wrackApril 8, 2005
Spring arrived somewhere in the middle of my plover warden shift this morning. The fog and overcast at 8:00 AM changed to bright sun by 11:00 AM. It's about time.I'm at the north end of the beach. The dunes look like a sand-eating giant took a bite out of them. I can see the roots of the beach grass. There isn't all that much beach between the wrack line and the dunes right now either. By the way, a reader asked me what I meant by wrack line so here you go: The "wrack line" is that line of dried seaweed, marine vegetation and other debris left on the beach by the action of the tides. This is where all that dried salt marsh cord grass that flowed seaward over the winter comes back to the beach and eventually becomes part of the formation process of new dunes. Some kinds of seaweed are called wrack, also. Those would be the brownish ones (genus Fucus I think). Anyway, there is plenty of wrack piled up here today.
Having read several reports, on massbird and on Tom Wetmore's PI sightings page, of piping plovers foraging in the wrack on the north beach I figured I was going to be lucky again and see the little invisi-birds on my first shift of the season. Hah! Didn't see 'em. Didn't hear 'em. Had to take their existence on faith.
What I did find in the wrack was sort of surprising. From a distance it kind of looked like a horseshoe crab shell -- one side of it and the tail sticking out from under a thick pile of grasses - the way it curved and the shape of the tail. When I got closer I realized it was a mammal. It was a dead muskrat. It didn't smell yet, probably preserved by the salt. I don't know how long it had been dead. I just left it alone -- gave it a wide berth. A seafaring muskrat?
Further down the beach toward the closed area I found a plastic sail from a toy boat nestled in the wrack. No boat, just the sail. Fairly weathered. For some reason I picked it up and shoved it in my jacket pocket. I guess even toy boats are subject to the long history of shipwrecks on Plum Island. PI used to be famous for shipwrecks back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Celia Thaxter of neighboring Appledore wrote one of her first poems about the wreck of the Pocahontas in the big storm of 1839, which also claimed the Richmond Packet (though her crew and passengers survived unlike the Pocahontas) and damaged boats in Newburyport Harbor. No, I'm not 166 years old (or more!) and remembering the storm of 1839 personally! Just about every web site about famous lighthouses mentions that storm. Besides, all New Englanders have memories that go back generations before they themselves were born. See what a toy plastic sail in the wrack can get one thinking about?
A seal keeps swimming back and forth just offshore. I swear it's looking at me. It pokes its head up above the waves and stares in toward shore every time it passes me. A mini-flock of migrating kestrels passes overhead, flying remarkably low. Low enough for me to see them clearly without binoculars. An osprey comes in over the dunes and checks out the prey possibilities in the near shore waters. I watch it for awhile hoping to see it catch a fish, but it doesn't catch anything while I'm watching. The usual loon, grebe, cormorant, and gull suspects are all checking out the fishing possibilities too. Must be tough to be a fish.
By the time the shift is over, the sky has totally cleared and it's a glorious spring day. I haven't contacted a single visitor or seen a single piping plover but the time seems to have gone by quickly. My relief arrives and I warn her not to step on the dead muskrat. I show her the toy sail and she exclaims "The poor little sailors!" That gives new meaning to the prayer: "Lord, my boat is so small and Thy sea is so vast." :-) We both laugh at the plight of the tiny plastic sailors in their tiny plastic boat.
Then it's off to meet Ned to celebrate my birthday with the ritual greeting "It's my birthday and we're not in the ER!" and the ritual reading of the rat part from Charles St.John's Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands. Yup, it's my birthday and we're not in the ER.
Todays'
Bird Sightings
Plum Island
horned grebe 2
common loon 2
great black back gull
herring gull
ring-billed gull
common eider 10
osprey 1
red breasted merganser 4
double crested cormorant 22
red throated loon 1
kestrel 4
northern harrier 1
great egret 2
great blue heron 2
mute swan 1
American robin
mourning dove
common grackle
Mammals
harbor seal 1
muskrat (dead)
Coast Guard Assets
1 big boat
Today's
Reading
Birdsong by Don Stap, Wild Sports and Natural History
of the Highlands by Charles St. John
This
Year's Reading
2005 Booklist
Today's
Starting Pitcher
Bronson Arroyo
Ignore this nav-thing unless you are reading Journal of a Sabbatical
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Copyright © 2005, Janet I. Egan