After a long day of work, sitting in front of a laptop, annoyed by the insular experience of being wedded to its artificial light, I end the day with a birding excursion to Pine Point in Scarborough, Maine. Shorebird season is heating up and I have not seen a Western Sandpiper this year. Do I need to see it? What drives me? Is it pure selfishness or curiosity? Who knows. All I know is I like finding birds in their natural habitat, knowing they've traveled hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles to migrate from a breeding location to a non-breeding location so they can be in a safe climate. Along the way they will stop at places like Pine Point, plunging their black bills into the mud at low tide until high tide pushes them to find other shelter. But for those few hours when they are exposed to predators on the shore they will feast in the mud. Sometimes they will take a quick nap, tucking their little heads behind their necks. This is when they are most vulnerable. If you're lucky you'll be on the beach and be able to get close enough to see them with binoculars, making out each one's particular shade of grey, brown, mixed mottled, and white bodies. If you're lucky you will find one among hundreds that has a couple of streaking bright cinnamon marks on its back, and a bill that appears to be just so ever slightly longer, droopy. A head and posture comparatively larger than the Semi-palmated Sandpipers around in droves. I saw this bird today, and in that time of looking, re-affirming what I thought I was seeing in my head, I forgot the whole rest of the day. And that is priceless in the most non-commercial, this-is-a-life-worth-living sort of moment. After getting lucky enough to take a few photos, a Cooper's Hawk comes flying through, and most the birds scatter and survive. Every moment felt perfectly imperfect, exceptional, and fleeting.
