South Shore Journal

October 23 - All this and a newborn, too...

Goodness, gracious me, how time flies. Last time you heard from me, I was stepping ashore at Point Judith coming back from Block Island. Well, to say the least, my time has been occupied.

Let's see. On Tuesday, September 18, I joined three volunteers from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care at the Daniel Webster Wildlfie Sanctuary as we cleared the brushy edge of what would be the parking area for the upcoming Farm Day celebration in a week and a half's time. The next morning, I gave a talk in Norwell on backyard birds, how to attract them and how to feed them, for a church group. On the 20th, I spoke on the topic of lighthouses around the United States for the Memorial Library in Andover. On Friday, we birded, of course, hitting Duxbury Beach and the Duxbury Bogs Conservation Area with all we had. A pump was running at the bogs, watering the drought-starved cranberries with all its might, making for the loudest birding experience we'd ever had. Firty-one species, including an American golden plover.

Saturday, the 22nd, I took my wife out for her birthday. We picked apples in North Andover and fed chickadees at the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. The next morning I headed for Sandwich and a birding program led by Wayne Petersen, head of the Important Bird Areas Program for Mass Audubon, at the Sandy Neck IBA (marsh wrens and saltmarsh sparrows).  That afternoon, I retreated to the North River Wildlife sanctuary to lead what is usually a well-timed mushroom walk. This year's dry August and September, though, left me 'shroomless.  We found only one mushroom altogether (excluding turkey tails), a russula.

On Tuesday, September 25, I left for a Coast Guard history conference in Erie, Pennsylvania, driving westward for about ten hours in total, stopping a few places on the way. It was my first chance to drive through the middle of the Montezuma National wildlife Sanctuary, on the New York State Thruway. David Ludlow and I had visited the refuge in April, and I'll be going back there this weekend, but I had never seen it from the thruway. Erie, the final destination, was depressing. The city's in a bad way, economically, and it shows. I arrived a day early for the conference, so took the opportunity to visit the Erie Maritime Museum, the Erie Land Lighthouse, and Presque Isle State Park, finding the mushrooms at left along the way. In total, I spent four days on the trip, driving back through Buffalo and two horrendous thunderstorms on the way back east on Friday. I arrived just in time for Saturday's Farm Day, and stood in the parking lot for ten hours waving little orange flags (no, not just for the fun of it).

On the 30th, I returned to Cuttyhunk Island with Ian Ives, director of the Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary on the Cape. The last time I had visited was during Labor Day weekend, and the island was overwhelmed with boats and people. Today, it was empty.  We had the place to ourselves. On October 3, I hit another island, Nantucket, on assignment from Northeast Boating magazine to witness the move of Sankaty Head Lighthouse. On Friday we headed for Cumberland Farm's fields in Middleboro and Halifax to see if we could get a glimpse of the Swainson's Hawk that had been reported there (unsuccessfully), and on Sunday I returned there with another group for the Friday Morning Rewind program (this time successfully). That afternoon I birded Duxbury Beach with a group, picking out a black-throated blue warbler at High Pines, and watching a pergrine falcon zip past at full speed.

Tuesday, October 9, I boarded a plane at Logan Airport bound for San Diego and the 8th Maritime Heritage Conference.  I was headed there to give a talk on a West Coast shipwreck, and to hobnob with the country's top maritime historians. One of the most interesting sights to me was the HMS Surprise, a sailing ship that looked very familiar to my eyes. Close inspection made me realize that it was in fact the HMS Rose, the sail training ship that operated so successfully out here on the East Coast for so many years. It's now doing duty as a pirate ship, a casualty of the Pirates of the Carribean mania of the past few years.

Touching down in Boston on Saturday at 5:48 a.m., I slept for four hours and headed to a cousin's wedding. The next day I joined the staff at the South Shore Sanctuaries in celebrating the 25th anniversary of education programming at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, preparing a PowerPoint program that ran on a loop throughout the day, co-leading a nature walk, and just otherwise playing co-host to the more than 200 visitors that showed up to party with us.

