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Vernacular names are the poetry of birding. Bobolink, tufted titmouse, groove-billed ani, crested auklet: many are fun to say, and any one of them may strike a reminiscent chord in us, calling to mind an eventful day or a special place where we saw the bird, perhaps once, perhaps a hundred times. The name reverberates, like a thrilling poem or a haunting melody.

The late-summer marsh grasses along Beaver Meadow Brook were awash. Though I had often explored the brook by small boat and its shoreline on foot, I had never before seen them under such an expanse of water. The season's highest tides, listed for that day in the charts at 13 feet, four inches, had surged into this mile-and-a-half stretch of saltwater marsh on the eastern Maine coast and spread over its elevated muddy fringes.