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January 2, 1998
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Today is considerably warmer than yesterday. It feels almost like spring. A walk on the beach at Plum Island revealed a huge raft of common eider ducks. There had to be well over 500. They congregated around some rocks just off shore. As we walked toward the rocks to get a closer view of the eiders, we encountered 3 sanderlings in their gray and white winter plumage running in formation along the edge of the waves. They showed remarkably little fear of us. I got close enough to take pictures with my dinky 70 mm lens. A little ways down the beach, another sanderling was running around by itself. Nancy commented on how unusual it is for sanderlings to be solitary. Almost as if on cue, it flew off to join the others. On the other side of the refuge, over the marsh, we spotted a peregrine falcon. We had seen it listed on the white board at the gatehouse and were talking about whether we might see it, when it swooped down out of the sky. So the only thing listed on the white board that we didn't see was a northern shrike. Not a bad day's outing. We capped off the day with a really long browse at Jabberwocky, one of my favorite bookstores, and dinner at Ciro's. | |
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