The weather did not look
promising this morning. In fact it was raining at my
house, but only a little. I'd heard it was supposed to
clear up so I drove up to PI to do the human signpost
(aka plover warden) thing anyway. I was a little late
because the road is torn up around Perfecto's where I
stopped for coffee. The gatehouse was skeptical about how
long I'd last. The guy who was suposed to be north had
already called in to cancel.
After I'd been there about an
hour, the weather cleared up spectaculary. It turned into
one of those glorious days that people move here for.
There's a steady trickle of visitors. This is the first
time this year I've gotten the "Is the beach closure new?
We used to be able to walk the whole length of the
beach!" question. I point out it's been like this for at
least 9 years. Then there's "where are the greenheads?"
"are they bad yet?" "what keeps them away?" All the usual
questions that have little to do with piping plovers. I
have to kick one woman out of the closed area, but at
least she's polite and sort of embarrassed when I
confront her.
There are no greenheads today. Not
a one.
For most of the shift (at least
three hours) there's a great black backed gull working on
a fish just at the water line. It shares with one other
great black back but scolds other great black backs and
other gull species when they get close. One is working on
the fish all the time. The other comes and goes. When the
one it shares with comes by it greets the other gbb with
head bobbing and a slightly different cry. Just call me
Niko Tinbergen.
The coolest bird sighting of the
day is a bunch of Wilson's storm petrels following a
lobster boat. Watching them dip like swallows over the
boat wake was so much fun! This is the first time I have
seen storm petrels from shore. It's weird not to have a
boat pitching and rolling underneath me while looking at
storm petrels. A unique experience. Add these little guys
to my list of sea birds seen from shore. Too
cool.
I periodically interrupt my intense
study of gulls to scan the beach as I'm supposed to. I'm
looking at some Bonaparte's gulls on the closed area of
beach when I lift my binoculars a little higher and spot
two people in the distance on the closed area of beach. I
radio the gatehouse who sends Unit 63 to investigate.
Through my binoculars in the heat haze the people look
like they are near lot 5. I watch them for awhile and see
them walk into the dunes and disappear. Unit 63 radios me
from the top of the boardwalk at lot 5, where I can just
see him, and asks if the place where the people went into
the dunes is "past me" or "between you and me". I say
"between you and me", so he commences walking toward me
looking for the footprints leading into the dunes. He
gets to the spot where I think I saw them, radios me, and
asks where I saw them go into the dunes. "Right where you
are" I say stupidly. I am forgetting two very important
principles of optics: foreshortening and looming. From
where I am lot 5, Sea Haven, and points north all look
the same distance -- flattened. Plus there's just enough
heat haze to create looming, which causes things on the
horizon to look bigger and closer and things past the
horizon to be reflected up above the horizon. None of
this occurs to me while I'm talking to 63. He keeps
walking toward me at lot 6 searching for the
footprints.
Jean comes by to witness this whole
search and say she's surprised I can even see as far as
lot 5. I hand her my 10x wide angle binoculars and she
marvels at them. I start to tell her the story of how
Pete Dunne himself told me my binoculars are too heavy.
(Oddly my
account of the Pete Dunne binocular
lecture does not include
his comments on my heavy binoculars, which he made
multiple times in Chile and once when was pulling me out
of the mud on South Georgia. -- not that the binoculars
were the reason I sank in the mud or anyt hing.) We get
sidetracked with a discussion of binoculars in general
and Jean's praise of Deb's binoculars (crystal clear)
makes me want to rush out and buy Bausch and Lomb Elites
or Swarovskis or something in the 4 digit price range
(yeah, like I have the money for that).
On the piping plover front, Jean
says there are 8 fledglings, 4 chicks that are fledgling
wannabes, and 2 chicks hatching right now today -
biological staff says they've got some good pictures of
today's chicks. It looks like this is going to be a very
good year. Awesome.
Jean hangs around to give Unit 63 a
ride back to his vehicle once he gets to us. We discuss
the funky 5.6 mile marker, which looks more like it says
5d. In fact the second digit looks nothing like a 6 no
matter how you rotate your head or adjust your
binoculars. Unit 63 arrives muttering "between you and
me... between you and me... between you and me." He says
he found no footprints anywhere between lot 5 and here.
Mysterious disappearing people leave no footprints. I
must have judged the distance wrong. 63 got to do some
law enforcement activity anyway though, 'cause here on
the open part of the beach a group of boys has climbed up
into the dunes (no trespassing in the dunes--they're
fragile -- regardless of beach closure) and somebody is
about to launch a kite (no kite-flying on national
wildlife refuge). Jean offers him a ride and they take
off. Unit 63 says "between you and me" one last
time.
A visitor asks me about predation
on piping plovers. He wants to know if it's mainly eagles
that eat them. Eagles? Nope. "Gulls" I tell him, "Gulls?"
"Yes, gulls. Great black backs are extremely mean
predators." Then I tell him about crows and about
mammalian predators and humans stepping on nests and
chicks and all the disasters than can befall a piping
plover before it fledges. The visitor answers "It's a
wonder there are any of them at all!" There used to be
tons of them before people shot them to wear on hats and
developed the beaches so there's so few places for them
to breed safely, then a little predation didn't matter.
Their reproductive strategy hasn't caught up with modern
realities.
The gatehouse attendent radios that
my relief will meet me at the gatehouse, so I pack up my
stuff and end another day in the land of gulls and
radios.
