South Shore Journal

Off and Running

Are you ready for all this? Here's a rundown of the past two weeks.

On Monday, April 7, a friend and I took a common day off to visit Cape Cod for some birding. We started with a pre-dawn walk at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield to check unsuccessfully for owls, but instead scored timberdoodling American woodcocks. From there, it was straight - okay, with a Dunkin' Donuts stop on the way - to the Beech Forest in Provincetown, where she fed the chickadees and red-breasted nuthatches by hand while I snapped some pics. At Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary we met the little blue heron at left, and on we rolled until we ran out of Cape to see. After crossing the bridge for home we stopped at the Myles Standish State Forest to listen for singing pine warblers and watch for foraging ring-necked pheasants.

The next day I joined three other birders, Charlie, Joe and Allan, on an exploratory walk through Scituate's Glades for the Breeding Bird Atlas 2 project, finding a surprise osprey on a pole that was not used in 2007. That afternoon, the South Shore Sanctuaries staff brought a van full of volunteers to Mass Audubon's Visual Arts Center in Canton to see the current exhibit and even a little behind the scenes. That night, I led a woodcock walk at Daniel Webster, finding a sharp-shinned hawk and a northern shrike on the way to Fox Hill, and numerous woodcocks doing their thang in the failing light of the setting sun.

The next week was a blur - eye doctor, Friday Morning Birding, Celtics game (the win against the Bucks), two days in Maine (L.L. Bean, bowling, Scarborough Marsh, Cape Elizabeth, Portland Head Lighthouse, Lenny the 1700-pound chocolate moose, left). On Monday the 14th, I gave a talk on hawks and owls to the folks at the Duxbury Senior Center, then did our North Hill Marsh Waterfowl Survey (ring-necked ducks, wood ducks, green-winged teals). Tuesday night the 15th I gave a talk on Mass Audubon's Baltimore Oriole project, and on Wednesday I met a friend in Boston for burritos and a chance to see the fork-tailed flycatcher in Brighton, also a miss.

Thursday I "atlased" a block with a friend who needed some tips on places to go, and Friday, with my co-leader David Ludlow chasing Henslow's sparrows in North Carolina, I led Friday Morning Birders to Duxbury Beach and the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary, picking up several new birds for the year (eastern towhee, greater yellowlegs, black-bellied plover, etc.). Saturday morning I led a sunrise walk at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary and then the Friday Morning Rewind, retracing our Friday morning steps for those who missed them. The sunrise walk in particular did not disappoint, with a palm warbler, a lingering rough-legged hawk and more.

Sunday morning, after brunch, I received a call from Tim O'Neil, who had led our full moon hayride on Saturday night at Daniel Webster. Snow goose! Luckily, as you can see, it  was still there when I got there this foggy morning, Tuesday, while working my breeding bird atlas block.

Got all that?  Good, because I have to pack. I'm off to the Finger Lakes for a few days of rest, relaxation and...birding.

There, there, there and back again

Spring keeps rolling on in! It's been another interesting and exciting week around the region. In fact, with all that's happened, I'm kind of dumb-founded to think that only seven days ago I was on Nantucket with the gang.

Tuesday, the day of the Red Sox re-opener in Oakland, I led a woodcock walk at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary. Kathy Clayton, a fellow program leader, and I had seen them displaying back on March 9, and they were still at it hot and heavy earlier this week. Walking the trails at the sanctuary we had a sharp-shinned hawk, northern harriers, our northern shrike and more. All in all, a wonderful night that ended with a strange distant sound that may have been a fisher attack. But it was so drowned out by the sound of the hundreds of spring peepers around the sanctuary that we may never know.

Wednesday I attended the Mass Audubon education staff meeting at the Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick. As is my custom, I got there early enough to walk for an hour around the property, catching some early moring tree swallows on their boxes, as shown above. During the lunch break I got the chance to visit the resident great horned owl nest on the property, at left. The owl's moved in on an old heron nest, and if I was the heron, I think I'd take it up in court rather than try to make the eviction myself.

