South Shore Journal

August 26 - Winding Down

How many more days until Christmas? If anybody's asking, all I want for Christmas is eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Actually, if anybody is giving out Labor Day gifts, I'll take them then. But alas, there's still so much to do between now and then. I guess I'll just take the schedule as it comes and will hope that one of these trails leads to slumberland.

So! Back to Duxbury Beach, or at least we were on Tuesday and Thursday of the past week. Tuesday was a planned birding day with my boss, the South Shore Sanctuaries Director, Sue MacCallum, and we had a blast finding terns of many kinds - least, common, black, roseate, etc. - up and down the beach. Perhaps the greatest sight of the day was the enormous swarm of tree swallows feeding on berries at High Pines, fattening themselves up for the ride home. Once in a while, something would set the birds on high alert, and the swarm would rise in unison to meet it, a massive cloud of wings and chatter. Then, just as quickly and equally as gracefully, it would settle back down to the bushes to eat. That was the coolest moment of the day until two whimbrels popped out of the grasses just beyond High Pines, disappearing from view almost immediately. Oh well, at least we got to see them.

Or at least t hat's what I was saying at the time. On Thursday, our regular gang greeted Sara Grady from the North and South River Watershed Association, all ears for her talk on horseshoe crabs. And we could not have found a better speaker; Sara got her Ph.D studying horseshoe crab populations on Cape Cod, although she now works as a general coastal ecologist for the watershed association. She can just as easily be dealing with sudden saltmarsh dieback as with horseshoe crab issues. Using her considerable, ninja-like horseshoe crab tracking skills she found one scurrying along the bay floor and plucked it from the water. Holding it upside-down to show us its inner workings, she allowed the grasping and grabbing ten claws clutch onto her fingers and hands, showing us that this was obviously not the first member of the limulus polyphemus tribe she had ever handled.

But the day didn't end with Sara. Because the program ran for an hour, and we usually schedule them for two, our gang harrassed me into taking them birding along the beach. Good thing we did, for besides the fun stuff (black terns, innumerable small migrating shorebirds, northern harriers), we spooked another whimbrel. Up it flew out of the grass, and then came another. And another. And another! They kept coming until we had a suspected family of nine whimbrels! What a showing for the gang.

That night, I headed for Barnstable and the Trayser Museum of Coast Guard Heritage. My job? Sign copies of my new coauthored book, The Pendleton Disaster off Cape Cod: The Greatest Small Boat in Coast Guard History. Mission accomplished, I retreated to the South Shore.

And just in time, too, because Friday morning came around, and it was time to go birding again! We started out on Third Cliff in Scituate, checking up on the shorebird migration at the mouth of the North River. Good thing we did, too, or we would have missed the western sandpiper. We rolled around Scituate and Marshfield for the day, settling on 55 species, not really breaking the bank, but getting a good amount for a humid day. I came home to find articles I had written for South Shore Living (on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the Pembroke Friends' Meetinghouse) had hit the street in the new issue.

On Sunday, my wife Michelle and I headed for Provincetown with the sunrise. We made it across the Sagamore Bridge in what seemed like record time, and settled down to breakfast at Chach's with an hour to go before our scheduled appointment. From there we rumbled down to MacMillan Wharf and boarded the Captain Red, one of the whalewatching boats in the Portuguese Princess fleet. As we chugged outof the harbor, we passed some of my old friends on the state ship of Delaware, the Kalmar Nyckel, berthed at the end of the wharf. I had written about the ship, or pinnace, to be exact, in my book You Don't Have to Catch Fish to Go Fishin': A Day in the Life of Hull, Massachusetts, even sailing her in 2003 around Quincy Bay.

Off Long Point Light, my phone rang, and I did a two or three minute talk on Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds radio show about what the day held in store. I told Ray I hoped it meant a few Wilson's storm-petrels and shearwaters, and within ten minutes that prediction had come true. Our first marine mammal sighting was of a pod of approximately thirty Atlantic white-sided dolphins, one of which breached and got a huge rise out of the crowd. That was followed by several minke whales, one finback and six humpback whales, including two mother calf pairs. Just before we headed into port, a baby humpback breached out of the water directly to stern, to my gasping surprise.

"Holy crap!" I yelled in my best naturalist's voice. "Back here!"

The crowd moved in runaway herd-like fashion to where I had until that moment stood in solitude. The baby stayed with us for several minutes, wiggling and rolling for all.  A baby harbor seal finished the day's list, which all in all wasn't bad.

