Nobody Doesn’t Know the Harlequins

I’ve made three trips to Barnegat Light this past week, each of them a lot of fun: how can it fail when there are Purple Sandpipers and Common Eiders, and, yesterday, Razorbills to enjoy?

And Harlequin Ducks, of course.

This odd and beautiful little sea duck has been a reliable target for birders at Barnegat Light since at least the mid-1980s, when I first started visiting the   flock there; but something has changed in recent years.

In the 80s and even just a decade ago, fishermen and jetty walkers used to stop and ask me whether I was looking for whales or watching ships. My answer: no, just watching birds. Oh, they’d say, and that was that.

Nowadays, I can hardly get out of the parking lot without having someone ask me whether I’m going out to see the Harlequins. And once I’m out on that treacherous jetty, everyone I meet is eager to point them out, to talk about them, to ask whether they’re in yet.

It’s a great thing, this overwhelming popular consciousness of a rare and inconspicuous bird, but I wonder where it came from. Was there a series of newspaper articles, a special on public television, a poster competition in the public schools? Whatever did it, it’s heartwarming (and a little mysterious) to find non-birders, honest-to-goodness normal people, proud of these fine feathered visitors.