Journal of a Sabbatical

March 26, 2000

blithewold

Today's Bird Sightings:
Blithewold, Bristol RI

2 downy woodpeckers
2 red breasted nuthatches
American robins (lots)
bluejay (lots)
starlings (lots)
redwinged blackbird (lots)
2 mourning doves
herring gulls (lots)
American crows (lots)
1 great black back gull
1 tufted titmouse
1 red breasted merganser

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake, The Flight of the Condor by Michael Andrews

The crocuses at Blithewold are in full bloom. So are those small blue things I can never remember the name of. I was hoping the daffodils would be too, but only one or two are actually blooming. The acres of them that carpet the arboretum are just on the verge of unfurling. This is pretty early for daffodils, but everything else has been so early this spring that we just had to check.

It was a gorgeous sunny day to walk around the gardens and sit on the stone wall at the ruins of the boat house. The bay was gleaming pale blue dotted with white herring gulls like miniature sails. Gnats were somewhat in evidence but I couldn't see their plumes or eyebrows or whatever Thoreau was describing. Nancy and I both thought they just looked like black dots and can't imagine how Thoreau could observe their anatomy in flight. He must have looked at one under a microscope and then sort of added that in when he was describing the gnat swarms of spring.

Reading Thoreau's journals has also gotten us to pay more attention to lichens in spring. The stones of the old boat house are covered with lichens in amazing colors. There are several kinds on the maple trees that line the path to the bay also. Although the trees and shrubs are labeled, the lichens are not. Come to think of it I don't remember ever seeing a botanical garden with labels on the lichens. Guess I gotta get me a field guide.

We sat for a long time in the Japanese garden to listen to the birds. We tried to identify each species by ear. The starlings were giving me fits though. I'd hear something robin-like only to look up and see a starling. Ditto for redwinged blackbirds. Starlings are gifted mimics. The best identification of the day was the red breasted nuthatch. Ever since several of Thoreau's journal entries mentioned hearing nuthatches, with various transliterations of the call, Nancy has been anxious to hear one. We spent some time with the tape last weekend (which explains how much better we've gotten in a week) and picked out the red breasted nuthatch right away. In fact there were two of them circling a big old maple tree with two downy woodpeckers. We could hear the woodpecker's drumming as well as its call. The bird songs overlapped each other a lot, making for a wonderful soundscape. We listened in vain for frogs however. Neither wood frogs nor spring peepers joined the chorus. But oh what a marvelous chorus!