Michelle and I hit Route 6 after stopping in Wellfleet for lunch, and got ourselves tightly wrapped up in the penultimate Sunday afternoon Cape Cod traffic jam of the summer, making it home to Weymouth by 4. I got up this morning and kept going, leading a two-hour beachcombing walk on Nantasket Beach from 8 to 10, and then heading directly down to Plymouth Beach to discuss potential future programs there.

This week, the fun continues, culminating with a trip to Cuttyhunk on Sunday.  I figure if I get eight hours of sleep between now and then (combined) I should be OK. But Santa, if you believe in Labor Day...

August 18 - Creeping Towards Fall

Let's see, I left you just as my wife and I were about to head south. Yes, fall migration has begun, but our trip was only temporary, I asssure you. On Wednesday, August 8, we drove south to Maryland, and over the course of the next few days visited the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., although I'll deny I was ever there, and Annapolis, arriving just in time to see the cadets at the Naval Academy fanning out into the streets with their families. White uniforms everywhere, neatly containing the future of our sea supremacy within them. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, we toured the grounds of the Academy, including the famous chapel, although John Paul Jones' crypt was not open to the public that day.  Oh well, excuse number one to go back.

On Monday, it was back to work, although that was mostly behind a desk (the trade-off for all the outdoors fun). On Tuesday, our usual Duxbury Beach gang rumbled out towards the Gurnet headland on a program we call "Winging It." For eight to ten weeks each summer, I coordinate twice-a-week programming on Duxbury Beach. To break things up, I once in a while figure we'll just "wing it," go birding without calling in any outside program leaders. So we "wung it." And we picked a good day. We scored some black terns, a female black scoter and more. We politely argued over a roseate tern or two, never coming to a consensus, but I figure for many people, the arguing - and the learning that comes from having to focus on the details of a bird ID - is half the fun.

On Thursday, yes, it was back to the beach.  My life gets pretty repetitive in the summertime. This time, though, we skipped the birds, despite the presence of an early returning northern harrier, and headed straight for the Gurnet and its ancient lighthouse. With a small group, we had the chance to all go into the lantern room together and learn the history of the oldest wooden lighthouse still standing in America.  As usual, our friend Alden Ringquist led the way, as he has for many years now. Bank swallows swooped off the cliff, and we spotted our first brant in what seems like ages. That night, I led the discussion at the monthly Natural History Book Club. We chose Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez as an ironic midsummer title. There we were, sweating in the mugginess of the old building, discussing muskoxen and narwhals. Excellent book, by the way.

And Friday? Yes, Friday morning birders. I'd missed the last two weeks, being in Maryland and Michigan, so was glad to get back in the saddle. This week, though, with our camp kids on the road at Camp Wildwood up in Rindge, New Hampshire, we only had one van. My saddle, as it turned out, was my own car. We spilled over by three attendees, and needed a second vehicle. Good thing I gassed up on the way to work.

Plan A, as usual, did not work, so we improvised. We stopped on Kent Street in Scituate, a small, wooded area off a bean field, and listened. We were surprised to see and hear some returning warblers, including a few American redstarts, and a handful of blue-gray gnatcatchers. We wandered off the road and David Ludlow surpised himself by pishing a black-crowned night heron out of a thicket. Don't see that every day. We roamed around Scituate racking up the species until we hit 65, ending with a pectoral sandpiper at the First Herring Brook reservoir (and the short-billed dowitchers at left). That night, my wife and I headed for the Marshfield Fair. We tried to find some friends of ours, but the event is enormous. We watched the second heat of the demolition derby, meandered through the farmlife exhibits, and caught up with the professional wrestling show just as the rain started to fall. In case you're wondering about the results, Hercules Hernandez, Jr., is the new EPW Heavyweight Champion, having won a battle royale in the rain. It was just amazing how quickly the guys got eliminated as the rain started to fall harder and the lightning began to strike (wink, wink). By the time we reached the car, our fried dough was quite soggy.

Saturday morning brought yet another adventure, a cosponsored walk through the Nelson Memorial Forest here in Marshfield with the executive director of the New England Forestry Foundation. The forest, a really well-hidden gem of a site, leads directly onto the North River, and is rife with evidence of local history, from stonewalls to a packet landing. And barely anybody knows it's there.

