Tag Archives: gulls

Winter beach

Drove to Horseneck Beach for a long walk today. I had a desire to walk down the beach and pick up a few shells and not think about anything but sun and sand and waves. A brisk westerly breeze kept me walking quickly until I drew near to the Westport River where the beach was somewhat protected by a low rise of land to the west. I slowed down and started looking at the beach.

A different mix of shells from the beach at Fort Phoenix: Most of the clamshells appeared to be Atlantic Surf Clams, and I don’t think I saw any quahogs. (I saw one clammer working the beach, and I would have liked to have asked her what she was raking in, but she was too busy.) I also found a good number of Blue Mussel (Mytilu edulis) shells, which we haven’t found at all at Fort Phoenix. I picked up two or three clamshells that I couldn’t identify; after looking at the “Marine Organisms Database” on the Web site of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole, I believe the shells are either Transverse Ark (Anadara transversa) or Blood Ark Clam (Anadara ovalis), both of genus Anadara. It must be a somewhat different ecosystem along Horseneck Beach.

At one point, I saw a Great Black-backed Gull floating on the sea with something quite large in its mouth. I looked through the binoculars to see what the gull was carrying. It was a sort of pinkish color; the gull had to open its bill quite wide to hold onto whatever it was, and at one point it dropped the thing into the water, but quickly snatched it up again. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was, and the gull’s eye glowed a brilliant, mysterious red in the setting sun. At last the gull flew ponderously up into the air, and I could see that it was carrying a Horseshoe Crab with the long tail dangling down. Off the gull flew, presumably to drop the crab onto something hard to break it open.

But mostly I just walked, and didn’t think of anything at all.

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For the first time in five days, I managed to take a long walk. Evening meetings and snow and early sundowns have kept my walks short.

I walked over the bridge to Pope’s Island. The water in the harbor looked black and gray, winter colors. One or two small gray-white chunks of ice floated near shore. I came around the tree next to the marina building, and saw four black-and-white ducks calmly swimming fifty feet from shore: Buffleheads, three males and a female. I’ve seen a dozen or so cautious Buffleheads nearly every time I’ve walked on Pope’s Island; usually swimming away from me as fast as they can. These four, howver, were not nearly as wary, so I stood and watched them for a while. I like the look of Buffleheads: the neat black-and-white males, the black female with her white cheek patch.

A lot more ducks were swimming at the far end of Pope’s Island: thirteen, no fourteen more Buffleheads; then another six; two dozen in all. I walked across the bridge to Fairhaven. A hundred or so pigeons who had been resting on the docks by the old Seaport Motel started up all at once, wheeled acorss the sky, and settled back down. There was another duck behind them. I headed down to the edge of the water to see what it was, cursing the fact that I had left the binoculars at home; but the duck, whatever it, was right in the sun. A Ruddy Duck? Another female Bufflehead? I couldn’t be sure.

On the other side of a little stone pier, just past a skin of ice, were still more Buffleheads, maybe another two dozen. Half a dozen Scaup were diving and feeding near them; perhaps Lesser Scaup. The sun was getting close to the New Bedford skyline, low enough now that the surface of the water looked almost creamy white in places. Clouds moving in from the west. Overhead, a thousand black specks of starlings wheeled in synchronized flight; they started up the hundreds of gray and white pigeons who wheeled counterclockwise below them.

Back across the harbor via the north side of the bridge. A gaggle of gulls sat at the Fairhaven end of the bridge: Ringbills, Great Black-backed, Herring, and Bonaparte’s Gulls. A few Canda Geese, too. The gulls and geese didn’t like the looks of me, and most of them sprung into the air, screaming and splashing and flapping, gray and white and black against the black water. One yearling gull didn’t move, hunkered down on the dark gray pebbled beach, nearly invisible until it swayed ever so slightly. The gulls and geese settled down out on the water near a pair of black-and-white ducks: not Buffleheads, but probably Common Goldeneye.

It was good to see the wild ducks in the harbor; mostly I just see gulls, starlings, and pigeons. By the time I got back, it was getting pretty dark: the city streets, shades of black and gray, warmed here and there with red brick.

Gulls

Our apartment is right in downtown New Bedford, a ten minute walk from the harbor. Needless to say, there are lots of gulls in the neighborhood. A couple of mornings ago, a group of gulls set up shop on the roof of a building near us, and had what sounded like a knock-down, drag-out, sreaming fight over something. My guess is that they were fighting over some little scrap of half-decayed fish guts. Gulls seem to love to fight over that kind of thing.

I don’t mind the gulls fighting and screaming. It adds to the character of the neighborhood. But I do mind the fact that they were doing it at 5:30 in the morning, awakening me out of a sound and blissful sleep. I also mind that the kept up screaming at each other for what seemed like half an hour.

Stupid gulls.

New Bedford

New Bedford, Mass.

Carol and I left Cambridge at about 10:30 this morning. We had to take separate cars since Carol will return to Cambridge on Sunday. She has to commute to Watertown, which could be a two-hour drive from here at rush hour, and she’s still trying to work on her next book while working full time.

I arrived here in New Bedford at about twenty past noon, twenty minutes late to pick up the key from Nancy C., who has kindly loaned us her house in downtown New Bedford until we can find our own apartment. The drive down here was bad. I had a hair-raising ride through Somerville and the Central Artery, and I learned that the driving directions you get on the Internet are pretty useless in the Boston area — in greater Boston, you don’t just need to know when to take a right and when to take a left, you need to know which lane to get into well before you have to make the turn, and you have to know that to stay on Somerville Ave. you have to take what looks like a sharp left. Of course being Boston, the drivers are insane, the roads are still a mess with the Big Dig construction, and Interstate 93 was all backed up south of the city. I sat in traffic for twenty minutes on I-93, and saw two accidents, and three cars pulled over by the State Police. It was just a nasty drive from Cambridge until traffic eased out close to New Bedford.

But at last we made it to New Bedford.

And at about one o’clock, my two sisters, Abby and Jean, my father, and Jim, Abby’s husband, arrived to spend the afternoon in New Bedford. We had lunch and walked over to the National Park visitors’ center. They wanted to see the waterfront, so we crossed the pedestrian footbridge over Route 18. Dad and my sister Jean had to stop every hundred feet to take photographs. Jean took 64 photographs yesterday. I don’t know how many Dad took. Downtown New Bedford is photogenic, with most of the houses and commercial buildings from the 19th C., and a few from the late 18th C.

“Seagulls,” said Jean, as several circled and cried overhead. “I could work in a town that has seagulls.”

We walked over to the waterfront, looking at the fishing boats tied up there, going into the Wharfinger’s Office which now houses exhibits for the National Park, and wandered over to look at the Ernestina, a wood-hulled schooner built in 1894, and originally christened the Effie M. Morrissey. She was a fishing schooner on the Grand Banks, sailed to the Arctic as an exploratory vessel, and is now a national landmark, currently being restored. As we were looking her over (as Dad and Jean were taking lots of photographs), a three-masted vessel, a barkentine, came into port and tied up just down the wharf from Ernestina. Carol being who she is, she immediately struck up a conversation with the crew, and learned they sailed from Philadelphia headed for Booth Bay Harbor, to go into drydock there. “If we stayed another half hour,” said Carol, “I would have gotten us an invitation to go on board.” She would have, too, but we had to head back to the cars, so Dad and my sisters and Jim could get back to Concord.

After we ate dinner, Carol and I went to Baker Books in Dartmouth, the town just west of New Bedford. Going to a bookstore is our usual weekend date. That we went on our usual weekend date says more than anything that we are here, we are settling in.

I’ve arrived now. The journey from Illinois is over.