And on it goes: on the 17th, I gave a talk on my book When Hull Freezes Over for a Masonic lodge in Weymouth; on the 18th, I led the discussion at the Natural History Book Club on Mark and Delia Owens' Eye of the Elephant (great read). On Friday, we redeemed our weak birding performances of recent weeks with a 66 species total, including 17 purple finches and our first ring-necked ducks of the fall.  It felt good to be back in that saddle again, I can tell you. On Saturday, I attended another cousin's wedding, and on Sunday I led a teachers' professional development program through Hull Village in the morning, and walked out to the exploding flowers of the Witch Hazel grove here at North River in the afternoon.

Yesterday I attended our statewide education coordinating committee meeting in Lincoln (counting red-tailed hawks as I sat in traffic on Route 128) and interviewed an ex-professional wrestler for the Hull Times. Today I met David Ludlow at the sanctuary early so we could chainsaw up a fallen oak tree on the Woodland Loop Trail here at North River, which had come down in the heavy windstorm of Tuesday. In an hour or so, I'll be on my way to Hull to help the Straits Pond Watershed Association clean out their tree swallow boxes, and tomorrow will be back to birding again, before heading for Sapsucker Woods and the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge for three days of what else?  Birding!

Amidst all this madness, my family was blessed with the arrival of my first niece, Ava, born to my younger brother Nick and his wife Kerri on their first wedding anniversary, this past Monday, my mother and father's first grandchild. The holiday season will be even happier than usual this year, with another tiny mouth to feed in the greater family.

There you are, up to the minute. I'll have pics from Montezuma when I return, and I'm sure plenty more stories to tell.

October 2 - Taking the Block

They were all here when I got here, the participants in the Block Island trip. I arrived at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary at 5:45 a.m., and the parking lot was full. We jammed the van full of gym bags, binoculars and bags of snacks, and headed for the hills.

There, at the Blue Hills Trailside Museum parking lot to be precise , we met up with the rest of our gang, four more bodies from the Drumlin Farm side of life, making our group a total of eleven birders strong. We exchanged names, home towns and our favorite bird species, and began our migration south.

We reached Point Judith, Rhode Island, a little bit early, which gave us a chance to do some shoreside birding before boarding the ferry. We found a flock of shorebirds, including some ruddy turnstones, and otherwise soaked in the beauty of the warm late summer weather. From there we headed for the boat. Kathy Clayton, our master bird bander and co-leader, and I had to back the vans onto the ferry, an interesting experience in life, I can tell you. As much as I 'd like to say I did it once and was done with it, I know that I'll probably end up doing it again in the future.

The waters of Block Island Sound were surprisingly quiet, birdwise, but the one odd species we got was quite a good one, a parasitic jaeger. The first memorable moment of the trip, though, concerned a relatively abundnant species, a herring gull.

The gull in question began to overtake us by our perch on the port side, and one of our anonymous attendees decided to work on an experiment. Holding out a potato chip in her left hand, she wanted to see if the gull would come in and take it. It thought about it, but eventually backed away. She then wondered if the gull would catch the chip in flight, and released. Of course, though, the chip got caught in the slipstream and jetted its way toward the center of the stern, zipping its way past the face of another one of our attendees. The chip releaser ducked her head and said she couldn't believe how close that was, and I said (WARNING - REALLY BAD PUNCHLINE AHEAD), "I agree. She should have ducked once she heard the chip note."

Once ashore, we had a great, full afternoon ahead of us. We dropped our bags at the Gables Inn and headed for Mohegan Bluffs, supposedly the sight of the defeat of Mohegan warriors who the local natives drove over the cliffs at the end of an ancient battle. The southeast winds prevailing on this day, Kathy and I thought, might push a migrating raptor or two up against the walls of sand that formed the bluffs. So nature made us fools for a day. No raptors, but there were still some sights to see.

