South Shore Journal

November 28 - A surprise guest

Three years ago at about this time I was sitting at my desk, scuffling to figure out how to do my new job. I wandered downstairs to lunch, knowing that things started precisiely at noon around here. In a flash of heavy weather gear, David Clapp, my boss at the time, flew past the door shouting "Are you coming?" Knowing who it was I was working with, I hesitated for just a moment before instinctively heading for my binoculars.

By the time I reached the already running van, David, David Ludlow, and Ellen Jedrey from the Coastal Waterbird Program were seated and ready to go. Ellyn Einhorn joined us moments later to complete the party, and David C. took off down the driveway. "Where are we going?" asked Ellyn (not Ellen).

"There's a thick-billed murre in Scituate Harbor!" the driver said excitedly.

"Wow, how long's it been there?" asked Ellyn (still not Ellen).

"Oh, about two weeks," came the answer. "But it could fly at any minute!" We zipped up Route 3A.  I imagined a flashing light atop the van with the call of a crow sounding with each flash, "Caw, caw, caw, caw..."

On Tuesday, November 20, I didn't even hesitate when Sue MacCallum and David Ludlow asked, "Are you coming with us?"

We took off, again, right around lunch time, to investigate an unusual local sighting. A local family called and said they'd had a hummingbird coming to their feeder, and they realized that it shouldn't be there at this time of the year. We walked into the yard and focused on the feeder and sure enough, it appeared. We picked out details and dialed the number for Wayne Petersen on a cellphone, telling him our possible identification. Did I mention that it was raining? As such, we shielded our Sibley (what a weird thing to say) and zeroed in on a subadult rufous hummingbird, a western species that has made several appearances in Massachusetts in recent years.

The next morning, Sue and I joined Wayne, birder Kathleen Anderson, hummingbird bander Sue Finnegan, Trevor Lloyd-Evans from the Manomet Bird Observatory and the proud homeowners in a banding adventure. Sue Finnegan set up her trap and captured the bird within five minutes. Putting it on a scale, she and Trevor called out the weight of 3.9 grams. For comparison, Trevor placed a nickel on the scale, which came in at more than four grams.

Sue's nimble fingers delicately turned the bird this way and that as she and Trevor broke into banderspeak, calling out letters and names of feathers and taking all the requisite measurements, using words like rectix, rachis, subcutaneous and gorget.

Speaking of gorgets, I was lucky enough to take some close-up photographs of the jewels emerging from this young bird's gorget. Perhaps the drabness of the day contributed to it, but those jewels glowed like nothing else I've ever seen on a bird. All the while, the banding stories flowed from the gathered group, each one becoming more and more fantastic as the last one was finished.

The moment came to release the bird - a consensus hatch year male rufous hummingbird, later corroborated in the report completed by Sue F. and Trevor - and the homeowners were given the opportunity to do the honors. The bird remained in the hand for several moments, obviously comfortable in the warmth of the palm, and finally needed some coaxing, some some slight up and down hand movement, to take flight once again. Wayne warned the homeowners that there might be a chance that the bird might not return, shocked by the experience, but that that did not mean it was dead.

I took a chance on the day after Thanksgiving and brought the Friday Morning birders group to the hummingbird haven, with the permission of the owners. We spent fifteen minutes watching it buzz from feeder to branch and back again, often perching for up to a minute at a time. It was the first time in more than two decades that the Friday Morning Birders program had colelctively seen a rufous hummingbird. We followed that up by heading directly to Black's Creek in Quincy to find the American avocet reported earlier in the week by photographer Joe Poggi. Needless to say, it was a banner week for public programming at the South Shore Sanctuaries.

So that was our Thanksgiving gift. I can't wait for Christmas.

November 26 - Someday...

When I get the green light from above, I'll have some fun news and photos to share, but for the moment, I'll just have to keep you in suspense. In the meantime, here's a catch-up on the last week or so, minus one really cool moment.

