inverse proportion April 30, 2005
I thought my plover warden shift would be rained out today, but I know enough to stick my head out to check in the morning before believing the weather forecast. The day starts out gray and gets grayer but I get in most of the shift. Good thing too! Turns out that the number of visitors varies in inverse proportion to the weather! The darker, colder, and wetter the weather gets, the more visitors arrive at the south end of the beach. I lost count at 22, but I know I spoke to more people than that. I actually heard a piping plover this time, the distinctive peep-lo call. I may also have seen it, but the pale shorebird blip dipped out of sight behind a rock before I could get the binoculars on it. As birders, identifiable by the expensive optics, came by throughout the morning asking if I'd seen any piping plovers I had to say "No, but I heard one." Some people with huge scopes were looking at something on the beach that I couldn't see, claiming it was a black-bellied plover. Anyway, they asked about piping plovers and I motioned in the direction of where I'd heard the call and said "Of course, judging by your serious scopes, you already know that piping plovers can ventriloquize, um, throw their voices." Turns out they hadn't heard that. I talked about how many times I've been tricked into looking in the direction of the call. I don't know how they do it, but it's a real phenomenon. The people with the giant scopes couldn't scope out the identities of the scoter species either. Of course, it's getting darker and drizzlier all the time so they just look like black blobs bobbing on the waves. I'd need fog-penetrating see-in-the-dark binoculars to sort them out. I'm beginning to think all three local species of scoter are indistinguishable unless they paddle up to you and announce their names. I intercepted a father and son entering the closed area of the beach and carryinig a metal detector . After my explanation of the beach closure, they asked where Indian Head Point is. "Indian Head Point?" "It's supposed to be on Plum Island." "I've never heard of it. Maybe Sandy Point? Or that drumlin over there?" I pointed them toward Bar Head and Sandy Point. They insisted there's someplace called Indian Head Point on Plum Island. There's an Indian Head Park in Merrimack, but that's the only Indian Head anything I can think of or find with google around these parts. Maybe I should have asked them if there's some kind of buried treasure map they're following. A family looking for sand dollars insisted that they would only be able to find them by Emerson Rocks in the closed area of the beach. I patiently explained the beach closure. They claimed, somewhat angrily, that there are no signs to tell you the beach is closed before you pay the $5 entry fee. There are in fact several signs, which it would be hard to miss, but I patiently held my tongue and just explained again that they really couldn't go into the closed area. While I was talking to a couple of French tourists wanting to see gannets and puffinsa fox zipped across the beach and then back up into the dunes only about a tenth of a mile away. At first I thought it was a coyote, but it was definitely a fox. The French people wanted to know if it preys on piping plovers. Yup, foxes eat the eggs and scare the parents off the nests and in general are like any mammalian predator. The French people and their hosts were actually interested in my whole piping plover life cycle speech, so it was satisfying to me to give it. I answered their questions about gannets and puffins too : gannets yes, one just flew by a few minutes ago; puffins no, they only come close to shore around here when there's a nor'easter. They don't nest around here. Neither do gannets, actually. Both gannets and puffins nest further north. People started arriving in droves just before it got rainy enough that I radioed the gatehouse I was packing up to leave. It was 11:30, so it wasn't really that early. I think today's total must be the most visitors I've ever talked to in one shift.		Todays' Bird Sightings Plum Island redwinged blackbird American robin purple martin mallard 8 mute swan 4 great egret 3 snowy egret 2 glossy ibis 15 American crow 7 common grackle 10 herring gull 14 double crested cormorant 12 bufflehead 5 gadwall 2 great black back gull 7 ring billed gull 1 northern gannet 2 brant 2 red breasted merganser 2 oldsquaw 1 scoter species common loon 1 Mammals red fox 1 Coast Guard Assets none Today's Reading L'Ile Percée by John Mason Clarke This Year's Reading 2005 Booklist Today's Starting Pitcher Bronson Arroyo
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