The area is landmarked by an Italianate, brick nineteenth century lighthouse, known simply as Southeast Lighthouse. We visited the lighthouse grounds and peered over the bluffs, with little more than a few common eiders to keep us interested. When we left, we found a stack of bricks with big "Do Not Touch" signs on them. That proved to be too much for some of our group to take. While not a single brick was moved, let's just say we hope they don't dust them for fingerprints before mortaring them in place. We took the steps of Steps Beach to the beach, to find that the latest fad on the island is cairn building (see the pic at left, below).

We followed the Mohegan Trail toward the center of the island, and turned up Lakeside Drive. Peckham Pond and Fresh Pond held wood ducks, belted kingfishers, and an eastern kingbird. We soon realized that we would have some recurrent species on the trip, as we picked out a few merlins, several cedar waxwings, and four red-breasted nuthatches. We ended up out at the mouth of Great Salt Pond, picking up a spotted sandpiper and a black-crowned night heron on the jetty off Beane Point. A merlin put on an amazing display of aerial fury, terrorizing a murder of crows in the nearby trees. That evening we headed for a communal dinner on Water Street in Old Harbor, which was still jumping as if it was the Fourth of July. The only difference was that this weekend, being one of the last of the summer season, offered deep discounts on summer merchandise. Can't tell you how many t-shirts of which we helped rid the island.

Gathering clouds on Friday night forewarned ill weather by morning. And so it was. Six of us arose for an early morning excursion at 5:30, rolling toward the north end of the island. Bounding up Corn Neck Road, we held out hope that the now north-northwest wind would help push some migrants ashore. We found a large flock of American robins diving under cover, huge swarms of bugs, and a half a dozen deer running through the pre-dawn streets. We stopped at Settler's Rock and scanned the beach toward Sandy Point and the North Lighthouse, finding a buff-breasted sandpiper in amongst the semi-palmated plovers. Nearby, in "the pines," and in the rain, we found our first warblers of the day (we'd had one common yellowthroat all of Friday). The numbers grew quickly - northern parulas, a magnolia warbler, a black-throated blue, yellow-rumped warblers, palm warblers, a black and white warbler, about twenty American redstarts, and more.

Before heading back to the hotel for what we termed "second breakfast," we stopped at the end of Andy's Way and a short walk out to the mudflats of Great Salt Pond. We were blessed with views of a brown thrasher, a Cerulean warbler, American oystercatchers and Carl Yastrzemski (see the pic at left).

The rain was still falling heavily as we gathered at the inn for breakfast downtown. From there we returned to the north end of the island, taking in the view of Sachem Pond, the pines again and walking our way up into the Clay Head Trail and its marvelous overlook. More merlins, more waxwings, more red-breasted nuthatches. And still more rain. By the time we returned to downtown New Shoreham for lunch, though, the rain lessened, and eventually stopped. We walked West Beach in the afternoon, picking up some American oystercatchers and a Bonaparte's gull along the way. We dined at Sharky's, and turned in for one final time.

On Sunday morning, our early morning crew grew to eight. Perhaps because of that, our deer count doubled on the way to the north end of the island. And the warblers were back in evidence again, in huge numbers, with the same culprits as the day before, and some new little bandits, blackburnian, yellow and Connecticut warblers and ovenbirds and northern waterthrushes being heard from. After second breakfast we headed for a meeting with the folks at the Lapham birdbanding station, where we were greeted by a black-throated blue warbler in hand. The visit gave our attendees the opportunity to hold and release birds, and to listen to the heartbeat of a catbird. Directly from the Lapham property we entered the Maze, a winding thicket with so many offshoots we wondered if we'd eventually find our way back to the ferry in time to make it home. At one point we were swarmed with eastern towhees, with dozens flying about in a mad cacophony.

Returning from lunch, we had time for one last visit. We chose the Hodge Family Preserve, an open grassland that winds down to Middle Pond. There, we added northern harriers, mute swans, a dickcissel and our last new bird for the trip, number 87, a rose-breasted grosbeak.

With an hour to go, our gang headed out shopping, while Kathy and I prepped the vans for the return trip. On the ferry ride back, a bunch of the gals ceremoniously tossed pennies into the water, swearing to return together to the island some day.

