Our rings, made for us by Cynthia Corio-Poli.
Today we leave for our ten day wedding celebration trip, during which time we drive first to Rhode Island and then to Ontario to celebrate our May wedding with our respective families. We’ll be offline for most of that time, as we eat hummus, drink rosé, and take a day in Niagara to ride the Maid of the Mist.
See you in August!
I spent most of this past week visiting family in the hospital on Western’s campus in London (Ontario). While there, I took the opportunity to walk along the Thames and check out the breeding birds. Many were familiar — Yellow Warblers, House Wrens, Grackles, Robins, Chipping Sparrows, Catbirds, and a Great Blue Heron — but we were lucky and persistent enough to see a few new ones. On the second day of our afternoon walks, we tracked a pair of Great Crested Flycatchers along the path; they were making plenty of noise, but the gray light made identification difficult at first. Once we got a good look at the dark crest, wing stripes, and yellow belly things were a lot easier. We also spent what seemed like an ungodly amount of time craning upwards at what we eventually resolved was a male American Redstart. He landed on a perch near us long enough to get a good look, even turning around several times to display his plumage from all angles as if he despaired of us ever identifying him on our own.
The next day we returned hoping to get a repeat performance, but they never reappeared. We did spot the nests of several different birds — one complete with babies — and located an Eastern Wood Peewee on the way back along the trail as well as a male Baltimore Oriole hanging out above a squawking juvenile hawk, completely unperturbed. The peewee, with its light yellow chest, was quite fun to watch flying out after bugs, and the oriole was a nice first sighting for my partner. We didn’t return the next day; temperatures hit 90F and that was just a bit much to be tromping through the woods at the height of the afternoon. Nonetheless, every new bird, however common, is a nice addition to the lifelist and I’m pleased to have seen some of the woodland species.
In addition to the birds, I was pleased to come across numerous toads hopping into the shady underbrush, most likely a combination of American and Fowler’s. We also spotted enormous soft-shelled turtles — dark brown shells, light limbs, pointy up-turned noses — which were likely Eastern Softshells (judging from the maps in my Peterson’s guide, which I still haven’t learned to take with me on these trips).
The next task is to update my records to reflect all of these new sightings, a task which is suited to 90+ degree weather!
Rhubarb Ginger Galette, round two.
We celebrated Memorial Day by attending a party at ‘our’ farm: Even’ Star Organic Farm, where we’re members of the CSA. We’d had a fun time at the autumn party and enjoyed the drive down, which included stopping on the way for pumpkins and honey at a farm stand in Dunkirk. This time we drove straight through, and arrived for a gorgeous afternoon.
Having taken the farm tour last autumn, we opted for eating the delicious food, drinking the tasty Weiss beer, and lounging around. My contribution to the desserts was a Rhubarb Ginger Galette with a half-whole-wheat crust; it was meant to be all whole wheat, but I mistook the bags of flour and dumped the remaining white flour into the bin by mistake. I was glad that I had planned to make and bring two galettes, as that meant I already had a backup plan in place when the first one wasn’t ready for prime time: I forgot to strain out the excess liquid from the fruit and inadvertently omitted the butter that would have thickened the filling, which combined with a small tear in the crust to create a gooey puddle around one half of the pan. This first round also helped make clear that the galette needed to cool on the sheet; once we’d let it cool that way overnight it slid off onto a board without a problem. Probably the French have some large flat galette-removing spatula-type implement, but I certainly don’t.
Having an afternoon party meant no bonfire, but it did mean that we could explore the woods a bit more. Once we’d eaten, we trooped off in search of new birds. As promised, we sighted several Indigo Buntings in the fallow fields near the house. Buntings, like bluebirds, are common in the right habitat in this region, but I’d yet to see one. I still haven’t gotten over the surprise of seeing such blue birds, so it was a thrill to see them popping up over the grasses. On the drive in we’d seen a true Black Vulture in a group that was devouring something on the grassy median of the road. It was unmistakable with its deep black plumage, gray face and white beak, and it was a thrill to get such a good look at it on the ground after years of peering into the skies hoping not to see the flash of red on the faces of what always turned out to be Turkey Vultures. In addition to those long sought after life birds, we lucked out and spotted a mature Bald Eagle circling over the treeline. It was only the second time I’ve seen an eagle in adult plumage, and the first for my partner, so that was a great treat. No trip to a farm is complete for me without sighting a few amphibians, and the best part of the day was seeing a juvenile salamander that the kids had collected from the stream. The frogs and tadpoles were lovely, of course, but the little guy with gills still on was particularly nice.
