marsh mist and spider web dew

Up again early in time to greet the new month of June and to see (to quote a favorite Homeric simile) a rosy-fingered June dawn. No fog this morning but a rather heavy dew and mist rising above the marsh and, to a lesser degree, over the creek. The marsh mist creates a fairyland effect along the shrub edge by coating spider webs with droplets of water and making them visible in the early morning light. What is amazing is how many of them there are; they crown the top of almost every bush that frames the wetlands. And they are all alike and very distinctive: each web has a pyramidal shape outlined by the gossamer threads and they are so similar that they must all be made by the same species. In addition the path between the bushes is criss-crossed by single threads that are like delicate spider bridges across open space. These single spans must be remade every day since I break down dozens of them merely by traipsing down the trail nearly every morning (the deer also use these paths and must cause at least as much damage). And yet, the next morning, the bridge threads are all there just as before.

After seeing Phoebes every day for the first two weeks of May, I haven't seen or heard a one since. Perhaps they weren't nesting in the neighborhood after all. There was, however, a loudly vocalizing Phoebe at the top of a tree this morning. The bird had a belly washed with yellow which is supposed to indicate a young bird. A possible offspring of an early local nesting pair? Or a yearling still in a partial juvenile plumage cruising in from somewhere else and calling for a mate?

Chimney Swifts -- now just a single one or, on occasion, two -- are pretty regular visitors, usually high over the head of the marshl; there was one twittering above this morning. Swifts used to be familiar aerial sights on the East End where they actually nested in chimneys. But cool springs and the installation of automatic heating systems have smoked them out of many chimneys and they have become much less common. A few years ago, I persuaded Jim Ash, the then director of the South Fork Natural History Museum to build a fake chimney outside the main museum building to attract swifts -- a nesting pair and, perhaps, a mumuration of swifts migrating sound in late August (they overnight in chimneys and I have seen them gather in swift clouds before going to roost in a school chimney on the South Fork). But Jim tells me that no swifts have taken up his offer so far; perhaps they will yet find his furnace-safe chimney.

And, oh yes, a flock of a dozen or more flying Cedar Waxwings. In spite of my early guess that the Waxwings were pairing up, this was apparently not completely true. When not nesting, Waxwings like to flock up and this was a migrating or nomadic ensemble still on the wing.

Eric Salzman