Hey, no problem.  Kathy and I are already planning for next September.

October 2 - Yup, I've been busy

So, how have you been? Sorry it's been so long since I've written, but as Johnny Cash once said, "I've been everywhere, man..."

Beginning on September 6, I worked for eleven straight days, wearing Audubon blue every day for nearly two weeks. On Friday, September 7, I led our Friday Morning Bird Walk, as David Ludlow, our normal number one van driver, was away downeast, vacationing in Maine. The long summer drought was in evidence. I conferred with some of our more experienced birders and decided to head for the coast, even though the idea of warblers coming through had me thinking about the woods. We compromised with a quick stop at Wompatuck State Park, hoping for maybe a songbird or two, or that maybe the big pond at the end of the park's main road (Union Street) might still have some water in it.

It didn't. It was full of mud. But it sure was full of shorebirds. We noticed one, then three solitary sandpipers. There were spotted sandpipers, and long looks brought in wood ducks at the back, where the extensive mudflats that used to be the pond finally gave way to some shallow, brackish water. We left there and meandered through Hingham, Hull, Cohasset and Scituate, scratching out 52 species.

On September 8 I pulled light duty, giving a talk at the Marshfield Council on Aging for the 60-Plus Club on one of my books, Images of America: Squantum and South Weymouth Naval Air Stations. That night, I followed up by going to see Jimmy Buffett at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. The next morning, heavy rain - finally - washed out the sunrise walk at Daniel Webster, so instead I led a bird walk at Wompatuck again, at 9. Unfortunately, we were swallowed up by bike racers, who had taken over the entire park. But their presence led to some interesting diversionary sightings. Because our normal pathways were taken, we walked where we normally wouldn't, and got a fresh perspective on the park. Other than a couple of American redstarts, though, there were still really no warblers.

That afternoon I joined Sally Avery for a walk at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary, with red-shouldered and red-tailed hawks putting on an interesting show. We also bumped into an eagle scout putting up new birdboxes across the sanctuary with his mom and brother, a project that has brought new life to our nesting bird program. Finally, at 3, I headed for the Ventress Memorial Library in Marshfield to sign copies of another book, Images of America: Marshfield with my coauthor, Cynthia Krusell.

Monday, our South Shore Sanctuaries staff, with David back from Maine, met to discuss Farm Day, our hugh fall event. It requires more than 100 volunteers and the availability of all staff, all day. After the meeting, I ran down to the Marshfield Fairgrounds to snap a photo of what would be our giant pumpkin, now sitting outside my window at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary. On Tuesday, September 11, we met again as a group, heading for the Wachusett Meadow Wildlife Sanctuary in Princeton and the statewide long service awards program. It's annually a time to get together and take a nature walk with friends we rarely get to see (during which I ran across a "herd" of red efts, like the one at left), and then listen to stories of longtime survivors of the rigors of nonprofit life. For some of us, it's also a chance to poke fun at those same survivors. David Ludlow now has twenty years of service with Mass Audubon, and he has also now been hit by the public recitation of "The Top Ten Things You Didn't Know About David Ludlow."

On Wednesday, September 12, Sue MacCallum, our sanctuary director, and I headed for Lincoln, and an 8:30 a.m. meeting with birder Kathy Clayton (I ran to Great Meadows in the morning to beat the Route 128 traffic and do some birding). In two days' time, Kathy and I would be leading a weekend trip to Block Island, and this was the first chance we had found to meet face to face to discuss the plan for the three days. Immediately after that, Sue and I popped across the street from the Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary to the Mass Audubon headquarters for a meeting with the statewide education coordinating committee. I spent the rest of the afternoon in Waltham at the regional National Archives branch doing research for an upcoming book.

Finally, on Thursday night, September 13, I led our Natural History Book Club discussion on the book River of Doubt, the story of Teddy Roosevelt's ill-fated post-1912 Presidential election journey down the river of the same name. With that completed, I ran home and packed to get ready for three days on Block Island. For those details, read on...