On the way back home we stopped to check on Solomon’s Island Winery, which is quite small and run by a couple basically out of their home. The property is smaller than my family’s blueberry farm, which means that it would be virtually impossible for them to grow their own grapes. The wines were largely low alcohol fruit-flavored varieties—coolers in a bottle seem to be a popular item in Maryland—with only a couple of serious labels. The Meritage was decent and tasted like a Bordeaux, as advertised. The Icewine was also a fine dessert wine; we bought a bottle, and it made me regret not tasting the Eisling when we were at Boordy Vineyards earlier in the weekend. Overall, though, I would recommend sticking with wines by actual vineyards, from regions where the terrain is more suitable to growing grapes.
Having fulfilled our farm-related duties for the season—sent in our check, attended the party—we now sit back and let the food come to us. Not too shabby!
This week we got up early on Saturday to travel to Delaware for the Migratory Bird Festival at Bombay Hook. Our goal was to see new shorebirds, and we were successful, even with the high water remaining from last week’s storms. After getting up at 4:30am, we were on the road at 5:20am. This was the first time I’d gotten on the road before dawn in order to see birds, another small milestone in the evolution of my birding hobby. Most organized birding events start at such ungodly hours, so I expect I’ll be doing more of that in the future. The first time around, though, I was grateful to not have to drive myself or interact with strangers before my morning coffee.
The drive was mostly uneventful; the weather was clear and we made good time. On the Bay Bridge I made the mistake of looking out at the water with binoculars: I’ve never gotten nauseous so quickly in my entire life. The remaining hour drive with the windows down restored me mostly to normal, but I now understand the warnings about going on pelagic birding tours. At the refuge we doused ourselves from head to toe in DEET and gathered outside the visitors’ center for our boat ride through the salt marsh (the reason we’d planned to arrive so early). The ride was fun, although it didn’t yield as many bird sightings as we’d hoped as a result of the recent flooding. We heard the distinctive Clapper Rail in the grasses, flushed a Spotted Sandpiper, which then made its jerky-winged way down the channel in front of us for a fair stretch, and saw groups of Dowitchers and smaller birds winging their way overhead. The small number of birds was less of a disappointment than losing my hat to the wind and water; I was able to replace it with a new one from the gift shop, but it won’t be the same as my old smiling-girl-on-a-bike one that I’d had since doing the AIDS ride five years ago.
After the boat ride, the new hat, an early lunch, and the receipt of a free native Summersweet cutting for our home garden, we set out to bird the auto tour. As hoped, we soon discovered shorebirds aplenty, almost all of them new. At the first pond, we came across the flock of American Avocets, beautiful large graceful birds. They flew off before we could get a close look at them, however we saw them in flight several times through the afternoon and caught up with them at a later point on the tour. It took us a while to get into the habit of seeing the smaller brown birds, but eventually we got better: we would simply scan the landscape two or three times until their shapes jumped out at us from the same patches of reeds we’d previously passed over, much like those brain teasing posters at the mall. In this way we were able to identify the enormous flocks of Semipalmated Sandpipers and Black-bellied Plovers that were flying in and landing in large clusters as the tide rose in the outer parts of the refuge. In with this group was a single Semipalmated Plover; near but not intermingled we tracked a small group of Least Sandpipers and a couple of beautiful light gray Baird’s Sandpipers foraging along the water’s edge.