As I seem to remember, the last time we spoke, I was headed out for the South Shore Duck Run. The Run is a program I came up with a few years ago to help get us through the winter. November, December, January, February, these can be tough months for birding in New England, strictly duie to the cold, as many of you know. The Run sticks close to the shore and can be done mostly from the confines of a car, unless something really exciting pops up and telescopes are called for. When I first started, I knew about four or five places that we could go to potentially catch up with some waterfowl. Now, it seems, I know far too many reliable oceanside sites to fit into the three-hour time slot.

We started out "down south," at Manomet Point in Plymouth, where we can always count on finding scoters and red-breasted mergansers. I was hoping for more, but there just seemed to me very little going on for the day. Unfortunately, it would be a theme.

Coming up the Plymouth coastline, we headed for Plymouth Beach and our first loons, both common and red-throated, and horned grebes, before moving downtown into the Thanksgiving maelstrom. It's kind of fun living near a place that has such late season tourism. Tourist attractions either have a specific targeted date or they're simply best viewed in warm weather. The Plymouth economy, and as such the Plymouth County and Massachusetts economy, gains tremendously thanks to its Thanksgiving attractions, an added bonus to the regular heavy summer visitation. Some locals may hate it, having so much congestion in town at such a time of year, but it's certainly a trade-off one can live with.

As you can guess since I'm writing about the economic gains of local tourism, there were few birds to see in Plymouth. We visited Nelson Street Beach and found the flock of brants, but did not find the black-bellied brant that we usually do. At Gray's Beach in Kingston we saw an oddity, a mute swan on the ocean. It was only in about a foot of water, very near to shore, but certainly out of place. On the way through Duxbury we found hooded mergansers on the Bluefish River.

As time was beginning to press on us, I decided to skip a few destinations and head for the grand finale. We shot towards Minot Beach in Scituate and a date with harlequin ducks as the sun went down. But, wouldn't you know it, it started to snow! We got a quick squall as we passed the Minot Post Office, and I thought my plan of the setting sun's rays on the colors of the harlequins was done for. We hopped out of the van and I got the scope on the birds, calling the group over to take a look. Just as I did so, a full, vibrant rainbow flashed its way into the sky over the ocean. We lingered and watched it fade with the setting sun, which poked its way through the clouds, as the harlequin ducks played in the surf off the rocks.

The day after Thanksgiving I led the Friday Morning Birders group alone, a rare occurrence. When it does happen, though, we go north. David Ludlow grew up from Pembroke south, and I grew up in Hull, Hingham and Scituate, so when I get the chance, I bring the gang to my old haunts that David doesn't know as well. And we had another reason to go north, a little thing called an avocet.

North, in the case of the avocet, meant Quincy, and Black's Creek. That's usually well out of our range, so after we saw the bird (and a common goldeneye for the first time this fall), we had to find our way back home, meaning that I had to come up with a bunch of birding stops along the way. I tried out the Wessagussett area of Weymouth, but came up relatively empty of any waterfowl, breaking instead into my history routine, so we headed for Hingham. We pulled into the Cranberry Pond Conservation Area and got a great look at thirteen hooded mergansers and a great blue heron. From there we visited More-Brewer Park, where we found...nothing. On to Hull. Off Meade Avenue, our dovekie site from last year, we picked up horned grebes and several close-in white-winged scoters. At Straits Pond, we struck out, so we rushed off to the Minot's area once again, finding our first purple sandpipers of the season. In the end, we tallied 52 species, inlcuding one first-time ever bird for Friday Morning Birders that I've promised to tell you about in a futrue post. Believe me, it's frustrating me more than it's frustrating you! But then, isn't the lesson of Thanksgiving patience? Or something like that. Sit tight, and watch for future posts.

I spent most of the week looking ahead to 2008. We've lined up several interesting Citizen Scienece Initiatives (I call them CSI for short, but then, I think I'm trendy) that will call for help in monitoring ospreys and other birds. We've also got a fantastic travel schedule lined up for 2008. As of this moment, I'll be leading trips to Nantucket, Sapsucker Woods and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the White Mountains (to search for breeding Bicknell's thrushes), downeast Maine to look for puffins, and Block Island. Sue MacCallum is headed for Trinidad, southeast Arizona and the Galapagos Islands. What a life! These are on top of our regular weekly trips, and whatever else might pop up in the meantime. I'll also have a few more books coming out in 2008, including one on the history of the North River, which I finished writing this weekend. 2008 is going to be quite a year.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I'll be back next week.

