seasonable
November 12, 2001

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
American black duck (68)
American tree sparrow (2)
dark-eyed junco (1)
lesser yellowlegs (1)
mallard (18)
long-billed dowitcher (2)
Canada goose (46)
snow goose (9)
great blue heron (1)

This Year's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island Year List

Today's Reading:
Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome

This Year's Reading:
2001 Book List

The sun's out and I desperately want to find some winter birds. I'm in bird withdrawal and Plum Island withdrawal. Nancy has today off from work for Veteran's Day and I took a vacation day from Starship Startup so we can go look for PI birds. It's seasonably cold and extremely windy. We've had such a warm autumn, I'd forgotten what November is supposed to feel like.

We got kind of a late start so the late afternoon sun is making it hard to identify all these ducks on the salt pannes and stuff. All the perching birds except for one junco hanging out with a pair of tree sparrows seem to be hiding in the thickets chirping unrecognizably and not showing themselves. We do spot two long-billed dowitchers at the North Pool, my first for this year, and a small flock of snow geese for that wintry feel.

I'm just so happy to be in this gorgeous landscape that I wouldn't care if I didn't see a single bird. The sun lights up the dunes, the wind ripples the water , and the whole place looks like a 19th century painting. Complete with a V of Canada geese overhead.

Late autumn has its charms.