crowded beach in the heat

June 29, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Ethiopian Yrgacheffe
Sighting of the Day: monarch butterfly (first of the season)
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: none
Invisi-bird Status: Official: Refuge Beach: 29 pairs, 9 nests, 37 chicks/17 broods; Sandy Point: 9 pairs, 5 nests, 12 chicks/3 broods; Town Beach: 5 pairs, 3 nests, 5 chicks/2broods. Number actually seen by me: 1.

Looking South

OK, it's really most sincerely hot today. The beach was already packed with people at 8AM and they just kept coming. Questions ranged from is the tide going out or coming in to why the plovers are not nesting as close to the north boundary as they did last year.  I didn't have a whole lot of time to take photos.

Herring Gull

The plover pair I can usually see from the boundary -- and their two chicks -- were doing a good job of becoming invisible for at least the first two hours of the shift.  I finally heard the peep-lo call coming from quite a way farther south and up closer to the dunes and located one of the adults walking around. I heard another one calling but didn't see it.  There really wasn't much bird activity on the beach except for a few herring gulls keeping an eye out for visitors' food scraps or bait.

My best sighting of the day was not a bird at all. A monarch butterfly flew down off the dunes and made a low pass over the beach. My first of the season. I'd actually been thinking about monarchs because I hadn't even seen the milkweed in bloom yet, never mind monarchs or their caterpillars. It seemed a little late to me. I guess I should read my old blog posts/notebooks to see when the milkweed usually flowers and when the monarchs come around. As I was leaving for the day I did find some milkweed in bloom in one of the usual spots. The only thing that would have been more exciting would be seeing the monarch on the milkweed.

Milkweed in Bloom

chicks!

June 22, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Sumatra Mandehling
Bird of the Day: piping plover -- finally chicks!
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: strange pink thing
Invisi-bird Status: Official: Refuge: 23 chicks from 7 nests, 20 nests that haven't hatched yet, total 35 pairs; Sandy Point: 10 pairs, 7 nests, 1 brood with 4 chicks; Town Beach: 4 pairs, 2 nests, 1 brood with 4 chicks. Number actually seen by me: 4 -- pair and two chicks.
Least Tern Status: 10 nests, 10 pairs that haven't nested yet.

Looking South

Some of the nests are starting to hatch, including the one I've been watching. I spotted two chicks running around in the wrack line. It was a little difficult to spot the chicks in the wrack line when they weren't moving around.  There was just so much stuff for them to hide behind or blend in with. Watching them was the highlight of the morning.

Plenty of Camouflage, Strange Pink Thing, and Lots of Seaweed

Today's odd thing about the wrack line was the presence of so many colorful but unidentifiable trash items -- mostly plastic by the looks of them. I think that pink thing may have been a buoy of some sort, guessing from the shape, and it appeared to be made of some kind of Styrofoam-like stuff. Weird indeed.

Not a Seal

Speaking of weird, today's confusing item of flotsam was a log that was flipping around in the surf and at times looked like it was a seal poking its head up. After watching it for a few minutes, I felt confident answering the visitor's question about it with: "Nope, it's not a seal. It's a log."

rainy day

June 15, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Ethiopian Yrgacheffe
Bird of the Day: wild turkey
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: none
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge: 35 pairs, 26 active nests, 2 broods totaling 6 chicks. Number actually seen by me: zero.
Least Tern Status: 3 nests.

Mystery Bird in the Rain

It wasn't raining when I left my house but by the time I got to the refuge it was definitely raining. It didn't look like it was going to let up within the next several hours, so I decided not to do my shift. Since I was already on the refuge I drove down to the North Pool Overlook to drink my coffee and see what birds I've been missing.  There was not a whole lot of bird activity but the wild turkeys and the mourning doves seemed completely unbothered by the rain.