Once we’d had our fill of the refuge we decided to try our luck at the beaches down the coast a bit. Because Bombay Hook is predominantly salt marsh, it’s hard to spot those birds that don’t like to travel inland. We were hoping to get a look at some of the legendary long-distance migrants that stopped at this stretch of shore to gorge on horseshoe crab eggs before continuing north. Our first two attempts to make it to a beach ended in ‘road closed’ signs, an artifact of the earlier flooding. Pickering Beach Road was open, though, and we headed to the beach, dutifully following the marked public access route. On the beach, serendipity took over: we followed a large shorebird down the beach to the right, successfully identifying it as a Willet before it flew off. It led us to a stretch of sand that looked out onto what appeared to be a heap of old tires; I eventually concluded that it must have been a purposefully created outcrop designed to make up for the lack of large rocks along that part of the shore. At first glance the tires yielded only a single enormous gull, which neither my partner nor I found worthy of comment. Finding nothing else of interest on the beach to train the binoculars on, we both returned to the large gull only to discover that the tires were completely covered with medium-sized shorebirds after all: the very birds we’d traveled to the beach to try to see! A group of twenty or thirty Ruddy Turnstones were hanging out there — resting, no doubt, after their journey from South America — and a single pair of Red Knots was keeping us company. The decent size of the birds in combination with their distinctive markings — it’s hard to confuse the rusty back and stark head pattern of the Ruddy Turnstone or the salmon and gray combination of the Red Knot — allowed us to identify them conclusively, even with our minimalist binoculars.
The sighting of these two birds was the perfect end to the day, allowing us to return home on a high note of success rather than continuing to head down the shore getting ever more tired and frustrated. I was proud of myself for sighting seven new life birds, most of them painstakingly identified by the two of us without outside assistance. And, I have another free plant for the garden!
This week I splurged and took the Zipcar to the shore to see the wintering waterfowl before they head back to my homeland for the summer (don’t get me started on the Flexcar buyout and how the new carlords are Teh Suck). This year I’ve decided to take the Go Where The Birds Are approach to seeing new species, at least in a low-effort general sort of way. I didn’t actually catch the rare White-winged Crossbill when it was hanging around locally, due to timing and lack of information, so a bird-chaser I most definitely am not.
That being said, I was eager to see the Tundra Swans on their winter grounds around the Chesapeake Bay, and I was not disappointed. As promised by the volunteer with whom I spoke on the phone, the swans were hanging about en masse on both sides of the bridge to the island. I had planned my trip to Eastern Neck Wildlife Refuge for Wednesday, figuring that the previous night of bad thunderstorms would have grounded other early migrators. Sure enough, I passed an entire field of resting Snow Geese just a few miles up the road inland. They were crowded around a farm pond, and I stopped to car to tromp over and get a closer look. Winds that day were over 20 mph, and I found myself laughing like a crazy person as I hoofed it through mud and over corncobs to look at some birds. I have no doubt the geese thought I was crazy as well, but they marked my first life bird of the day and I didn’t care. Just after the geese, I caught my first sight of a Bald Eagle, white tail splayed and yellow talons out, hovering over a field and dropping in for the kill. Those are some scary big birds! I had barely recovered from the shock of such a close-up view of the eagle when I spotted a Bobwhite, another bird I’d never seen before, nosing around in front of the hedgerow on the other side of the road. At this point I was being completely tailgated and passed, as it was the country and I was only going about 5 miles over the speed limit due to all the bird gawking, so I didn’t try to pull over and go back for a closer look.
Having sighted three new life birds before even getting to the refuge, and getting treated to all kinds of swans at the entrance, I wasn’t too unhappy to not see any other new birds on the trails. There were Buffleheads and Ring-necked Ducks out in the Bay, Canada Geese, Red-winged Blackbirds, Mallards and a Great Blue Heron along the river, and I’d seen Greater Black-backed Gulls and Ruddy Ducks at the marina where I’d ended up when I missed the last turn. I did have several nice second-sightings, though: a Horned Lark near the visitors’ center, a pair of Eastern Bluebirds on the wires along the main road, and another Bald Eagle hanging out on a utility pole across the water from the boardwalk. It was a good day for hunting; I saw loads of Turkey Vultures and two other hawks, a Red-tailed Hawk over one of the fields and a Cooper’s Hawk at the first house up the road on the mainland. The eagle was pointed out to me by an older guy who seemed to be making a sweep and looking for anything unusual. He also tipped me off to a few Greater Scaup hanging out in with the swans, and suggested that I head over to the Bombay Hook refuge if I wanted to see pintails and other wintering ducks.
