An outing to Rhode Island proves fruitful.
An amazing array of ducks is usually the star attraction on any trip to the winter coast. The last weekend of January in Rhode Island, the birds were rivaled by the rolling and pounding surf where they rode. The challenge was finding a place to shelter from the winds that drove the ocean into a froth.
We started the morning at Apponaug and Watchemocket Cove, where the wind was only a cold annoyance. The very idea of facing the brunt of the tempest, as it came across Narragansett Bay, steered us away from the usual visit to Colt State Park. Instead, we crossed over to the eastern shore of the Sakonnet River.
There, we found the expected brant geese, along with buffleheads and goldeneyes, hooded and common mergansers. There were also broad meadows where larks fed and flew, and raptors hunted. Finally we arrived at the river’s mouth, where a spit of land separated Rhode Island Sound from Buzzard’s Bay.
We could see the whitecaps on the dark waves far out from shore, but the waves that washed the beaches and the ledges were whipped into a white frosting. They hit the shore with a wild roar, crashing and grinding. Riding this maelstrom were a 1,000 feathered bodies, a raft of ducks.
These were greater scaups, a duck that usually gathers on the calmer waters of the coves, but those quieter places were now covered with ice. Their dark bodies rose and fell on the white waves like a rolling blanket. Somehow, they seemed calm and cool amidst the violence of the waves.
We circled back along the river and crossed the bridge to the island for which the state is named. The city of Newport is in the southwest corner of Rhode Island. We were headed for the opposite corner, to a wilder and more wonderful place, Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge.
This point of land is a rocky promontory covered in thickets, though connected to the mainland by low dunes and beaches. On the ocean side, the wind had turned the shallow bay to a sea of surf, avoided by birds, but a playground for two parasail riders. On the lee side, scoters and goldeneyes plied the water for fish.
We watched the black scoters, the goldeneyes, and the aptly named surf scoters. They were fine sights, but they were only a prelude to the time of twilight, when the owls rule the air. In other years these fields and thickets had been the hunting grounds of short-eared owls.
We walked the trail through the thickets with premonitions of a special owl dancing in our heads. Emerging into the meadows near the parking area, we met a mother with two young children. She told us she had just seen an owl flying across the deep grass, then diving into it 20 yards away.
We held our breath and waited for a minute that seemed to be an hour. Then the owl rose from hiding and slowly passed by, a pale specter riding on broad, deeply beating wings. It was the barn owl, a bird of the south - and the plains - and the great basins of the west - and even all over the world.
In former days, when our valley still had a few broad pastures and dairy barns, you could find this owl in southern New England towns. That was years ago, before the invasion of corn and crops. The last wild barn owl left the valley in 1982.
That thought was lost in the thrill of this moment on Sachuest, when the pale, ghostly owl wandered back and forth around us. Too soon it dropped out of sight .into the thick tall brush.
Then, beyond all hope, it rose to fly again, staring us down, wishing us out of the way with its pale, fierce face and intense black eyes. We marveled at the heart-shaped face, and the tawny golden sheen of the feathers, on its back and upper wings.
Finally, the barn owl disappeared for good, and no other night birds came out to hunt. We were left with memories of an apparition that haunted our dinners and our dreams. In the morning, we ventured out into an even colder wind, hoping there would be more cool birds to warm our souls.
Seth Kellogg can be contacted at skhawk@comcast.net
The Allen Bird Club website can be found at massbird.org/allen