Northern Pintail - Northern Pinhead

Northern Pintail drake with American Black ducks, as seen across the marsh on Hermit Island, Phippsburg Maine, February 2012

Marsh grass frozen under tide water, Hermit Island, February 2012
Do you see any car keys here?

Northern Pintail drake with American Black Duck drake, Phippsburg, Maine February 2012

 Northern Pintails have narrow, long wings and slender necks.

Northern Pintails upending at the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Preserve in New Jersey, 2010. Notice their pointed tails.

 

This may be the only owl I find all winter. It is folk art that I found on a fence post at Popham while searching for a Snowy owl.

     At home, I have a title; I am known as The Queen of Find. This is because my people think I have magical powers to find anything anytime. This includes objects I don’t own nor had any reason to even lay my eyes upon.  There’s no real secret to this; It’s just a system. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking where was the person who used an item when they last had it. That’s a no-brainer which any reasonable person should employ before asking someone else, namely me, “Have you seen my……..you fill in the blank.”  Most of the time, I don’t think about it because, I can literally ‘see’ the object in my mind. In fact, thinking about it usually messes with my powers. 
     I was born with some degree of what is called a “photographic memory.” As a youngster, I learned to use this talent to keep my father from beating us kids. When he couldn’t find something he had usually misplaced himself, I quickly pre-empted his wrath by finding what he sought, thus saving one of us a thrashing. Back then, being the Queen of Find had strictly practical applications. As I got older though, I came to like feeling special. I'll admit that by now, I have probably fostered dependency in some of my loved ones for the sake of my own thrill. 
     I was also born with really great eye sight. In fact, until the past couple of years, I had 20/10 vision. Any object that most people need to be ten feet from to see clearly, I can see from twenty feet away. This gave me a hefty advantage for birding, too. My husband is amazed at the birds I see that he does not, until I point them out. Traveling together on any given stretch of road, I'll see six raptors in the trees where he sees none.  Many times I've heard "You've got such a great eye!" A splendid birder friend once told me that I had "birding mojo." He didn't know it, but he couldn't have given me a finer compliment. I felt magnificent! 
     I'm at the age now where many of these talents are failing me and it scares the snot out of me. I am not going gently into the good night of aging. Like a lot of  women, I have struggled with knowing that I'm no longer the hottest babe in the room. Maybe I could deal with that more gracefully if everything wasn't disintegrating at once. I want to keep a couple of my talents that have set me apart. Does aging have to be a slow slide into incapacities?
     I do understand that cosmic balance and fairness dictate that compromises be made. So, I easily gave up on the idea that I would become an Olympic figure skater. My modeling career tanked when I stopped growing at five feet tall. And, I surrendered my dream of becoming a nuclear physicist when I flunked high school algebra. Those were my compromises, God. So where's the fairness?
     Everybody said when my eye sight started going to hell that it would deteriorate to a point, then stop, but apparently that's not true. Though my house is littered, confetti-like, with colorful reading glasses, none of them seem strong enough. I can't see far away quite as clearly as I used to, either. And now, my birding magic is losing its twinkle, too.
     I've seen quite a few rare birds in my birding career. I've had a good eye for picking them out and I've put the time and effort into it, too. Just this past week, I've seen and photographed a rare, Red-headed woodpecker and a Northern Pintail duck. The duck isn't rare, but it IS rare to see one in Maine in February. Nonetheless, the prize I long for is a Snowy owl. I've gone hunting nearly every day for weeks, so my failure to get one isn't for lack of trying. It must be, that like my thickening waist and ankles, my wrinkling face and dulling vision, the blush is off my mojo.
     After one of my recent fruitless Snowy expeditions to Popham Beach, I stopped at Hermit Island on my way home. A sulking brat, I was feeling very sorry for myself and quite desperate. My eyes keenly scanned the salt marsh and clam flats. That's how I spotted the Northern Pintail drake amongst the American Black ducks, all dabbling along the mud line. Well, at least that was something!
     I had barely stopped the car before I was shooting pictures out of the open window. I needed to be closer, so I pulled over. So as not to alarm them, I left the door open and slipped around the back of the car. Creeping across the muddy flat, I hunkered down to keep a low profile. I imagined myself like a sleek, Arctic fox slinking across the marsh. 
     Northern Pintails are a fairly large duck. Long and slender with narrow wings, they are fast and graceful fliers, sometimes called the “Greyhound of The Air.” The drakes sport a long, pointed tail which gives them the nickname “sprig.” When in breeding plumage, the tail accounts for a quarter of the full length of the bird! They aren't rare, though their populations have been in slow decline. Hybridization with invasive Mallards in the western and midwestern United States may be one reason. Predation by foxes, Bobcats and other large carnivores, disease, habitat loss and hunting are all contributing causes to their decline.
     Sprigs are dabbling ducks that eat mostly plants and insects from the bottom. Upending in shallow water, their long necks enable them to reach further down than other ducks. Usually eating in the evening or at night, they rest during the day. They breed in the northern areas of the planet. Highly migratory, they winter south of their breeding range to the equator. 
     The thermometer in the car said it was seventeen degrees. A biting wind cut across the flats from the west. As I stalked the ducks and waded through the icy tide water, I was mindful of where I stepped. In that cold, I couldn’t afford to stumble into a hole. Amber marsh grass, flattened and trapped in ice, lay in elegant whorls at my feet. Suddenly, the ducks flushed and the whirring wings raised them skyward and away. I was freezing!    
      When I got back to the car, I could not find my keys anywhere. I am compulsive about not leaving my keys in the car because I am paranoid about locking them in. I always put my keys into my right, front pants pocket. I check and double check them.  For me to lose car keys was unheard of! I couldn’t freaking believe it! I traced and retraced my steps through the frozen marsh at least a dozen times. After about the sixth pass, my feet went from throbbing to numb. I passed over and over the same beer bottle, rubber lobster claw band and wad of balloon ribbon, but could not find the keys. I grabbed fistfuls of my own hair and screeched at the sky, "Where they hell are they!" I screamed at no one. From far across the cove, a loon cried back.
     I searched the car, knowing they weren't there. The tide was creeping in as I walked the marsh again. I thought about frost bite. I didn't have a cell phone; coverage here is spotty at best. I was miles from a phone or occupied home.  I had left the car door open and window down to sneak up on the now, long gone ducks. I had thousands of dollars of camera equipment in the car, more than I could carry and more than I could abandon. Panic was setting in and panic is not my style. The Queen of Find was going to die empty handed and without ceremony on a clam flat. When I started to cry the tears froze on my face.
     As I was triaging which pieces of equipment to carry with me for the long trek ahead, a pick-up truck came barreling along. The driver named John, had a cell phone which mercifully had enough bars that I was able to call my husband to come with spare keys. I was exhausted and embarrassed.
     The next day, I went back and looked again, to no avail. Why would I look for keys lost in mud on a tidal flat, you ask? Because to have lost them was so unlike me, and to not be able to find them, less like me still. The Queen of Find had been summarily dethroned in the cold mud. 
     On the second day, David rustled up a metal detector that he had procured from the town dump. He put fresh batteries into it, then said "Let's go try for the car keys." It was stupid really because the tide had cycled in and out several times. Ice chunks had scoured the grass clean of even my footprints. For over an hour we wandered in circles on the mudflats like lunatics looking at our shoes. We found the same beer bottle, rubber lobster claw band and the wad of balloon ribbon, but not the keys. After an hour, David said he could totally appreciate my frustration. "If they were out here, we would have found them by now." He did find a quarter with the salvaged metal detector.
     Then, he found the keys on the floor of the car under the driver's seat. Just shoot me now, God.