Super novelette, Dave!! Thanks. Donna Scott Kendal at Ithaca-377 Sent from my iPhone
On Oct 23, 2023, at 12:00 PM, Dave Nutter <nutter.d...@mac.com> wrote: Clouds poured overhead, propelled by a relentless northwest wind. Ann and I wandered the abandoned land below the levee alongside the Chemung River. We thought we were prepared for this quest, yet our equipment was now heavy and awkward, and the chill air sapped our heat. One of my boots seemed to be leaking. Somewhere very near here, Elmira Limpkin had been reported again. The first time, over a week ago, she was said to be walking a forest trail, and that’s certainly what the photos appeared to show. But the observer had been confused, seeing something so improbable and beyond her experience. The next day over a dozen searchers scoured the area. They came up with nothing. This morning Elmira Limpkin had been standing on a shingle beach. I saw this new photograph. Could it be true? We had to see for ourselves. All around, trees creaked and moaned. Dead leaves carpeted the mud. Our vision was blocked repeatedly by thickets of invasive Japanese Knotweed. Ann and I did not even know Jeremy was here, but suddenly he was signaling us to the edge of the floodplain. Adam had passed us earlier on a footpath, and he emerged from the forest along with Michael, to join us. Jeremy gestured at a curtain of head-high weeds. Beyond, at the far side of a clearing, a huge, strange bird gazed at us from the shadows. It stood on tall, dark, thick, stork-like legs. Its long bill was dull brown with yellowish tones around the mouth. The beak curved, but lacked the slender tapering grace of the bill of an ibis. This was a heavier weapon that hung down over the bird’s long folded neck. Its face was dusty gray with feathers that turned to stubby spikes on the back of its head. The rest of its plumage would have been dark chocolate but for the white flecks on its neck which became arrows down its breast then daggers on its wing coverts. We stared. This tropical creature did not belong here in Upstate New York. Long ago I had seen such a mollusk-eating bird and heard its wild screams in the darkness of a baldcypress swamp in Florida. As we tried to take pictures, the bird began walking... slowly... silently... toward us... becoming even harder to see. Now we knew it was only a few feet away, but it was hard to tell just how close. Our cameras quit working, showing only shadows and blurry forms. We dared not move. What was it doing? We wondered and whispered. Minutes seem to pass before we saw that the bird had turned aside. It kept a brown eye on us while strolling behind tree trunks and among rotten logs, heading toward the river. As it crossed the final opening I could see its lengthy webless toes with every step. Then it stopped and stood alongside the final patch of Knotweed atop the riverbank. We had been following at distance but we stopped, too. We finally got some sharp - and we hoped indisputable - photographs. Jeremy hurried away first, needing to get some sleep before working a hospital shift. Adam joined Ann & me as we climbed the levee toward the normal world, but Michael went back into the woods, wondering why his friend Phil never came out. From the top of the levee Adam turned toward the dead end of a street where he left his car, while Ann & I hiked to the end of the levee. Noisy kids on a playground ignored us, but a guy at a fire station stared at our telescopes and binoculars and cameras. Maybe he knew what it’s like beyond the levee by the river. - - Dave Nutter On Oct 23, 2023, at 7:09 AM, Robin Cisne <rfci...@gmail.com<mailto:rfci...@gmail.com>> wrote: Wasn't she the villain in an early 20th c. novel? On Sun, Oct 22, 2023 at 10:18 PM Dave Nutter <nutter.d...@me.com<mailto:nutter.d...@me.com>> wrote: On 12 October Barb Borelli found and photographed a Limpkin along the Chemung River in Elmira and reported it to eBird. This morning (22 October) Martin Cain refound & photographed it, also along the edge of the river. This afternoon Ann Mitchell & I went to look for it, and we were close by, as were Adam Farid & Mike Gullo, when Jeremy Collison discovered the Limpkin a hundred yards from the river standing and resting in the dead-leaf-strewn floodplain forest immediately southeast of Pirozzolo Park in an area which seemed to be associated with a culvert below the corner of the levee. The bird was standing almost under the Japanese Knotweed which covered the embankment above. We were surprised when it walked toward us, coming within a few yards behind a narrow screen of knotweed, then it turned and strolled toward the river, sometimes out in the open, and rested again at the top of the riverbank for several minutes, remaining there when we left at 4pm. During the 40 minutes we watched it, it was silent and neither flew nor fed but seemed relaxed & healthy. Later observers saw it catching worms in the leaf litter. If you seek this bird, don’t just look at the edge of the river, look in the woods, too. Pirozzolo Park is near the West Elmira fire station on Water Street. This is the second NYS record for this species. The first record was just last autumn along the Niagara River. That bird was captured just before the deadly blizzard hit Buffalo, and I believe it was released in South Carolina. - - Dave Nutter -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: Welcome and Basics<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME> Rules and Information<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES> Subscribe, Configuration and Leave<http://www.northeastbirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm> Archives: The Mail Archive<http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html> Surfbirds<http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds> BirdingOnThe.Net<http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html> Please submit your observations to eBird<http://ebird.org/content/ebird/>! -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
