Orange-Crowned Warbler

Common Murres on the Water, Kittiwakes on Gull Rock

Orange Crowned Warbler--Photo by Peter Schoenberger

A week ago I had never seen or heard an Orange-crowned Warbler. They pass through the Hudson Valley where I live during their migration, but I have never had a chance to see and admire one. They are not a warbler that would command the most attention. They are yellow, a dusty yellow, with few other defining features. The orange crowned part is pretty subtle. And the song is a bit raggedy, not one of the magnificent warbler songs.
Turns out these little birds are everywhere in Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. And after being thrilled at seeing them a week ago, I've now started to ignore them. That happened too fast.
Excess always makes us dull to something. Too much good food, too many beautiful sunsets, too many spectacular views of big, snow-covered mountains--even the best things push our attention elsewhere. But I'd like to resist that in praise of the orange crowned warbler and other birds we've seen a lot of here in Alaska (and the ridiculously beautiful views). Like the White-Crowned Sparrow, with its striking helmet and raspy song. Or the hundreds--perhaps thousands--of common Murres and Kittiwakes seen off of Homer while on a boat ride yesterday. A local birder took us out in his tin boat, circling Gull Island, where the Murres bobbed in the water, their beautiful black backs shining in the almost-sun (after days of rain). How could I ever tire of a Common Murre? He then took us into some little coves where we spied a few Marbled Murrelets, and some mountain goats high on a green hillside. The Murrelets and the goats--much less common, but no more special than the Orange-crowned warbler or Common Murres.

Wandering Tattler

View from Potter Marsh

Pine Grosbeak--photo by Peter Schoenberger

Before leaving for Alaska I set my sights on a few special birds: the Bristle-thighed Curlew and the Bluethroat in particular. But the bird I really wanted to see is called a Wandering Tattler. The Tattler is not a particularly beautiful bird or special looking bird. It is gray overall, with short yellow legs. It falls into the sandpiper family, that cluster of birds that are often maddening to identify. And it's not rare--certainly not as rare as the Curlew. And yet that bird took my imagination for one reason: its name. Wandering Tattler. Say it a few times and you'll feel giddy.
Our second day in Alaska we woke in Hope, just south of Anchorage, to rain and gray skies. We piled on layers--long johns, pants, rain pants; sweaters, down jackets, hats, gloves, rain parkas--and headed south toward Seward. The roads at five in the morning were empty. Five because we were still on East Coast time. Both Peter and Mark had gotten up at 3:30 to wander the woods near our rented cabin to look for owls (no luck). We pulled over at Summit Lake and there, squatting in the rain, was a Wandering Tattler. Now when I imagined seeing this bird the sky was blue, the views good, the feelings of euphoria deep. What I felt standing there in that pull out, the slow rumble of an RV parked nearby, was cold. Cold and a little tired.
Like many birding trips the best birds so far have been mammals: black bear, some with cubs, a moose at the end of a field near Potter Marsh, a porcupine that climbed into a tree and peered over at us, a full bodied coyote that we for a moment thought a wolf, and a mountain goat. The goat is perhaps the most miraculous of our sightings. As we sped along in our van at 65 miles an hour Mark (DeDea) asked Kyla (Haber) if she would stop. He pointed to a white spot on a steep hillside. Once he had a scope on it I could see the shaggy legs and bulky body of the goat. But that he was able to locate that goat was a gift to us all.
OK, the birds too have been wonderful, from the Hudsonian Godwit seen in a pond in Anchorage to the Pine Grosbeak we found by pulling over looking for another bird, to the Golden Crowned Sparrow seen on Palmer Road above Hope. We walked that dirt road lined with birch and spruce for four hours yesterday hoping to arrive in Ptarmigan country (no Ptarmigan, sadly, yet). En route Kyla found us a Spruce Grouse, a bird Peter has spent many hours trying to locate. There it sat in a tree, its dark red eyebrow visible as it remained motionless. The smell of the spruce forrest is always crisp, invigorating. We crossed snow, saw a bear galumphing on the hill above us (far up), and the sun beat down beautifully. On our return we saw a striking yellow bird I had never seen before: a Townsend's Warbler. It flew from tree to tree while we admired its black throat and mask against the brilliant yellow.
As we walked a beautiful, odd noise rose from the woods. It was a sound I had never heard before, which I have now come to associate with the forrest of Alaska: the Varied Thrush.
Thrush, especially the Veery, Wood Thrush and Hermit Thrush to me are the sounds of an Eastern woods. The sounds that they make--flute-like and a bit haunting--are beautiful, melancholic or romantic, depending on your mood. Here, the sound that this northern Thrush makes is also haunting, but in a different way. It sings a note, then another; last night one seemed to be singing a scale. But the notes are not pure, or flute like. "It's like amplifier feedback," Peter suggested. "It's like a bug," Kyla said. "It's like wind through metal," Mark offered. "But the song is indifferent." That was the quality I was trying to identify. Most birds sing to establish territory or to find a mate--there's boldness and sex lacing those calls. This bird seemed to be putting out a sound for other, more mysterious, reasons.
The Varied Thrush is a beautiful bird, with an orange throat and belly with a black bib. Imagine a finer American Robin with orange on the wings. This is what I love about travel: I never could have left on this trip imagining I would love the sound of a Varied Thrush, the striking yellow of a Townsend's Warbler, or the sight of a Mountain Goat high on a hillside. And I will still always love saying Wandering Tattler.

