an early morning apparition

It gets easier and easier to get down to the marsh before the day breaks (great expression especially if you assume that it's the sun that cracks open the day). My object in getting down there is partly to see the sunrise (we can't see sunsets from where we are perched because it is blocked by a heavy tree cover). Some migration mornings, you can actually see the birds coming in before or just at first light. And there's always the chance of catching the last bit of night action -- an owl hooting in the half light or a rail calling from the marsh. Well none of that happened this morning. There were six or eight ducks that flushed up from the pond -- Mallards probably mixed with a few Black Duck to judge by the quacking. But that was it. Or at least that seemed to be it when suddenly a dozen crows appeared out of nowhere cawing and chasing a raptor over the marsh. And what a raptor! It appeared twice as big as the crows, flapping majestically away from its tormentors and then smooth sailing on flat, glider wings with wingtips extended like slightly curled like fingers. It was, of course, an EAGLE. I am not yet clever enough to distinguish one eagle from the other by silhouette (as the bird glided in front of the not-quite-yet-risen sun, all I could see was an unmistakable eagle outline) but it was, by the odds, a Bald Eagle.

Dawn, it seems, is a great time to see raptors. They probably roost somewhere at the edge of the marsh -- on the ground? in a bush? in the trees? -- and they see me before I see it. They take off and the crows or jays spot them and come in hot pursuit. This season, besides the eagle, I've seen Northern Harrier and several accipiters all by the dawn's early light.

Not much else to report: D-c Cormorant swimming at the head of the pond (where the water exits from the marsh), a kingfisher or two, a few kinglets working the bushes, White-throated Sparrows -- most of them recent arrivals -- everywhere. After an eagle, everything else seems on a somewhat lesser plane.

Oh yes, flood tide was still quite high although not as much so as in the last few days.

Eric Salzman

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