at this point and told them we'd meet them at Ninigret.
After lunch and filling the gas tank, I realized we needed to get back to Providence while it was still light to see if I could fix the electrical problems in Nancy's apartment. So, we never did get to Ninigret. And, although I reset every circuit breaker in the box labled 2 east, there's still no electricity in half her apartment.
We regrouped, came up here to my place, cooked dinner, listed to A Prairie Home Companion, and dozed. Nancy is snoring in the other room and I've turned off the radio. Wilbur has stopped patrolling the house for possible invasion by scraps of paper, leaf fragments, junk mail, or takeout food and is curled up in the hallway. These long weekends are something else.
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