BOOTHBAY REGISTER • August 30, 2023
It was a typical late-summer evening in Ogunquit, one of Maine’s popular seaside towns. We decided to get away from the beehive of activity by strolling the sidewalk around the corner to the oceanside pathway known as Marginal Way. Something caught our eye on the jumble of rocks some 30 feet below on the shore. It was a semipalmated plover. We counted 20 individuals roosting there, yards away from walkers by the dozen. Very few of our fellow human travelers relished the special experience. They felt no connection to the global odyssey of earth’s grand bird migration spectacle. Birds that had perhaps seen polar bears only days ago now stood only feet from all of us on that path on the coast of Maine. Within a few more weeks these same birds could well be sitting among the tangled roots of a steamy hot mangrove forest on the coast of some Central or South American or Caribbean nation. ~ Jeffrey V. Wells and Allison Childs Wells