Journal of a Sabbatical

September 18, 1999

monarchs

September 18, 1999
Plum Island

greater yellowlegs
black duck
snowy egret
northern mockingbird
tree swallow

white tailed deer

monarch butterfly

Today's Starting Pitcher: Bret Saberhagen

Today's Reading: A History of Game Birds, Wild-Fowl, and Shore Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States by Edward Forbush, Danube by Claudio Magris

Monarchs fill the sky. Everything that moves turns out to be a monarch. Where I saw thousands of tree swallows massing for migration earlier in the month, I see hundreds of monarchs. They flit among the fall blooming wildflowers/weeds never lighting for long. They're such delicate creatures I can't imagine them making it from here to Mexico on those thin wings.

People are stopping their cars to look at a white tailed deer grazing in the field and aren't even looking at the hordes of butterflies all around. I am amazed. I keep having to stand and stare with my mouth open. When the sun catches their wings just right, they glow bright orange like they're lit up from inside.

A flock of migrating Canada geese passes overhead, about 300 of them honking to keep themselves together. They have such a neat V formation and a clear leader and all that. The monarchs aren't even all going the same direction and they don't coordinate their flocks by sound like the geese. How do they do it? Sight? Smell?

Except for the geese and a few black ducks, the waterfowl haven't really started arriving yet. Of course, ducks are a winter thing and it isn't even fall yet!The sky has been so blue and the air so crisp today that I keep forgetting it's still summer. Late summer, but still summer.

No birding trip is complete without browsing the used books at Old Port Book Shop. Domino has been out of sorts lately and hasn't been leading me to the bird books. She was curled up on a table full of books downstairs, sound asleep. I petted her and she raised her head a tiny bit, looked at me, purred, and went back to sleep. I managed to find something I had to have even without Domino's assistance. In the hunting section (lots of good bird books are in the hunting section), I spotted Forbush's A History of Game Birds, Wild-Fowl, and Shore Birds of Massachusetts and Adjacent States, not in the best of condition - a reading copy as opposed to a collecting copy but then again reading is what I want these things for - so reasonably priced. Somehow, settling in with a sandwich and coffee and reading about the decline of shorebird populations in Massachusetts in the nineteenth and early twentieth century just seemed like the perfect "it's fall in New England" activity.

The wild boars have nothing to do with today's entry. I was experimenting with the sepia effect on the digital camera and what better subject than my Hungarian wild boar painting?