That night, I headed for the Lloyd Center in Dartmouth to help with a Breeding Bird Atlas 2 meeting (I'm a regional coordinator for the project). While witnessing a red-shouldered hawk display put on by the staff, I heard the familiar hoot of a barred owl in the distance. I then gave it my best "Who cooks for you?" and called in a dueting pair, a probable breeding record for the area. Great horned and barred in one day, without any darkness! What are the chances?

Thursday brought a meeting at Plimoth Plantation forthe upcoming FlightPath exhibit of shorebird photography from Plymouth Beach, and Friday, of course, meant Friday Morning Birders. For the four billionth Friday in a row, it rained. No worries!  David Ludlow and I found 56 species of birds for our attendees, including American kestrels and Wilson's snipes at the Daniel Webster Widlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, and this mute swan at Store Pond in Plymouth, one of three we saw sitting on nests around that city. We also found a Canada goose on a nest in Marshfield, and a total of seven confirmed breeding records in the region. I told you spring was here...

This morning I led "All Around the Mouth of the North River," based on my new book The North River: Scenic Waterway of the South Shore, now out from the History Press. Got my first great egret of the season, out on Damon's Point in Marshfield, and first chipping sparrow, right outside my window at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary office. I guess no matter how far you roam, there's always a reason to come home.

Tonight is "Timberdoodles and Tapas!" Every good birding adventure starts with hors d'oeuvres, I always say.

It's Official

Remember how I said recently that there are two definitive signs of spring in Marshfield, returning fish crows and the grand re-opening of Dairy Queen on Webster Street? Well, I got the call. I was sitting at my desk listening to my phone messages when David Ludlow, our property manager at the South Shore Sanctuaries, piped in with, "Tuesday morning, CVS parking lot. There are fish crows all over the place!" The next morning, on an errand to Center Marshfield, I confirmed David's sighting. Or rather, his hearing. It's easier to tell fish crows by their vocalizations than their field marks.

But we'd already had a good start to the week, with signs of spring everywhere we looked. At dawn on Monday, David and I stood in the Boxford State Forest listening, hopefully, for barred owl calls. Instead, we were treated to singing brown creepers and winter wrens. At the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, on Plum Island in Newburyport, we watched for snowy owls, but instead came up with  our first piping plovers of the year. At Cherry Hill Reservoir in West Newbury, we were surprised by our first tree swallow of the spring. And that's a killdeer at left.

Back at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, I took a walk on the Woodland Loop Trail and turned over a coverboard to find our first red-backed salamander of the season. We'll be counting them in May and August/September, to determine their population on our property. If anybody would like to help with this citizen science project, contact me at 781-837-9400. This project will be a blast for scout troops, if you ask me.

WIth the spring comes the quickening of the pace for naturalists. Calls have been coming in all week. Ospreys in Hull! More at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary! A great egret on Duxbury Beach! American kestrels and eastern meadowlarks at Daniel Webster! On Tuesday evening I gave a talk for the Hanover Historical Society on my new book, North River: Scenic Waterway of the South Shore, just out this week. On Wednesday, I chatted with the staff at the Museum of Science about their upcoming firefly project - there'll be more about that in an upcoming post - and finalized an article for South Shore Living magazine on the osprey recovery project in the region. Today, after picking out my first double-crested cormorant of the year at Studley Pond in Rockland and being startled by a pair of low-flying, migrating northern goshawks, I worked on finalizing details for this weekend's trip to Nantucket Island. Binoculars, scope, camera, eighteen layers of clothing. I'm all set for the ferry ride.

But how could I forget? When I went on my fish crow mission earlier in the week, I was warmed by one further sight, the one you see to the left. Spring has finally, officially arrived in Marshfield.

March 20 - Spring is here, believe it

There are two well-known signs that spring has officially arrived in Marshfield. Dairy Queen on Webster Street opens and fish crows return to Center Marshfield from their southern sojourn. To date, neither has occurred. In fact, it's been snowing in these last few days of winter, making it feel like spring will never arrive.