November 18 - Fun on Fridays

So you're flying down Route 3 South headed for Plimoth Plantation, right? You're passing through Duxbury, when off to the right you see a swampy kind of area, dead trees sticking up through the water, and was that a little red building over there on the other side? Eh, gotta get to the Plantation for that new book on the cat that sailed on the Mayflower II.

Wait! Double back. There's lots more to see at the Duxbury Bogs Conservation Area. We visited there on Friday, November 2, with our usual gang on the Friday Morning Birders walk, and even walked right up to that little red building (a pumphouse) to see what was happening birdwise. There were the regular suspects - wood ducks, double-crested cormorants and the mute swans that can even be seen from the highway - but some unexpected sightings as well. I picked out a northern pintail, and after having been to Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge just a few days earlier, had I not been able to identify a pintail, I might just as well give up on this whole Mass Audubon thing. Pintails are not expected at this spot, but they are excpected at the Burrage Wildlife Managament Area in Hanson. That site, though, is so dry that the usual marshy area they inhabit during fall migration has absolutely no water in it. We guessed that the same birds are passing through, but are finding different places to rest and eat.

We had almost turned to leave when one of our gang noticed a shorebird acting differently than the greater yellowlegs that for the past few months have been feeding on the mudflat to the north side of the pumphouse. Its feeding behavior was what struck us most. We watched as it submerged its entire head underwater as it stitched for food below, classic behavior of a stilt sandpiper. In November? Here? According to local records, stilts should have left by the end of September. Yet, there it was.

We left there for Kingston. The water off Gray's Beach, on Duxbury Bay, is a fantastic gathering spot for sea ducks in migration, and that day proved that point. In the field behind us we heard mockingbirds, on the shore, black-bellied plovers and sanderlings waited out the cold, and in the waters a few feet offshore, a raft of gulls floated quietly, including a Bonaparte's and two laughing gulls. Beyond that, we estimated seven hundred brant, and not much else for variety. When I returned two days later on the Friday Morning Rewind program, we had maybe twenty brant. The Saturday storm came and went, and so did the brant.

We finished the day at Mounce Meadow in Marshfield, a reliable sparrow spot in late fall. We walked along the edge of the field aside a rosebush hedgerow, picking out a swamp sparrow amongst dozens of song sparrows. Red tailed hawks soared and called overhead, but gave us only a fleeting glimpse.

The following Friday we headed north, with a target bird in mind, the harlequin duck. We started at the south end of Scituate, trying to cross the Edward Foster Road Bridge to get to Peggotty Beach and Myron's Puddle, but road construction had the way blocked. So we turned our attention instead to the harbor. We visited Scituate Light and watched rafts of offshore scoters, and the occasional passing long-tailed duck. Tim, one of best best by-ear birders, pointed skyward and shouted "Redpolls!" but we never got a glance of them.

Farther up the coast we scored our reliable old harlies, on the rocks off North Scituate. We watched also as red-necked and horned grebes ducked under the water for food, common and red-throated loons wrestled with small fish, and northern gannets swooped and swayed in the distance.

On our way home, we decided to make a stop at the Scituate public water reservoir on Route 3A. Greater yellowlegs here, too! They shared a muddy spot in the reservoir with a belted kingfisher and, from time to time a flock of snow buntings that swirled high in the sky, teasing a landing every once in a while.

This Friday, with rain and wind assaulting us from all sides, we did our best to find some from-the-car-only birding destinations. We stopped at the Bluefish River in Duxbury, on our way to the beach, and picked up our first hooded mergansers of the season (for Friday Morning Birders; I'd seen two on Sunday at Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary, where I also spied a couple of eastern meadowlarks, my first of the season). And, of course, More yellowlegs, the birds that just won't go away.