Goodbyes

This is the week of goodbyes. Over the course of the next three days I will be saying goodbye to the seniors graduating from Bard College. Tomorrow marks the first goodbye, with the baccalaureat ceremony, followed by the always-rowdy senior dinner. Friday night at the President's dinner we say farewell in a more sedate manner. What follows the dinner is my favorite part of graduation, the senior concert. The American Symphony Orchestra performs pieces composed by graduating seniors. The music is always inspiring. To hear a work of a young composer performed by such a talented orchestra is thrilling. And then Saturday, those students march across a stage and are gone. So fast. I've watched some grow up, intellectually, emotionally, physically. The young men change more than the women, it seems, growing taller and broader in four years.

I am always a bit heartbroken at the end of graduation. On that day, a shift happens. These graduates no longer need me--to read their work, encourage them through finals, figure out a paper topic. I applaud this, of course. But it leaves a hole. And then I will wait for the next shift, that moment when they write needing a letter of recommendation for graduate school. They write to tell me of jobs or marriages, of children born. They write to tell me they are writing.

To add to the leavings, I too am leaving, off to Alaska for a month. My own departure for such a stretch of time has its own sense of loss. Of course I'm thrilled to be off to this big place I have visited before. I have never been disappointed with my adventures in Alaska. But for a stretch of a month, I will be off the river. This has created in me a sense of quiet desperation. I've been out in my boat as much as I can, as if I can absorb the river into my body and take it with me. 

I've come to need the river, and the egotistical side of this is that I sense the river needs me as well. It doesn't, of course. Recently I received an email from Riverkeeper in which they describe their captain, who is also my good friend, John Lipscomb, as the eyes and ears of the river. He keeps a watch on the river, reporting back what he finds, taking action against polluters and illegal developers. But I really see him as the voice of the river, speaking for what the river needs. The river does need him. Perhaps the river does need all of us.

This morning, under a half-blue sky, I shoved north from the Tivoli launch, headed toward the Saugerties Lighthouse. I dipped into the bay south of the lighthouse, the same bay that will be clogged with water chestnut and spatterdock by the time I return from Alaska. I was about twenty feet away from shoreline when I spotted the eagle, perched low in a snag. It sat there as I bobbed in the water; it preened, and ignored me. Of all the birds on the river, this is the one that people are most excited to see. "See any eagles?" is the first question I get when people see my binoculars. What most people don't understand is that the eagle is an obvious bird; birders are looking for smaller, more elusive birds. And yet--seeing an eagle, especially so close, remains a remarkable thing.  I thought of all of the eagles I will see in Alaska. My memory is that they are everywhere, so common you stop paying attention to them. I'll hold onto this image of my Hudson River eagle, part of the success of restoring this river. Restored because people need this river but the river needs us as well to care for the shad and sturgeon, the eels and eagles. 

Beautiful, Until it is Not

looking north; the barge is on the horizon!When I talk about kayaking on the Hudson I am always sure to add a cautionary note: look out for the big boats. Tankers, barges pushed by tugs, and container ships all ply the waters of the Hudson. The river is theirs, and it’s important to stay out of the way: boats can’t brake or swerve. They need to stick in the limited shipping channel. I have heard that the captains of these big boats refer to kayakers as speed bumps; most of the time they don’t see us at all.