But spring is here, and I have proof.

About a week ago I was in Hull for a meeting, and had a little time to kill. I also had a telescope, so I thought I'd check out the osprey platform on the Weir River estuary, underneath the Hull Wind II turbine. Ospreys are actually due back from the south later this month, but one had already been reported in the Westport area, so I thought I'd take a chance. No luck. But, as I turned to leave, I looked beside me and saw pussy willows starting to open up their buds, as seen in the pic to the left.

That was actually sign number two. A few days earlier, while on our Friday Morning Bird Walk, we stopped at the Duxbury Bogs Conservation Area and espied a long lost sight, painted turtles climbing out of the mud and up onto a log. They've begun emerging from their winter rest and are returning to the surface to start soaking in the sun (aren't we all). That's a true sign that the seasons are a-changing.

Finally, a few days ago, I visited North Hill Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Duxbury to conduct another installment of our ongoing waterfowl survey on the pond. The expected suspects were there, 81 Canada geese, 2 mute swans, a handful of ring-necked ducks and a few common mergansers. The highlight, though, was a line of four wood ducks swimming along among the dead cedar trees in the distance. Wood ducks are known to not like having "cold feet," and as such are only around when they feel the temps are right, or are going to be very soon.

Other wildlife continues to show up on our doorstep, winter residents changing their behavior for spring. One of our resident wild turkeys from the past few years (they've been hanging around the North River Wildlife Sanctuary parking lot off and on since November 1, 2005) gave me a great photo op this week, going into full "I'm a bad dude" mode as I walked outside the front door. It's almost that time of year when the male flocks and female flocks break up and the sexes begin to intermingle. As such, Darryl, here, needs to practice the things that attract female turkeys, puffing himself out and acting belligerently. It's quite a sight from a few feet away.

Yesterday I had the chance to speak at the Mass Audubon staff natural history conference at the Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary in Natick, on the topic of "21 Years of Friday Morning Birding," a statistical study of more than 47,000 check marks made on field cards on the South Shore since 1987. As I walked out the door at the end of the day, I ran into this red-tailed hawk sitting on a tree swallow box. Red-tails, as they're known colloquially, are already nesting, well in advance of many other bird species around the state.

So, yes, spring is on its way to the South Shore, despite what the snow says. Monday I'm off to the North Shore for a day's birding and then it's Nantucket for three days soon thereafter. When I'm back, it'll be time to start working on the second season of the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 2 project, a major citizen science undertaking of Mass Audubon.

And maybe, somewhere along the way, I'll find life bird number 303.

March 10 - Wild Weekend

Finding a good bird with a group of birders is a lot like being in an elevator. Everyone is really silent and faces the same way. That's why there are no really good pictures of people birding. They all look the same.

That happened to our program groups a few times this weekend. On Friday morning, we followed the tips of a couple of birders who had visited Marshfield earlier in the week and tracked down a yellow-bellied sapsucker. He almost eluded us - almost. As soon as we walked into the Cherry Hill Reservation, on Daniel Webster's old land, an accipiter, or small hawk, flew out of the trees in front of us. While the sighting of a Cooper's or a sharp-shinned hawk is always a good one, it usually means there won't be much else around for a few minutes. Coops and sharpies are bird-eaters, and the smaller birds know it. Therefore, they go into intense hiding until the all-clear is sounded. But, the yellow-bellied sapsucker could not out wait us.

We found him working on a sugar maple. We then did what we always do. We all stood and stared, admiring him for the fact that he's different form all of our usual suspects, and we moved onto the next bird. We all thought about the last yellow-belly we'd seen, and most of us remembered the first yellow-belly we'd ever seen. They're quite rare in this part of the state, but this guy seems to have found a home here, as we've located him in the same general plot of trees for two winters in a row now.

