The one side-benefit of the President’s visit to New Orleans today is that it’s kept me from staring at CNN all day. I can’t stand the sight of the man. I don’t want my blood to boil any more than it already has regarding our impotent response to the disaster in the Gulf.
Instead I went on a birding break. Running errands downtown, I thought, if the bridge is clear, I’ll head over to Marymoor and look for the Buff-breasted Sandpiper. Which is how I ended up in soccer field Lot B next to two tiny women staring at a bird gleaning insects in the grass on the edge of a gravel parking area.
Buff-breasteds are a mild rarity on the West Coast. A few show up every year, generally on the outer coast, but this was a first King County record. I hadn’t seen one in twenty years, and that was two thousand miles to the north on their breeding territory in the Arctic.
I was a volunteer for the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, part of a tundra bird study. Amid the exotic avifauna of the tundra—Semipalmated and Pectoral Sandpipers, Long-tailed Jaegers, Snowy and Short-eared Owls--the Buff-breasted Sandpiper was a queer mystery bird. Its build is pigeonlike, but with an erect and regal bearing. I’ve never heard one make a noise, but on the tundra the males were conspicuous in their breeding dance, or more accurately, their breeding tai chi pose. They stood motionless with wings outstretched, in a small lek, two or three males occupying a territory between our tent and the Arctic Ocean, a half mile distant. I found one of the nests, hidden in the dense, low tundra grass, and a clutch of chicks less than a day old huddled together in the soft depression.
Seeing birds is like a mnemonic to my life, and seeing this bird in a gravel parking lot, a world and half a lifetime removed, took me back to the sights and sensations of a rare and precious place.
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