sharing

April 8, 2004


It's not raining.

It's my birthday.

Two great black back gulls are sharing a crab at the water line. It's a pretty big crab, but they must be sharing because they're mates not because there's plenty to go around. Gulls aren't exactly known for sharing, especially great black backs. The great black back pair hangs around for a long time bowing to each other and making lots of noise before they take off for a gull-rich spot further to the north past Emerson rocks. A lot of herring gulls seem to be hanging out in pairs too. Must be spring.

The first visitor I speak to wants to know if I've seen any piping plover chicks yet. Chicks?!? The adults are just arriving! I explain the life cycle, unconsciously making nest scrapes in the sand with my foot while I'm talking. She seems quite taken with the compressed time frame of nesting, incubating, hatching, fledging even though she says it's a bummer that the beach is closed until they fledge. She points out that humans take 9 months to hatch. I add that, "Yeah, and it takes us 18 years to be able to fly."

Another visitor announces she's bummed at having to share the beach with the plovers and wants to know what most people's reaction is. I tell her most people I've talked to are happy we're doing everything we can to help the piping plovers reproduce and I go into my "there's so little habitat left" speech. I stop short of giving the discourse on beach development and on having had a spiritual awakening as a result of viewing the Orrin Pilkey video. I'm fired up to talk about piping plovers. Beach "erosion" can wait for another time. Anyway, the woman says she guesses we'll just have to share the beach and walks away smiling.

It's low tide. The early morning spike in visitors is over and the midday influx hasn't started. I hear a purple finch singing its little brightly colored head off behind me. Then I hear the unmistakable peep-lo call of the piping plover. I get the binoculars on it really fast. I'm so surprised. This is my first plover warden shift of the season (the first three I had scheduled were rained out) and I can't possibly have the good luck to see a piping plover right off the bat. I'm watching it walk around the wet area just above the waterline doing that weird "plovering" thing with its feet (they vibrate their feet on the sand to help stir up food). As I'm watching it, I hear the "plaintive whistle" call, which is a little lower than the peep-lo call, and it's not coming from the plover I'm watching. It sounds like it's way to my right and almost behind me. I start to search for the source of the call methodically scanning from left to right when two more piping plovers fly in and land by the water line. Three of them!?! Does the universe know it's my birthday?

All three of the piping plovers hang around for about an hour or so feeding and calling and running around in that bizarre zigzag way they do. Except for the calling, they don't seem to interact with each other. They move in separate directions. It strikes me that they're very different from sanderlings in that regard. Sanderlings seem to have some sort of group mind that causes them all to turn the same direction at once or to take off and fly three feet further north all at once. The piping plovers are individualists. No groupthink for them.

I call Ned on my cellphone at the appointed Ned-calling time (yes there's a time to call Ned, and a time not to call Ned, a time to reap, a time to sow, a time...) and announce "It's my birthday and we're not in the ER!" Then I tell him about the three piping plovers. He's suitably impressed and reminds me that it's really great that I can lift my binoculars and hold them steady to see this. We decide we have to celebrate -- my birthday, the fact that we're not in the ER, the fact that I can lift binoculars, the first piping plovers of the season... Then it's back to watching Condoleeza Rice testify before the 9-11 commission for him and back to watching the beach, which is empty of both birds and visitors, for me.

Naturally, now that all three piping plovers are out of sight, the stream of visitors starts up again. A songwriter looking for inspiration says it's a bummer that the inspiring part of the beach is closed (Sandy Point's not inspiring?) but when I tell him all about the piping plovers, once again unconsciously making nest scrapes with my foot, he becomes resigned to sharing with them. Maybe he'll write a song about them. Who knows?

My relief is on her way sometime around noon but she's not here yet when Deb pulls up on the ATV, finishing her survey of the beach. I tell her excitedly about my three piping plovers. She asks if I'm absolutely sure. "Absolutely," I reply, "they were calling." She writes them down.

By the time my relief arrives it's past 12:30 and I'm starving. Lunch never looked so good.

Ned and I celebrate my birthday with coffee at Perfecto's and reading aloud to each other from Charles St. John as is fitting. It's not The Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands, this time but A Tour in Sutherlandshire, which has fewer mentions of rats but way more mention of birds. What a difference a year makes, I'm conscious for all of the St. John reading! We're trying to figure out how to make a Hollywood movie out of a 19th century birding trip. The Sutherlandshire trip definitely has great visuals with the boat on wheels drawn by horses on land and then with the wheels unbolted for the lakes, especially when they end up having to portage the thing over a huge hill because of the droll Scottish innkeeper's vagueness about how far "just over there" is.

Three piping plovers and I'm not in the ER. This has got to be the best birthday ever!

Today's Bird Sightings
Plum Island
piping plover 3
great black back gull 2
herring gull 16
mallard 8
double crested cormorant 7
tree swallow 4
American robin 1
American crow 2
brant 96
common eider 2
white winged scoter 6
great egret 1
great blue heron 3
osprey 1

This Year's Bird Sightings
insert PI year list here when I manage to organise it

Today's Reading
Jinriksha Days by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

This Year's Reading
2004 Booklist

Today's Starting Pitcher
Tim Wakefield


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Copyright © 2004, Janet I. Egan