The best summer job I ever had

On a late spring afternoon decades ago, I was driving home along Ocean Parkway when I stopped because I saw nets for catching birds in the salt marsh near Oak Beach.

I met Jon Greenlaw, a biology professor at LIU Post, and bird researcher Will Post, who were studying the sharp-tailed and seaside sparrows that nest there, one of the few places where these closely related species’ ranges overlapped.

This is one of the few healthy marshes left on Long Island without ditches meant to reduce the number of mosquitoes. The men needed help studying saltmarsh sparrows, and at 22, I needed a summer job.

They had already color-banded many adult sparrows. They not only put the usual aluminum rings on their legs but also a unique combination of colored plastic rings. And they had marked off a grid to record notes about nest activity.

My job? I would check a list of nests they’d leave me each day and record my observations from a blind they had set up. The blinds were wooden towers providing a view from above the marsh. Nests were identified by their location on the grid and marked inconspicuously with a tall reed, but I knew what to look for.

Rather than stand behind the burlap cloth that was wrapped around the top of the blind to hide observers, I preferred to pull it down and sit on the edge of the wooden platform. I recorded which adult bird came to the nest to feed the babies and the time it came and left. Only the mother sharp-tailed sparrow took care of the young, but both seaside sparrows helped each other.

I was alone in the marsh for about three or four hours every day. I loved walking in it, seeing it at different times during tidal cycles. I also loved occasionally spotting a Virginia rail, a secretive bird that favors freshwater marshes. I once stumbled upon the nest of a clapper rail, known for its loud, clattering calls.

I also adored the little black-and-gold dragonflies that lived there. It was wonderful looking from the blinds — above the biting level of the greenhead flies, whose bite can leave welts on a person. I enjoyed seeing glossy ibises coast in, land and bend down to feed, hidden behind the grasses. There was always something interesting to observe.

One of the job’s best aspects was being left alone! What could be better than being by myself in a wonderful part of nature — and getting paid for it!

A few years later, I took Greenlaw’s behavioral ecology course at Post and learned more about how sharp-tailed sparrows mainly lived to our north on narrow salt marshes while seaside sparrows lived mainly to our south on wide marshes and how their resulting mating behaviors differed. It was fascinating.

Post went on to work in Florida with the now-extinct dusky seaside sparrows, and eventually, Greenlaw retired to the same state. Together, they published several journal articles on the sparrows.

Ah, being alone in that salt marsh. The memories still bring back joy. It was the best summer job I ever had.

 Reader Laurie Farber lives in Wyandanch.