{"id":790,"date":"2008-05-17T03:17:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-17T03:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=790"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:47:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:47:36","slug":"softly-the-evening-came","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=790","title":{"rendered":"Softly the evening came"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>“Softly the evening came.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow <\/span><\/div>\n

On World Series day<\/a>, we spent the hours around dusk at North Pond; the others were mostly looking at birds, but I was watching the clouds.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude09<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It had been overcast all day, but the sky began to clear in the late afternoon and some of us stood around appreciating that nice light cast on a Canada Goose floating on the pond while we looked for a bittern… on the beach plum and scotch broom and cypress spurge blooming in the dunes. A beautiful place to end a long day.
<\/span>
\"\"<\/a>With the chasing mostly over and the last of the death marches done (I skipped the last one and missed 12 Piping Plovers!) we were hoping then for just a couple night herons, or nighthawks, or woodcock, or owls… we relaxed and found a rock or old fencepost to sit on. Gradually the stories began…
<\/span>
\"\"<\/a>Birders have great stories, you know. Many of us have traveled to interesting far-flung places (not me!) and oftentimes we travel with the same people. Even if we’ve not birded together, there’s a certain easy camaraderie among most birders that feels really nice. Of course, after 12+ hours together on a big day, we tend to get a bit silly and punchy from the lack of sleep\/food\/caffeine, but that just adds to the fun.<\/p>\n

When you consider that our team will have raised at least $3500 for conservation causes, and that’s small potatoes compared to most of the other 100 or so teams, I guess it’s easy to understand why I like doing it so much. Great birds, good friends, great stories, a good cause…<\/p>\n

Plus, we ended the day with nighthawks and a barred owl. What more could you ask for?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Softly the evening came.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow On World Series day, we spent the hours around dusk at North Pond; the others were mostly looking at birds, but I was watching the clouds. \ud83d\ude09 It had been overcast all day, but the sky began to clear in the late afternoon and some of us … Continue reading Softly the evening came<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,27,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}