calm sea & land

Everything was extraordinarily calm on an overcast morning. The tide was coming in quickly but there was only a bit of wind. Oddly enough the wind on the ground was coming from the northest but the clouds were moving in exactly the opposite direction (southeast to northwest), a phenomenon that I have observed before. There were no swallows or martins at all (a scattered few showed up after a while) and the only sound was a complaining Osprey. An inspection of the opposite shore revealed four Osprey -- two on the nest (probably the young), one on the dead tree stump at the tip of Pine Neck and the other on a tree limb further up the creek. Both Spotted Sandpiper and Green Heron were in the marsh but the families of anxious Song Sparrows and Red-winged Blackbirds that were all over the marsh edge in past weeks were now gone or dispersed. A few terns came up the creek to try their luck: Least and Common Terns and at least one Forster's Tern. There was the usual morning flight of Rock Pigeons (Rock Doves, Feral Pigeons, call 'em what you want) and a few House Sparrows as well. I see these birds almost every morning but I usually choose to ignore them. If pigeons and city sparrows are ignorable birds, a Yellow-crowned Night Heron is not. As I made my way back to the pond at the end of my walk, I flushed one from the neck of the pond, only the second I've seen this year.

Eric Salzman