puzzlers

Warm, sunny, humid, dewy, cloudless, windless morning that was spectacularly quiet. The Swallows, Purple Martins and Red-winged Blackbirds that livened up the summer marsh are gone with only Crows and Song Sparrows holding the fort. The few birds seen were puzzlers. A medium-sized accipter was either a female Sharp-shinned or a male Cooper's. An Empidonax flycatcher working the storm-damaged canopy near the head of the marsh was remarkably high in the trees for an empid (perhaps there were more insects to catch up there as the sun hit the treetops). This was a well-marked bird with wing-bars, a twitching tail and a lozenge or tear-shaped eye-ring. If we rule out the possibility of a stray Western-type, this would have to have been either a Least or a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher which, at a distance, can look quite similar (the yellow belly being often hard to see and not particularly yellow on some birds). Finally, there was a big sparrowy bird in the dense shrubbery at the bend of the old right-of-way, a bird that showed something of a crest, a streaked breast and pinkish legs. This was a real show stopper; my best guess would be a young Eastern Towhee.

I got a surprising number of responses to my Beach Plum blog including several recipes -- all variations on a theme. Gigi Spates actually found a Cherry Bounce recipe in Martha Washington's diary that used 'cognac' (whatever that was) instead of rum or vodka and added cinnamon and nutmeg (not my choice). Another recipe (sent in by two different readers!) called for vodka and rock candy (instead of rum and sugar) with Beach Plums in a quart jar but was essentially the same concoction. All the recipes call for shaking things up regularly (this being the source of another folk etymology for the name 'bounce') with the resulting liquor deemed ready at Thanksgiving or (our preference) Christmas. We filled up a gallon jug with Beach Plums, dark rum and some sugar so we should have a very merry Christmas indeed!

Eric Salzman