Shorebird summer
WHEN WIFE LINDA and I first started dating, we, of course, asked each other the requisite questions:
What’s your favorite color? Blue.
Who’s your favorite singer? Joni Mitchell.
What’s your favorite season? Winter.
“Not summer?” she asked, not quite believing me. “I hate summer,” I replied. “The heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes…”
But that was then, before moving to shorebird-rich South Jersey.
Growing up in North Jersey, I discovered that the summer heat bakes the song out of the syrinx of woodland birds by mid-June, and walks through toasted summer woodlands are made all the more oppressive by that silence. Oh, sure, every once in a while, an American Crow sounds off or a squadron of Blue Jays make the air