Out on the beach, I had the joy of being in the passenger (re: rain-driven) side of the van. Whenever a potentially good bird was spotted, down came my window, and in came the wetness. We were on the edge of our birding seats. A snowy owl had been spotted for the first time at Logan Airport on November 5, and another had been seen on Boston Common and at Fanueil Hall earlier in the week. Every white plastic bag or Clorox bottle was momentarily a snowy, until reality slapped us around to the fact that it was just trash. Another flock of snow buntings joined the fall fun before we headed to Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary for some harrier spotting, and to the Rexhame area of Marshfield for some more offshore viewing.

The first half of November has been an enjoyable entree into the winter season. During this time I've had a few other adventures, co-leading the New England Military History Symposium in Fall River the day of the big storm (returning home to find a Norway maple down on my house); speaking for the Friends of the Hull Public Library and at a career forum for UMASS Amherst history majors; hanging out with the 50th anniversary crew of the Mayflower II at their first full reunion since the July sail; running a sunrise walk at Daniel Webster (flcikers!  See the photo to the left), a trip to Duxbury Beach (from which we reported live to Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds radio show on WTD 95.9 FM), and tagging along for Sally Avery's monthly walk at Daniel Webster, all on Sunday the 11th; and attending a digital photography workshop for Mass Audubon educators at our Visual Arts Center in Canton. Today I'll be heading up our annual South Shore Duck Run, a growing tradition, and this Friday, I'm on my own for Friday Morning Birders, as the David Ludlow Friday-after-Thanksgiving-day-off tradition rolls into it's twentieth year. There have already been some good reports of birds we haven't had this fall, so I have a plan in mind. That is, if anyone cares to join me.

November 6 - Sapsucker and Montezuma

Rain. And lots of it. We did well to get in the vans at the North River Widlife Sanctuary and again at Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, where we picked up the second half of our crowd before it really hit, but then, it began. Rain. And lots of it. We weren't off on the most auspicious of beginnings for our trip to Sapsucker Woods, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.

We skipped our first stop, it was raining so hard, bypassing the Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Lenox and heading straight through to the New York State Thruway. We saw several pathetic sights along the way, including red-tailed hawks standing on telephone poles, and one on a hay bale, with their wings spread out to dry. But, as predicted by the meteorology gurus at weather.com, the rain passed us by (more like trampled us) on its way east, and we ended up coming out of the back end of the storm, with clearing skies as we stopped first at the head of Skaneateles (pronounced "skinny atlas") Lake.

Our first stop at the lake of our choice, Cayuga, produced...barely anything at all.  We found a lesser black-backed gull and a pied-billed grebe, but that was about it, except for the sounds of exploding shotguns in the distance. So we headed south along the eastern shore of the lake. We crawled through Union Springs until we found the community's famous factory pond. There we found the only wood ducks of the trip, and they were tucked along the back edge of the pond, out of the water, nearly out of sight. Local hunters claim that "wood ducks don't like to get their feet cold," and as such, should be hard to find at this time of year. That proved to be true. At Long Point State Park, where the gray squirrels are brown, we got an excellent look at an eared grebe, something we certainly were not expecting. At this time we also started spotting loonies (common loons), to take a page from Monty Python. Further south, at Myers Point Park, we caught sight of several red-breasted mergansers, and watched overhead as dozens of turkey vultures headed for their roost in nearby Salmon Creek as the sun set beyond the trees on the far shore of the lake. From there, we headed straight to Ithaca and our lodging for the night.

When we awoke the next morning, I was surprised to see that every member of our group had opted for the early morning owling program. Our group, from all around the state and even from New Hampshire, was as enthusiastic as any I've ever traveled with. And we had a surprise for them. A staffmember from Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Chris Tessaglia-Hymes, volunteered to lead the owling portion of the morning for us, complete with his amazingly accurate array of saw-whet, screech, long-eared and barred owl calls. In the end, one out of four wasn't bad, as a screech came right in on top of us. The barred owl call did bring a surprise, if not a barred owl. Two American woodcocks lifted from the roadside edge and bolted down the street, calling as they went.

