Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

The sound of the ocean slapping the rocks of the causeway heralded the arrival of another car to the rutted parking lot. Over the sea wall, Horseneck Beach with its daredevil para-sailers danced over the distant swells while gulls dark and light swirled over the mile long spit jutting into Buzzard's Bay. Alison and I stepped out of the car and looked around. It was good to be home.* As we stood on the rocky shores of Gooseberry Neck in Westport, Massachusetts, we watched as sanderlings, scampered back and forth along the sands while being chaperoned by herring gulls. We sat on a few boulders that lead down the eastern side of the neck and watched the relay. The sanderlings would run towards the retreating surf to pick at the minute crustaceans and periwinkles that were caught in the pull of water and sand. After busily picking at the sands for only a few moments, they were chased back by the rushing waves to begin their relay again.  The gulls, being far less particula...

While on a stroll the other day, I came upon one of nature's crime scenes that one glimpses every once in a while. It was absolute carnage with the only visible signs of what the prey originally was, were by its ragged and forlorn wings and a single, severed leg. I knew instantly that I'd come across several carcasses of feral pigeons* which were strewn and shredded all over the grass near where I work. While I was examining the carcasses, a guy in a pickup pulled up and shouted, "Boy! Someone was hungry!" *I don't called them "Rock Pigeons" because they have become mutts after interbreeding with domestic birds and don't carry the traditional colors of their species any more. The only "true" ones of their kind can be found in the more wild areas of the world where their stock hasn't been corrupted by the influence of other breeds "Yeah, I guess so." I was a bit startled and hadn't noticed the truck pul...

I know most people see them as walking, swimming, and flying terrors out to steal your chips and ice cream, but I like gulls for two reasons. One reason is that their almost ubiquitous presence along our shores seems almost miraculous today because of the ways they were nearly eradicated up to 150 years ago. The adults were hunted for their feathers and wings to adorn the hats of fashionable society ladies in the mid to late 1800s, while the eggs were collected from their offshore colonies for fine diners in New York, Boston, and Pittsburgh. Thankfully the slaughter was stopped by the Audubon Society and other concerned citizens and today they are one of our most ubiquitous citizens along our shores, lakes, and beaches. The second reason I have taken a shine to them is that because of their common presence around the parking lot where I now sit (and wait for hunters to hopefully come in and allow me to survey them on their success at hunting Oldsquaws. Yeah birding community, I just we...