Journal of a Sabbatical

January 9, 2000

the gull game

Today's Bird Sightings:
Watchemoket Cove
158 Canada geese
100 mute swans
2 domestic geese
42 mallards
7 scaup (your guess is as good as mine as to greater or lesser)
336 ring-billed gulls
9 herring gulls
9 buffleheads
12 hooded mergansers
6 American wigeons
1 belted kingfisher
8 European starlings
1 common black-headed gull
1 double crested cormorant

Today's Reading: Winter from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake, Wild Fruits by Henry David Thoreau

There were an unbelievable number of gulls at Watchemoket Cove today. At first I was excited at the prospect of sorting through them looking for unusual ones, but not having replaced my scope yet makes the gull game a little less fun. I counted the Canada geese, the swans, and the mallards before I started in on the gulls. The mass of gulls was unevenly divided between both sides of the parkway. After I counted the ring bills and herring gulls on the side where I'd parked, I crossed the street to see how far I could get.

I was trying to sort out the gulls without a scope, standing in mud scanning with my binoculars humming "one of these gulls is not like the others, one of these gulls doesn't belong". I lost count of the ring-billed gulls there were so many and I totally bollixed up the counting of everything there when I saw a flash of red on somebody's legs. I focused in on it and sure enough it was a small gull with red legs. Damn I wish I had replaced my scope. I thought I saw a red bill on it but couldn't be sure from where I was standing.

I noticed a couple with a scope looking in the same general direction I had been so I walked over to them and asked "Do you see a common black-headed gull?" They said yes immediately. I told them my whole story about how I had replaced the stolen binoculars but not the scope and I really wanted to know if that was a black-headed gull I'd just seen.

I don't know why I felt like I had to explain about the stolen scope before I begged the nice people with scope to look at the black-headed gull. They probably would have let me look anyway.

The guy even lowered the tripod for me so I could actually see. Sure enough, it had the red bill. It was most definitely a common black-headed gull. I wrote it down in my notebook and thanked them - I hope profusely enough. I never did finish counting the ringers.

When I went back across the street to the car, Nancy asked "common black-headed gull?" She says she knew by the way I was talking to the scope people that there must be either a common black-headed gull or a Eurasian wigeon on that side. No, she's not doing psychic birding again. Every winter brings at least one black-headed gull and one Eurasian wigeon to the cove. In the case of the wigeon, I think it's the same individual. Can't tell on the gull, and I have seen up to five of them at one time. Anyway, it's a pretty good guess if you see birders talking animatedly at the cove that it's one of those two species. Add to that the predominance of gulls today, and Nancy's guess is the only logical conclusion.

Since I had so much luck with the common black-headed gull, I thought we'd try the smaller cove to the south of the Squantum Club for a Eurasian wigeon. Since we're both still getting over our respective ailments, walking there along the bike path seemed a little overwhelming. I drove over there but chickened out on parking there because they have all these big signs saying how it's private property and no parking. I saw the scope people there too. I scanned with binoculars from the car, didn't see anything, and drove back to the bike path entrance. We walked on the bike path until it got dark and cold suddenly. The sunset seemed sort of abrupt.

We're in this fried banana groove. Nancy had an excellent fried banana dessert at Asian Paradise earlier in the week and wanted me to try it today. So instead of going out to brunch (we'd had bagels and coffee that I picked up at Dunkies while Nancy was still asleep for breakfast) we went to Asian Paradise for fried bananas and coffee. The bananas were deep-fried in big chunks and served with coconut milk and topped with vanilla ice cream.

So here we are at Siam Square for dinner. After very satisfying masaman curry, I decided I had to have a fried banana dessert so I ordered it. A long time later I was still waiting for my banana. Apparently the Thai word for banana is similar to the Thai word for shrimp. The cook made shrimp. The waitress explained it all to us. Eventually we got the fried banana. Little chunks of banana wrapped in spring roll type casing, deep fried, and drizzled with honey and sesame seeds. Delicious.

Nancy liked the bananas at Asian Paradise better. Thick chunks deep fried and served in coconut milk. I preferred the Siam Square recipe. Maybe I should fry up some bananas at home and experiment.