The Contented Naturalist

One of the central parts of my job is opening the park every day. All of us who are on duty for a given day unlock the gates and then make our way to the Visitor Center. Once we’ve opened our offices and deactivated the alarms, we go on a walk around the ponds and the boardwalk. This is when we check in for what’s on our plate for the day, and also look for any interesting birds or other wildlife. We’re not necessarily the *first* ones out, it’s possible to enter the park via the river trail– and some of our regular birders do that so they can check things out at dawn. But we’re usually at least *one of* the first groups out.

I like watching birds go about their morning– little sparrows searching through the grass for seeds, hawks searching for those little sparrows, ducks waking up and quacking contentedly to each other. And of course the Canada geese making a ruckus about nothing at all. It’s the beginning of migration season right now, so there’s sometimes a new species that we hadn’t seen before, or perhaps it’s the last day we’ll see a different species until fall. I saw some rusty blackbirds in one of the maple trees recently. At first all I could see was a black bird, but I knew the weekly bird walk spotted some rusties a couple days before, so I took a closer look with my binoculars. The warm sunlight glowed off its face, highlighting the telltale lighter stripes, letting me know for sure I had my own rusty. Yay! Later that same walk I encountered a birder from Finland who was racking up lifers on his visit to our country. After he gleefully saw (and heard) his first-ever Fish Crow, he asked if there were any Rusty Blackbirds around. Talk about the right timing! I pointed him to the exact tree where I’d seen mine. No guarantee it would still be there, of course, but that would be a good spot to start searching.

The end of our day isn’t usually my favorite. We close the park at 4 pm, and often have to shoo out lingering (or even just-arrived) visitors. That’s awkward and uncomfortable. Usually people are good natured about it so far; I feel guilty though. Later this summer we’re planning to have the gardens open later, but that hasn’t started yet. Anyway, occasionally we do get sightings on our closing walk that makes it worthwhile though. One chilly, cloudy afternoon recently it was just me and my boss closing up. As we walked past the picnic area, we noticed a vulture picking at something on the ground. We watched it for a few minutes, but couldn’t make anything out. Then it surprised us by picking its prey/carcass up– dangling from the vulture’s beak was a turtle! I assume the turtle passed away naturally, since vultures don’t normally go for live prey. Perhaps it had wandered into the grassy field looking for a good spot to lay eggs, but something went wrong with the egglaying and it died. Anyway, I’d never seen a vulture picking at a turtle before; neither had my boss. I wish I’d had a camera, but alas I only have the memory of what I saw through my binoculars. It was pretty cool.

We’re also now bringing on more staff for the summer– seasonals and a couple interns. So starting and ending the day with the whole team out for a walk is really nice. I like birding/wildlife watching with folks who are friends as well as colleagues, and times when there aren’t many birds to be seen, we still share cameraderie and/or sympathy for each other’s struggles. That helps, knowing we’re not alone.