Plum Island is a peach

This Is Just to Say

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

 

Off of Newburyport, there’s a lovely island called Plum Island. On said island, there are plums, of course, (see above photo) but there’s also a large wildlife refuge, famous for its fabulous birdwatching. The refuge is one of the habitats of the endangered piping plover. Piping plovers look like this:

(While I wish this was my photograph, it’s Jim Fentor’s, from the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge website.)

In late summer, we headed up to Plum Island and stumbled accidentally on “free day”–it was $0 to hang out on the beach/check out the 4,600+ acres of conservation land. The landscape in this area is really interesting, transitioning from forest to open fields, then marshes, rivers, land (island) and then sandy ocean beaches.

We wandered for awhile. It was an unusually brisk August day, so we decided to skip the ocean swimming. But we saw some piping plovers! Admittedly from quite a distance, and they basically just looked like fuzzy white blobs. Still, it was exciting, and we wished that we had brought binoculars.

After our Plum Island adventure, we stopped for some nourishment. Guess where?

~ by releasethebadgers on October 20, 2010.