And so began the day.  We headed for Sapsucker Woods, where our first bird sighted was - of course - a yellow-bellied sapsucker. We walked the Severinghaus Trail and the Wilson Trail around Sapsucker Pond, finding, amongst the gorgeous foliage, golden-crowned kinglets and tangible evidence of pileated woodpeckers and more yellow-bellied sapsuckers. Atop a dead snag, four rusty blackbirds squeaked out their eardrum-piercing chorus, and at the feeder station, dark-eyed juncos scratched around for a mid-morning meal.

Inside the Lab, our gang enjoyed the introductory multi-media presentation offered as an orientation to the work of the staff, shopped the heck out of the Wildbirds Unlimited franchise, and marveled in the view of the pond from the second floor observation area. A pine siskin showed up at the feeders just before we moved across the street to the bioacoustics research lab, where Chris works as "Mr. Pop-up" (for the pop-up ARUs usedin whale sounds research), and where we had the chance to pick up and manually study the acoustic receivers used in the search for the Ivory-billed woodpecker in the swamps of southeast Arkansas.

After stopping for lunch at the Ithaca Bakery (that's "yum" with a capital "Y"), and with the wind whipping off the lake, we took off for Ithaca Falls and then Stewart Park. American coots quickly became the bird of the day, at the extreme southern end of the lake. We scanned a flock of Canada geese for any abnormalities, but found none. Driving up the western shore of the lake, we stopped at Taughannock (like organic, with a "ta" sinstead of an "or") Falls State Park to spy the beautiful two hundred foot drop. While we were there, a large chunk of rock broke loose from the canyon wall and cascaded downward with a thunderous crash. How large that rock actually was, I cannot tell you. All I know is that I'm sure it was bigger than I thought it was.

From there, we scouted Sheldrake Point (named for the many mergansers that were shot there over the years) and Cayuga Lake State Park. The last stop - aside from revealing a mink feeding in the water along the lake's edge - brought the saddest moment of the trip, a mallard with a deformed mouth begging for food. The poor bird's tongue was dangling at a 90 degree angle from its bill, constantly exposed. We couldn't tell if it had been shot, or born that way. Either way, it looked like an uncomfortable little life.

As we headed for Seneca Falls and our lodging for the night, I made a wrong turn, on purpose. Where we were supposed to go left, I went right, and led the vans into the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge for some sunset birding. The sun was setting on the wrong side of the vans, but it didn't matter. The enormous flocks of Canada geese (it's amazing how much we dislike them on the ground and how much we truly admire their grace when flying in formation) simply astounded us all, especially when we counted how many were in the impoundments as well. This was a tease, the best one I could have come up with to end the day.

That night, the Red Sox won the World Series.

I woke up the next morning with less than four hours of sleep to find everybody else outside scraping frost off the windows of the vans. Luckily, the plan for the day was almost entirely indoors. We headed to the Tschache (pronounced "shocky") Pool and climbed the observation tower. American tree sparrows flitted around beneath our feet, as a juvenile bald eagle hunted in the distance. Leaving there we met with Andrea Stewart, the director of visitor services for the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, for an introductory talk about the property. We learned of the day they drained the main pool, leaving the invasive carp high and dry, and how sixty-four bald eagles appeared to partake of the feast. Prior to that day, the most eagles seen on site was seven.

We rolled out onto the viewing road, picking up green-winged teals, blue-winged teals, northern shoveleres, American coots, greater scaups, lesser scaups, several hundred snow geese (one blue goose), ring-necked ducks, a cackling goose, northern pintails, gadwalls, American wigeons, ruddy ducks, and more and more and more.  A female ring-necked pheasant wandered past the vans within reaching distance. After several hours of nonstop, unbroken, amazing birding, we finally realized we had to leave. We passed through an old potato farm known as the Mucklands and headed east on Route 90 for Drumlin Farm.

We tallied seventy-two species of birds, some in single appearances, some in staggering numbers. We sampled the local culture, visited the Mecca of ornithological research in America, and got home in time to dress up in bird costumes and hand out candy for Halloween. Well, not me, of course. But I'm sure somebody did.