Saturday, of course, was a monumental washout. I did have a program to run in the evening, but out of necessity we moved it to Sunday afternoon. Problem was, I already had a program on Sunday afternoon.

At 1:30, Tim O'Neil, our volunteer co-leader, and I picked up fifteen teachers and drove them the length of Duxbury Beach, talking about snowy owls, ospreys, scoter ducks - all the things we were hoping to see, but didn't. The birders' worst enemy, the wind, was in full force. Our best bird sighting, three horned larks, was lost on most of the teachers I fear, but at least Tim had the enjoyment of seeing them, his first for the year. Not quite as rare as a yellow-belly, they're still a nice find.

At 3, we hustled back to the North River Wildlife Sanctuary to drop the teachers off, and I then turned and kept going down to the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary. I met Kathy Clayton, my second co-leader of the day, and someone whom I had not seen since September 15, 2007, the day we returned form Block Island together. We had barely met before that trip started, but not only had fun with our dozen attendees, but had become fast friends by the end of it. We'll be leading a trip up into the White Mountains this summer together. But I digress.

Our goal today was a four hour walk around Daniel Webster to look for birds of prey, and, despite the wind, they did not disappoint in the slightest. We had northern harriers, both male and female, hunting for voles in the grasslands. We had red-tailed hawks coming from many directions, and a solitary rough-legged hawk soaring above the treetops to the northeast (on the way between sanctuaries I'd also seen a red-shouldered hawk). Just before dusk we heard, and then saw a northern shrike atop a shrub, a little monster known as the "butcher bird" for the way it massacres its prey. It kills cardinal-sized birds, impales them on spikes (barbed wire, or a snapped off branch of a tree) and eats until its full. It then leaves the remains impaled and comes back later for other meals until it's done with that particular food source. Finally, after the sun went down, we had a short-eared owl flying at high speeds over those grasstops evaucated moments earlier by the harriers.

The surprise of the night , though, was the first full "peent" of an American woodcock, the notice that the breeding display was about to begin. Woodcocks put on an amazing show, with whistling wings, a climb to dizzying heights, and then a tumble to the earth. We'd seen them performing their act before, but weren't expecting it for about another two or three weeks. Yet there they were, a dozen male woodcocks, some going right into their full act. Trust me, folks, that is a true sign that spring is on the way.

I left Daniel Webster at 7:45 and headed for home. Over the weekend, I'd added four more birds to the year list (115 - killdeer, 116 - yellow-bellied sapsucker, 117 - American woodcock, 118 - short-eared owl), but nothing new for the life list (sigh). Still waiting for 303.

March 3 - A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to 302

Every birder keeps a list. At least one. There are some who keep several. There are state lists, there are town lists, there are lists of birds you've seen while driving mroe than 50 miles per hour, there are commuting lists, international lists, year lists, month lists, checklists for every variable of which one can think. Some people prefer to keep a mental list, others have leapt into the computer age with Excel spreadsheets, while some are surrounded by huge, shambling piles of cardstock in four-by-six dimensions.

I started birding, in earnest, about three years ago. I kept all my field cards, but didn't really start to think about the big number - the life list - until late in 2007. The life list is just what it sounds like: every species of bird you've seen in your entire life, irrespective of nation, state, town, whether or not you were driving to work when you saw it, etc. (Of course, I also have a life mammal list, a life herp list, a life wildflower list...but I digress).

So I began the process of going through the field cards back through the late fall of 2005, when I started work as an educator for Mass Audubon's South Shore Sanctuaries. There was the thick-billed murre on Scituate Harbor that winter. Glad I got that one, as I haven't seen one since. Then there was the boreal chickadee at a feeder in Plympton early in 2006, and the fox sparrow that joined it on the ground below. I've since heard boreal chickadees in Maine, and only saw my second fox sparrow this winter at a feeder in Plymouth.