Since I had the car for the day, I decided to make the drive over to the shore and see what I could see. After an uneventful drive, I was greeted at the edge of the refuge by another enormous flock of Snow Geese; I could see how they could be causing damage to the terrain. I was put in mind of the Sandhill Cranes at Jasper Pulaski, or the field of godwits we saw at the Wexford Slobs. Just before the gates I spotted a female American Kestrel on the telephone wires, another bird I’d only seen once before, and that from a car on the highway. The markings are quite distinctive, though, and the male had been easily identifiable even at a distance while moving. I took those sightings as a good omen and was not disappointed. After a decent number of Canada Geese, and the pleasant surprise of more Tundra Swans, the first ducks I saw were Northern Pintails. They are elegant birds, with their tufts and markings and pert tails. In the next more shallow area I was rewarded with Northern Shovelers, another duck that figured prominently on my to-see wish list. In with the shovelers were a good number of American Wigeon, which I’d seen in Oregon but only in the air, and many American Black Ducks, also something I’d only seen in flight on the Detroit River. I also spotted a pair of what I later determined must have been Pied-billed Grebes: stumpy little ducks with thick bills that are all-over a nondescript brownish-black color and are (apparently) year-round residents. Thank you, seasonal guide to birds seen at Bombay Hook, picked up for free at the visitors’ center! On the other side of the road from these dabblers were Green-winged Teal mixed in with many more American Black Ducks, all mucking around in the mud. I got a nice look at a male Teal at the last stop on my tour, also just poking around in shallow water, but much closer to the road.
At this final stop I was rewarded with a group of another common bird new to me: a group of maybe twenty Dunlins, flying and landing and poking the mud and flying some more. They were lovely, actually, with their white (non-breeding plumage) bellies and white-edged wings in flight. At this point I also had a completely awkward interaction with a human: there was another bird-watcher with a large scope attached to the side of his car who joined me in watching the Dunlins. I went over to ask him what he thought the birds were, figuring that with such high-tech equipment he would just know and I would be saved the effort of thumbing through the bird book and trying to tell all the shorebirds apart. When I approached, I realized that the scope was a lens attached to a digital camera, so I waited while he got some shots and then asked when the birds flew away from us what he thought they were. And he said, ‘Well, they’re not Sanderlings.’ And I thought, is this guy screwing with me? Because I may be only an advanced beginner at this, but, well: Sanderlings run in the waves at the edge of the ocean eating crustaceans. And we were, as I maybe forgot to mention, in a marsh. So I thought, two can play at this game, and I said, ‘well, they’re not White-rumped Sandpipers, because they don’t have a white rumps, although they’re about the same size and those sandpipers also visit freshwater mudflats.’ I admit that I can be mean, but it’s all relative; I thought I did well not to say, ‘and they’re not storks because those are much much taller.’ Anyway, he looked really uncomfortable, so rather than just stand there awkwardly, I said, ‘well, I have the book in the car, I’ll just try to figure it out’ and then he said, ‘yes, I’ll have to look them up, too.’ At which point I realized that maybe he didn’t actually know; maybe he was also a beginner and his approach was to photograph them and look them up at home. Or maybe he wasn’t even interested in the birds per se, but only the photographs. At any rate, I felt like a bit of a heel, and was really glad I hadn’t mentioned storks. Back in the car, with the help of Sibley—I’ve become a reluctant convert from Peterson after all these years—and the seasonal guide to birds seen at Bombay Hook, I correctly identified them as Dunlins and called it a day.
I plan to update my lifelist with these recent sightings this weekend.