Always Wear A Helmet

Parker River National Wildlife Refuge
Tel:  (978) 465-5753

Birding by Bike on Plum Island

Yankee Magazine
 

As I approach the Parker River bridge, a male marsh hawk slowly quarters the salt marsh, a gently rocking, seemingly lazy flight, but as precise and purposeful as that of a flacon. The hawk flushes a cluster of sandpipers, which reassemble in a tightly packed, wedged-shaped flock that vanishes behind the bank of a distant tidal creek. I shift gears on my mountain bike and glide onto Plum Island, leaving the Massachusetts mainland behind me.

My destination this May morning is the luxuriant southern half of the island, the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, an avian bed-and-breakfast for more than 250 species of migratory birds. The refuge's 4,700 acres include salt marsh, sand dunes, and freshwater wetlands, There are also six miles of glorious beach, footpaths, boardwalks, and a couple of observation towers. A level seven-mile road, part paved, part dirt, caters to slow moving cars - which makes biking safe - and passes through some of the best birding sites in New England.

I lock my bike in the first lot and follow the boardwalk to the ocean. A wave buckles and sends a cold spray far up the beach. A congregation of sanderlings scurries, but gulls, patient as ever, heed the ill-tempered sea - three species, three age classes, nine plumages - like a crowd at a potluck. A loon drifts by, face in the water, hunting. A few eiders bob in the whitecaps, lobster buoys dressed in down. A line of white-winged scoters passes just above the distant swells.

Later, pedaling south, I stop at the salt pans, a series of brackish pools surrounded by crisp brown cord grass along the west side of the road. The tide is high. Phlegmatic black-bellied and semipalmated plovers, both in bright breeding plumage, crowd a small, grassy isle, while longer-legged, more animated greater yellow-legs waltz through the shallows striking at fish. A bevy of short-billed dowitchers probe the mud for worms as a flock of dunlins arrows in. Black ducks and green-winged teals idle along the far shore. A great blue heron rises like a periscope from the marsh and a flock of birders, cars in a line, celebrate.

Like shallow water in the salt pans, time drains away, so I continue on past dunes robed in beach plumb and bayberry, past a stand of pitch pines. I stop and click off a half-dozen songbirds - rufous-sided towhee, yellow-rumped warbler, robin, catbird, blue jay, white-throated sparrow - collectively a manifestation of the season, a calendar with wings, In the swale the sun is warm, the wind still, and the air like Perrier. I pause for a long drink.

Reaching Hellcat Swamp at lunchtime, three miles to go, I have these options to consider: an observation tower overlooking the freshwater impoundment; a marsh trail; a boardwalk through a tupelo swamp - where I once saw a red fox with a rabbit in its mouth - or a loop trail across the road, over dunes, through a swale and a winterberry swamp to a scenic ocean view. Three crows call loudly from above the pines. I listen and follow, lunch forgotten.

- Ted Levin