Today is Sunday, August 19, and I'll be taking off at 1 p.m. to explore the banks of the Jones River, and the history of that region. On Monday, I'll be walking the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary by morning by default, helping an eagle scout complete his birdbox replacement project, discussing the future of the bird garden at the entry cabin, and then joining State Senator Bob Hedlund on his radio show at night to talk about one of my new books, Crime, Corruption and Politics in Hull: The Rise and Fall of Boss Smith's Old Ring.

Can anybody guess where I'll be on Tuesday? If you said Duxbury Beach, you win the prize. I'll check in again at the end of the week, two Duxbury Beaches and a Friday Morning birders later.

August 5 - The Whirlwind Continues

It started out like a normal week. On Tuesday (after a quick radio spot on WATD 95.9FM to talk about a new book, Images of America: Marshfield, with coauthor Cynthia Krusell) I rumbled down to Duxbury Beach in the big blue Mass Audubon van to meet Regina Porter. Regina is a living history actor who portrays characters that lived in the South Shore of Boston area over the last four centuries. That day she was in Victorian garb, playing the part of Susannah Winslow White, 1863, the year of three Thanksgivings.

So, if you consider that to be a normal way to start your week, there you have it.

Regina, as usual, was a delightful diversion for our regular Duxbury Beach program crowd, offering an opportunity for them to look at the beach from a different perspective, meaning not through binoculars, for once. There would be plenty of time for that.

On Wednesday I headed into Boston for a small gathering for the release of another new book, The Pendleton Disaster off Cape Cod: The Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History. I coauthored the book with friends Theresa Barbo of Yarmouthport and CAPT W. Russell Webster, USCG (Ret.), and the Mariners' House graciously held a short reading and book signing event for us near the Coast Guard's First District headquarters.

Thursday morning I led a beachcombing walk on Duxbury Beach.  The program was inspired by a book we had read for our Natural History Book Club, Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam by Skye Moody. We wandered along, loading a full trash bag with the debris we found, and wondering about the history of the items we came across. A piece of linoleum flooring - lost from a home destroyed by the Blizzard of 1978 in Scituate? Numerous Wild Canada lobster bands - from a lobster boat lost out on George's Bank? The plastic torso of Woody, the cowboy from the movie Toy Story - floated from EuroDisney?  Hey, we figured, it was our chance to let our imaginations go wild. We discussed the differences between flotsam, jetsam and lagan and beachcombers, wreckers and mooncussers, and recoverd innumerable baloons and plastic bags from the wrack line, hopefully saving sea turtles and pelagic birds from future injuries or even deaths.

That night, I flew to Grand Rapids, Michigan, landing just after midnight. I woke up later that Friday morning and drove to Grand Haven, gave a five-minute speech, and was back in Boston by 11 p.m. On Saturday, I was back at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, warming up the van for a program that is always one of my favorites, the Wicked Big Rock Walk.

The idea came from a rock walk I'd taken with the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary a few years ago. I had the notion that a rock walk could be organized, at least in our immediate area, to hit a  group of six or seven huge glacial erratic boulders. Last August, therefore, we set out to find seven of the largest erratics around - each complete with a human story to tell - including House Rock, supposedly the largest erratic in New England. We hit the woods yesterday in Cohasset and found them all. At "Ode's Den," an eerie occurrence took place. "Ode's Den" was named for a man that lived under the rock after he lost his house in 1832, living like a hermit until he froze to death that winter. As we approached the rock field, a hermit thrush began to sing in the distance.

With the humidity as it was, I cut the walk short by one erratic, making sure that we'd all be physically intact to visit House Rock. The shame of House Rock, a seven million pound monstrosity and fantastic geological oddity, something that could be a tourism draw for Weymouth, is that the community has let the park that surrounds it fall into the hands of drug users and underaged drinkers. Trees have grown up around the rock itself, not a bad thing, of course, but as far as being something folks might want to be able to visit, the trees make the rock completely hidden from view. There's broken glass, graffiti, everything that goes along with the lawlessness of a public place underpatrolled by the community's police. So House Rock, once a subject of early 20th century postcards and poetry, is now an embarrassment to Weymouth.

Today, Sunday, is a beautiful day, and I'll be spending at least some of it outdoors.  This afternoon I'll be leading "Birdlife and History of the Marshfield Coast," a drive along the water's edge from Green Harbor to the North River, stopping to talk about hotels of yore, roosting areas for black-crowned night herons, and more.

And so the whirlwind of summer continues. I'm enjoying the beauty of these days and I hope you are, too. Get outdoors while we still can! The shorebirds are migrating, telling us that fall and winter are on their way.