I thought my plover warden
shift would be rained out today, but I know enough to
stick my head out to check in the morning before
believing the weather forecast. The day starts out gray
and gets grayer but I get in most of the shift. Good
thing too! Turns out that the number of visitors varies
in inverse proportion to the weather! The darker, colder,
and wetter the weather gets, the more visitors arrive at
the south end of the beach. I lost count at 22, but I
know I spoke to more people than that.
I actually heard a piping plover
this time, the distinctive peep-lo call. I may also have
seen it, but the pale shorebird blip dipped out of sight
behind a rock before I could get the binoculars on it. As
birders, identifiable by the expensive optics, came by
throughout the morning asking if I'd seen any piping
plovers I had to say "No, but I heard one." Some people
with huge scopes were looking at something on the beach
that I couldn't see, claiming it was a black-bellied
plover. Anyway, they asked about piping plovers and I
motioned in the direction of where I'd heard the call and
said "Of course, judging by your serious scopes, you
already know that piping plovers can ventriloquize, um,
throw their voices." Turns out they hadn't heard that. I
talked about how many times I've been tricked into
looking in the direction of the call. I don't know how
they do it, but it's a real phenomenon.
The people with the giant scopes
couldn't scope out the identities of the scoter species
either. Of course, it's getting darker and drizzlier all
the time so they just look like black blobs bobbing on
the waves. I'd need fog-penetrating see-in-the-dark
binoculars to sort them out. I'm beginning to think all
three local species of scoter are indistinguishable
unless they paddle up to you and announce their names.
I intercepted a father and son
entering the closed area of the beach and carryinig a
metal detector . After my explanation of the beach
closure, they asked where Indian Head Point is. "Indian
Head Point?" "It's supposed to be on Plum Island." "I've
never heard of it. Maybe Sandy Point? Or that drumlin
over there?" I pointed them toward Bar Head and Sandy
Point. They insisted there's someplace called Indian Head
Point on Plum Island. There's an Indian Head Park in
Merrimack, but that's the only Indian Head anything I can
think of or find with google around these parts. Maybe I
should have asked them if there's some kind of buried
treasure map they're following.
A family looking for sand dollars
insisted that they would only be able to find them by
Emerson Rocks in the closed area of the beach. I
patiently explained the beach closure. They claimed,
somewhat angrily, that there are no signs to tell you the
beach is closed before you pay the $5 entry fee. There
are in fact several signs, which it would be hard to
miss, but I patiently held my tongue and just explained
again that they really couldn't go into the closed area.
While I was talking to a couple of
French tourists wanting to see gannets and puffinsa fox
zipped across the beach and then back up into the dunes
only about a tenth of a mile away. At first I thought it
was a coyote, but it was definitely a fox. The French
people wanted to know if it preys on piping plovers. Yup,
foxes eat the eggs and scare the parents off the nests
and in general are like any mammalian predator. The
French people and their hosts were actually interested in
my whole piping plover life cycle speech, so it was
satisfying to me to give it. I answered their questions
about gannets and puffins too : gannets yes, one just
flew by a few minutes ago; puffins no, they only come
close to shore around here when there's a nor'easter.
They don't nest around here. Neither do gannets,
actually. Both gannets and puffins nest further north.
People started arriving in droves
just before it got rainy enough that I radioed the
gatehouse I was packing up to leave. It was 11:30, so it
wasn't really that early. I think today's total must be
the most visitors I've ever talked to in one
shift.