There have been the chase birds, the snowy owls on Duxbury Beach, the rufous hummingbird at a feeder in Marshfield, the Swainson's hawk in the Cumberland Farm Fields in Middleboro, the pileated woodpecker in Wompatuck State Park in Hingham. And then there was the big surprise bird, the miniscule yellow rail that appeared less than a mile from our offices in Marshfield, in a marsh just off the North River. There were birders with us that day that had been at it for sixty years and never seen one.

There are the birds of Maine - puffins, common murres, razorbills, a spruce grouse and her young - and those of Nevada, like the California quail that run the streets, and the western scrub jay that invaded my wife's grandfather's backyard. There were the various birds of Arizona on last year's Red Sox/Grand Canyon trip, the white-winged doves, cactus wrens, the gila woodpeckers, and the pyrrhuloxia. There have been countless early morning owl prowls, offshore trips for pelagic species, forays to the Finger Lakes, downeast Maine, Nantucket, Block Island, up and down Cape Cod, and into and out of backyards, wildllife sanctuaries and state and national parks.

So I totaled them all up and began to count. Ducks, geese and swans? 34 species. Grebes? 3, and all of them in Massachusetts. Hawks, kites, eagles and allies? 13 (ooh, I'll have to change that). Gulls and terns? 16. Owls? 7. Hummingbirds? 5. Woodpeckers? 8. Wood-warblers? 31.

Overall? 300.

Are you kidding me?

I recounted. After just about three years of birding, I had a round, even number. The three-century mark. 300. What were the chances?

So I went home from work that day and told my wife Michelle. I said that I had included everything, even the bananaquits, frigatebirds and pelicans we had seen on our honeymoon on Tortola in th British Virgin Islands. "Right, everything," she said. "Like that black and white bird we saw on that electrical box on the way to Lake Tahoe."

What? Wait a minute! Did I check off black-billed magpie?! No. My 301st bird came three years ago on vacation.

That all became moot a few days later. On a recent Friday morning, David Ludlow, our property manager, and someone who shares many of my lifebird sightings around New England, and I led our regular Friday Morning Birdwalk. We headed for Scituate, staked out yet another feeder - on a tip from the owner, one of our regular birding program attendees - and watched as a flock of about 100 common redpolls flew in to feed on a thistle sock. There, amongst them, were two bigger, whiter birds. Hoary redpolls. 302, baby.

I had a temporary dream of retiring with 300. I thought what better way to call it quits than with a nice, round easily remembered number. But now, I'm resigned to the fact that the listing must continue to at least 500. And now I have to think about what the celebration at that point will be. One birder I know brought a can of Mountain Dew all the way to Africa to celebrate his 3000th species.

And I also have to wonder what number 303 will be. The beauty of spending so much time outdoors exploring the nature of Massachusetts is that surprises are around every corner, under every stone, hidden in the leaves of every tree. I have no idea what number 303 will be. It may come on my upcoming trip to Nantucket, to the Finger Lakes, the White Mountains, downeast, or it may just show up at the feeder outside my window at work. But I know there will be a number 303.

February 2 - Think warm thoughts, think warm thoughts...

We've had a pretty good winter, especially if you like things cold. I've always believed in the mantra "if it's going to be this cold, it might as well snow." Cold without snow is just frustratingly bleak. Cold with snow is, in my opinion, the epitome of a New England winter. And there's no secret in the fact that I like to be outdoors enjoying the variability of the New England seasons. That definitely includes these colder days.

But there's a part of me that has been cold for long enough. I could go for a warm day here or there, one that thaws all the snow and gives at least a hint of late spring, or early summer. At least, though, I have a lot to look forward to this year, whether that warmth comes sooner or later.

In March, it'll be cold when we visit Nantucket, but it'll be worth it to see the mass flights of long-tailed ducks. Last year our Nantucket visit scored the first belted kingfisher and great egret seen on the island during the calendar year. We also tracked and found an Eurasian wigeon, part of the fun of three days on "the rock." It'll be much warmer in late April when we had for Sapsucker Woods and the birds of the Cayuga Lake area, and even warmer in May when I head down to Wilmington, North Carolina and Pensacola, Florida on maritime historian business. In June, things will be just about perfect when we head for the White Mountains to search for breeding Bicknell's thrushes. I know that downeast Maine will be ideal in July when we go for puffins on Machias Seal Island, my third trip in three years. And if last year's weather pattern holds for this year's trip to Block Island in September, well, that should be meteorologically delightful as well.

