Last week, against all reason, my wife and I packed up the kids and our barking adventure chihuahua, Timmy, and went camping. The main reason for this, aside from temporary mental illness, was that we had a renter in our house and we no longer had any family to take us in. So we headed to Nickerson State Park. We all love camping, even Timmy, and as always, had a great time in Nickerson. We even got daily visits from some extremely friendly flying wildlife that weren’t birds, but more on that later.
We love camping, but let’s face it, it’s a gamble. When you’re living together in a small tent, you’re a rainy week away from couples therapy. Luckily, we had perfect camping weather – dry, calm, and warm, not hot. And even though we were ten minutes from home, the aesthetics of Nickerson’s big woods and a little squinting can make you think you’ve driven five hours to the middle of Maine.
But boy were the birds quiet – it was clear that breeding season was over. For hours, nothing but the same family of blue jays made the rounds to pick up the leftovers from camp. I barely heard any chickadees or knots and only managed to see 29 species in six days. Brown creepers, a personal favorite, were calling most days – many don’t know they breed in the area. The first night I enjoyed the calls of a family of young screech owls and saw another fly over a road. But my highlight was on the third night.
As I sat in that meditative state that only a campfire can conjure, something barked out of the darkness with the following question: “Who’s cooking for you, who’s cooking for all of you?” It was, of course, a barred owl, a species that has been native to the Upper Cape for 15 years but is still a rarity east of Barnstable. Now I truly felt like we were in Maine. This owl hooted for several minutes, but I heard no response. The owl later woke me up at 3:30 a.m., at which point a second owl finally answered – I was glad it did, and went back to sleep.
The owls were great, but it was another nocturnal animal that ultimately stole the show. Every night around 8:30 p.m., cute little pirates would invade the campsites in our area—flying squirrels. In all my years of camping and fieldwork in the U.S., I never knew flying squirrels could be scavengers in camp. They would glide down from a tall tree to one next to our picnic table, sometimes whizzing past my head so close I could feel the wind. They scurried across the table and camp stove. One climbed onto my leg. From the tree trunks, they begged us for scraps of food, with their big doe eyes and soft, baggy fur, and some visiting friends couldn’t resist. Even I, a swearing wildlife biologist, succumbed to her furry charm – I left a small hazelnut that I had picked from a nearby bush in a crevice of her favorite tree, and the gift was quickly claimed.
Although we felt far removed from the impression a typical tourist had of Cape Cod, the illusion of Nickerson, with its great forests, was not quite so expansive. Roseate terns, endangered seabirds, called as they flew over the campground on their way from the bay to the sea. Salt water was, after all, only two and a half miles away. Black-bellied plovers, birds of the vast tundra and mudflats that don’t need trees at all, also flew by and were recognizable by their undulating, whistling call. It was the best of both worlds – smoky, woodsy camping where you can take a dip in the pond, and somewhere above the trees, a little taste of the world-class shorebird watching that draws all the birders to our backyard.
So get out there and camp close to home if you can. While it may not seem exotic enough, it’s a way to get to know the place you live better. But trust me, be sure to bring something for the flying squirrels – one night we ran out of nuts and they took Timmy, the adventure chihuahua, hostage.
