Journal of a Sabbatical

May 4, 2000

south wind

Piping Plover Count: 7 pairs

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
16 double crested cormorants
8 herring gulls
8 oldsquaws
5 purple martins
2 sanderlings
1 American oystercatcher
5 great black back gulls
1 ring billed gull
2 semipalmated sandpipers
1 common loon
1 great egret (at Joppa Flats)

Today's Reading: Geography of Home by Akiko Busch

Today's Starting Pitcher:
off day

Two weeks of wind, tide, and ATV tracks later, the gull skull is still visible as it settles into the dune. The AM shift plover warden reports it's been very quiet and very windy. The wind is straight out of the south and unrelenting all day.

Despite the fact that it's brilliantly sunny, it's a slow day. Only two visitors. They ask if I know how to estimate the wind speed. Umm, nope. I'll have to add a pocket Beaufort scale to my work kit for the next day with winds like this.

The wind just keeps on blowing and blowing and blowing. If I were a piping plover I would scrunch down in a scrape in the sand and not move 'til it's over. It doesn't seem to bother the herring gulls, but a lone ring-billed gull struggles against it for several minutes making absolutely no headway south until it finally turns north.

A small flock of oldsquaws floats in the waves just offshore. As the tide goes out it looks like the oldsquaws are getting closer and closer to shore. It takes me a minute to realize the oldsquaws are still in the same spot and the shore has gotten closer to them!

As I'm watching the oldsquaws, a large black and white bird with a bright orange -red beak comes into view. An oystercatcher! Oystercatchers rarely come this far north, so this is quite a treat. I watch it until it heads south out of binocular range. That's one for the Plum Island life list for sure.

Another plover warden shift passes in which I see no piping plovers. I thought maybe I heard one once, but it was too faint and faraway to be sure. I take on faith the word of the refuge biological staff that there are indeed 7 pairs nesting here.

On the way out after my shift, I tell the hawk watch guy about the oystercatcher 'cause I just have to share it with someone.

It's 10 degrees warmer on the other side of the dunes.