It would seem that staying out of the way of a big boat would be easy. They take up a lot of room; they are visible. But it is not that simple. This morning as I slipped my boat into the water at the Tivoli landing, the water was lightly feathered.  At 41 degrees, I urged the sun and its promised warmth as it peaked over the eastern shoreline. A faint rumble emerged from the north. I scanned the river and saw nothing. But the noise wasn’t going away. It had to be a boat. I looked more closely. There, on the horizon, was a double barge, pushed by a tug. It was enormous. And it was almost invisible, thanks to my angle, the angle of the sun, the height of the barge. It all worked against me. I hugged the shore until it chugged past, then I made a dash for the western shore.

one way to feel very small On the western shore I was looking for sunshine and ducks. Ducks tucked in near shore south of the Long Pier. The tide was out and the water so shallow my paddles grazed the muddy bottom. I couldn’t get in close enough to identify any of the ducks, just dots on a shoreline. And the sun hid behind thick white clouds, a light breeze pushing me from the north. I wished I had brought my gloves (which I left sitting on shore to be sucked out with the tide).

I looped back across the river cutting across the rocky prow of Magdalen Island. The North Bay sucked me in. A calm draped my shoulders, as I pushed back in my seat, my feet still a bit damp and cool from getting into my boat. The energy of the big river left me as I drifted with the incoming tide. I put my binoculars to my eyes and scanned the mudflats, exposed at low tide. I  landed on the foraging movement two compact shorebirds, which I realized were Common Snipe. Why are they called Common? There is nothing common about a Snipe. Their long bills dwarf their pint sized bodies. And it’s a rare event to see one so clearly, the streaked back and short legs. Usually they skulk in tall grasses and take flight in a blur. Just as these two did, wheeling into the air.

I stroked into the bay, Common Mergansers taking flight in objection to my presence. Again: why Common? They are big ducks, with those great white bodies, tufted heads, long bills. Yes, common in that they are present, and so perhaps not so special to see. But once seen, they are remarkable birds. Perhaps we should get rid of “Common” attached to any bird. I count fifteen “Common” birds including the Common Murre, Common Pauraque, and Common Poorwill,  three birds I have never seen. Let’s change them to Special. The Special Raven and the Special Grackle, like the ones feeding like crazy at my feeder this morning.

The calm of the North BayA very special Pied-billed Grebe foraged in front of me. Not wanting to disturb the little bird, I turned around, heading back toward home, toward mid-term grades.

The bay before the railroad tracks let me know I was in for a ride. Wavelets formed, ruffling what is almost always a placid body of water. The wind of last night had awakened, and I could see the trees on Magdalen Island bending in the breeze. How fast the river changes. What had been a gentle morning was now a windy challenge.

I steeled myself for getting under the railroad bridge, bracing my legs and shoveling the water with determination. Once on the river the wind hit me. It took my boat broadside and pushed me south before I came around and pointed my nose north.  My hands, which had been cold, now were really cold. My body was cold. I stroked into the wind, the waves sloshing over my boat.

I like wind. But I don’t like wind when I am cold, when the water is cold, when the wind is moving one way and the current another, forming frothy white caps. The wind made this big river appear enormous. I thought: I am not going to make it home.

It’s a sad thought to have.

I then did the unthinkable: I rode my boat onto the rocky shoreline. I pulled it out of the water, and above the high water mark. And I walked back to my car. It was the coldest, longest mile-long walk of my life. Leaving my boat felt a kind of betrayal. As I walked, I went through all of my options. I would drive home and pick up the wheels to attach to the back of my boat and wheel the boat back to my car. No. I’d drive down the rocky path beside the tracks (no doubt illegal), then walk on shore and float the kayak north. No. I’d drive down the tracks as far as possible then paddle the boat to that point. No. I could see there was no getting back in my boat.

What I did. I drove down the side of the tracks, where people in pick up trucks drive out to fish, drink or make out at the abandoned stone dock to Sycamore Point. I gave thanks to Subaru as the gravel spit beneath my tires.  I kept on past the dock, the gravel less packed down, the passage narrower, until a large log blocked my way.

I jogged the 200 yards--which felt like 2 miles--to my boat, relieved when I saw its pink body resting on the gravel.

My boat weighs 46 pounds. This means I can carry it from my car to the water, and that I have a system to get it on the roof of my car. 46 pounds is not bad, until you have to carry it several hundred yards. Because the 46 pounds are spread out over sixteen and a half feet, it is an awkward 46 pounds. I hoisted the boat on my shoulder and looked forward. I wished I could see my car, which I had tucked to the side in the bushes that line the river, in case a train swooshed past. I could feel my shoulder begin to sag. The wind grabbed the boat and swung it away from my body. I staggered a bit, caught my foot on a rock. What are you doing out here? I hefted the boat more securely on my shoulder, and marched on. Keeping moving, I told myself. My hands were freezing. Don’t stop. My shoulder ached. Don’t put the boat down. I knew if I put it down, I wouldn’t pick it up again.  Just keep walking, keep walking.