So there are warm thoughts ahead. In the meantime, we continue to seek wildlife in the cold of New England. Last Friday, January 25, we located a bald eagle on Great Herring Pond in Plymouth, and then headed for Scusset Beach Reservation to find a morphing northern harrier, a young male that was both splotchy gray and brown. Speaking of kingfishers, we found one there as well, the first one on our 2008 list. The beach also held horned larks, tree and savannah sparrows, including one of the "Ipswich" family.

While friends headed north for a second consecutive Sunday to miss the slaty-backed ghull, I did a half an hour in studio with Ray Brown on WATD 95.9 FM's Talkin' Birds to hype our Focus on Feeders event, which is taking place right now in the high winds that have followed last night's rain storm into the region. Looking out the window at our feeders here at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary, we've got a big fat zero going on.

Yesterday, we decided to stay local in our weekly search for avian species. The Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary was alive with birds of prey, with as many as five rough-legged hawks, in both light and dark morphs, visible from Fox Hill at any moment. American tree sparrows have become regular winter residents in the treeline out near the hill, and our young northern shrike continues to be very visible atop the shrubs of the Piggery Loop. Two golden-crowned kinglets surprised us while we were looking for long-eared owls, which again have proven quite elusive for our Friday morning gang.

Twice in twenty-four hours we've visited Duxbury Beach. Yesterday's trip turned up an Ipswich savannah sparrow and a black guillemot. Today's brought a red-throated loon, a close Cooper's hawk and a flock of snow buntings. Neither trip brought what we had hoped for: snowy and short-eared owls. Like I said off the top, it can be frustrating: if it's going to be this cold, there might as well be snowies. No such luck.

Punxatawney Phil will have his say today, as will Mrs. G of our Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln. I get the feeling that we're in for more cold, but I know it can't last forever. That's only happened once in Massachusetts history, in a year known as eighteen-hundred-and-frozen-to-death, during which ships were ice-locked in Boston Harbor in May and June. Either way, I can think warm thoughts, and know that this year is going to be one filled with new sights, new sightings and plenty of days where I'm paid to be doing what I love - wandering trails under the sunshine and experiencing the wonder of the nature of Massachusetts and the northeast states.

Real World Time-out

Something inspiring has happened in my life, or, I should say, "around" my life, and it's something I just have to write about.

Last week, on Thursday, August 30, at 7:45 a.m., I was 4 minutes away from finishing a one-hour session on the treadmill at Planet Fitness in Weymouth. It was only my fourth day back since March, after I suffered a concussion that to this day still affects me in minor ways. I'd been feeling good, and thought the time was right to get back to the gym.

At that moment, I heard a crash. I looked around, but couldn't see anything wrong. Occasionally someone slips on a treadmill and pops right back up, more embarrassed than anything else. But this time a woman was waving from a treadmill well across the room, pointing at something. I stopped the treadmill and started to move quickly to where she was pointing.

As I turned the corner to a row of elliptical machines, a man stood up - someone I'd seen in the gym dozens of times, but had never met - stood up and looked at me through hazy eyes, breathing very heavily. He rested his head on his left arm on the machine, and then went down in a full-body collapse. His head lolled back, his left pupil was dilated, and he was breathing so heavily it sounded like he was snoring. Worse yet, he was jammed in what looked like a very uncomfortable position between two of the machines.

