June 25 - Up and Over
There's really only one sentence that can sum up the nature trip that David Ludlow and I took on Monday, our common day off: We were looking down at the fresh moose tracks when the great horned owl flew by.
Yes, it was that kind of trip. We spent all of Monday - leaving the South Shore at 4:30 a.m. - in Worcester County, bouncing from gate to gate of the Quabbin Reservior. Our purpose was multifold: to get outdoors for the day; to see wildlife; and to add incidental reports to the Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 2 project. Check, check and check, all missions accomplished. Even before we got to the first gate we had taken note of two dozen baby turkeys, one of America's funniest natural sights.
We walked. And we walked. And it all paid off in the end. And we had some instant returns. There were red-eyed vireos everywhere, and the black-throated green warblers and common yellowthroats seemed to have them almost matched note for note. We were scoping a pond (greeted by a beaver that at first had no idea we were there, but who soon enough gave us a tail slap to confirm it), when we decided to take a side trail to a beaver dam and the pond it had created. That's where we found the moose tracks, and that's where, at 7:21 a.m., the great horned owl flew by. When the time came to leave that area, we checked on the song of a warbler that turned out to be a black-throated blue, and were startled by the drumming of a yellow-bellied sapsucker not fifteen feet from the car. The sapsucker turned out to be one of five woodpecker species we observed during the day, with downy, hairy, red-bellied and pileated rounding out the list. We began to take note of nesting activity, mostly scoring on red-winged blackbirds and common grackles, but soon, the real fun began.
We came across a chestnut-sided warbler and watched as it gathered some food in its bill. It then descended into a grassy area, emerging seconds later without the food (a least flycatcher buzzed away and two broad-winged hawks called overhead the entrer time we watched). It repeated this process twice, and we were convinced. At that same spot we noted an eastern phoebe nest with both parents guarding the nest, and a belted kingfisher hole. The hole was interesting because there was a large rock wedged into it, and therefore it did not have the trademark shape that others do. But the birds were there, and the scuffmarks around the nest showed us that it had been active. We lingered for confirmation.
Farther down the eastern side of the reservoir we found a garter snake that had obviously swallowed something chipmunk-sized, and based on the number of chipmunks around, we felt pretty confident about what it was. A very loud chestnut-sided warbler singing on the foundation of an old home fooled us into thinking it was a hooded warbler for a few minutes, but we finally did get the sighting. We found a wood thrush nest, but never found a nearby wood thrush that had anything to do with it, and came across an enclave of American redstarts feeding young and otherwise chattering away. Other sounds filled the forest: singing scarlet tanagers, ovenbirds, rose-breasted grosbeaks, a solitary winter wren and more. At our last stop in the Quabbin area we found a mother wood duck with eleven young paddling along in tow.
From there (after lunch at Theresa's in Ware) we traveled through the Brimfield State Forest, finding nesting chipping sparrows on Dean's Pond and checking several other bodies of water. We picked one final stop, as things started to slow down ornithologically, and were pleasantly surprised by what we found. There were tree swallows nesting in natural cavities, and eastern bluebirds doing the same. And although it was sad to see a deer carcass floating on the pond, we did catch sight of another belted kingfisher, a grackle feeding a very demanding youngster, and a pair of eastern kingbirds that were making the rounds of the area.
Statistics? We found 63 species of birds, 6 types of mammals, three types of frogs (including pickerel, at left), a "gi-gundus" snapping turtle, about a dozen each species of each dragonflies and butterflies, notched one Baltimore oriole in New Salem for the Baltimore Oriole project (www.massaudubon.org/oriole) and tallied about 30 breeding records forthe Atlas. I added two birds to my Massachusetts year list (now 210) and picked up 15 species for the month to put me up and over 100 for June. Not bad for only five days of birding in the state.
But work has already begun in preparation for Friday Morning Birders. Bird number 211 doesn't know it yet, but it's about to be recorded for posterity.
The botanical garden holds more than 50,000 plants and naturally attracts wildlife in great numbers as well. We spotted cactus wrens, Gambel's quail, gila woodpeckers, white-winged doves, black-tailed jackrabbits, round-tailed ground squirrels, pyrrhuloxia, and much, much more. We dined at a place called the Rokerij, which was fantastic, and together went onto Phase Four.