Linda Natale, the woman who had been waving, met me there as he fell. She reached for his throat to help open his airway and called for someone to grab a defibrillator. Paul Basile, the man in charge of the gym that morning, did so as he rushed over to the scene. Linda called for others to move the machines out of the way so they'd have room to perform CPR. I - and several others - did just that. I reached under the man's head so it wouldn't bounce off the floor when the machines were moved, perhaps a sensitivity reaction to having my own head smash off the gym floor back in March. Paul called for someone to call 911, and the rest of us then moved to clearing a pathway through the machines for a gurney to move through. Someone also opened the emergency exit door to allow the paramedics ease of access to the scene.

Paul, a retired firefighter, and Linda, an off-duty nurse, began two-person CPR, as the rest of us stood by helplessly, wanting to help. They called for the defibrillator to be applied and one of the gym patrons grabbed it. "I can't open it!" he said in a moment of panic, his hands shaking from the rush of adrenaline. I reached for it, found the tab that had to be removed, and opened the package containing the pads. I handed them to him, and he followed the instructions and placed the pads on the victim's chest.

By now, with Paul pumping on his chest and Linda breathing into the breatuhing tube placed in his mouth, the man seemed to be lost. He had turned grayish-green, his breathing had slowed and stopped, and the man who had placed the defibrillator pads on his chest could not find a pulse. Linda would say later that at that point, he was clinically dead.

But they kept working, as a dozen of us watched, ready to cover any detail called for by Paul or Linda. The defibrillator failed to deliver a shock on the first attempt, but a second attempt provided one. Minutes that seemed like an hour crept by, and when the sirens sounded in the distance, I told Paul and Linda that the ambulance was on its way. They kept working, and soon Linda announced that his breathing was coming back. The paramedics moved in and took over the scene. They told Paul and Linda to keep on doing what they were doing, as they placed their own defibrillator on his chest. Moments later, they announced they had a pulse, and told Paul and Linda they were clear to move back from the victim. They shocked his heart back into normal rhythm and began to work him onto a stretcher. When he was ready to go, I joined Paul and the paramedics in lifting the stretcher onto the gurney.

The staff scrambled to find out what his name was. Paul had it in his head, but was having trouble recalling it. That's the odd thing about the gym. You know so many people by face, but so few by name.  By the time the paramedics reached the door, the staff had come up with what they thought was his name, and off to the hospital he went. As soon, as they were gone, I hit the showers. Someone asked in the locker room if anybody knew what had gone on "on the floor," and I told the story. "What a way for that poor guy to start the day," one man said.

I walked back out and shook Paul's hand, simply saying "Good job." Linda was leaving at that moment as well, heading straight to work at South Shore Hospital. She promised she would update Paul on the man's condition. I asked her if it would be okay if the press contacted her.

On the way to work (I was on my way to Duxbury Beach for a birding trip) I called the Patriot Ledger and spoke to reporter Sue Scheible.  She got a hold of Linda and had a brief story in the paper that afternoon. She followed up the next day witha  longer piece. I also called Ed Baker at the Weymouth News, and he picked up the ball and ran with it.

For various reasons - including a yellowjacket attack on Friday, an early morning trip to Cuttyhunk on Sunday, etc. - I didn't get back to the gym until this morning, Thursday, September 6. I walked in and Paul shook my hand at the desk, thanking me for calling the story into the press. He asked me the same question I was going to ask him: "Have you heard anything?" Neither of us had heard any news of the victim since that day.

I was just about done with a 45-minute treadmill session, at 7:45 a.m., when the door to the gym opened. There he was, our heart attack victim, standing straight and tall, alive and well. Paul sprung out from behind the desk and gave him a big hug. He walked back outside and came back with a group of people, including his mother and father. I couldn't suppress my smile.  It had to be a mile wide, and yes, there were tears in my eyes. I hit the showers.

When I came back out, the group was still standing there. As I did, another employee came in with a copy of the Weymouth News, handing it to Paul.  "Have you seen this yet?" she asked. 

"This is the guy right here!" Paul said, pointing to our friend.

"I'm here to sign autographs," he joked.

I snuck past to get out the door to get to work, looking back at Paul to give him a thumbs-up.

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...