January 2008 - Red-Headed Stakeout and Slaty-Backed Frustration

It's a New Year, and that means it's a new list. Or at least it can be, if that's the way you like to do things. I haven't yet closed the books on 2007 - just a few cards to go to figure out the yearly total - but 2008 has arrived, and the birds are certainly around.  And there have been some interesting moment in the first three weeks in January, some that I'll forget, others that I probably never will.

On January 4, we had snow, and we had rain. We also had an Eurasian wigeon, most likely the same one we've seen on the same pond in Plymouth (Forge Pond) for several years now. This time, though, with rain coming down we decided to do what we could from inside the van, and only got a fleeting glimpse of it as it flushed with several other duck species. Just around the corner from the wigeon we found a fox sparrow under a feeder, only the second one I've ever seen.  The other was under a feeder in Plympton, sharing the spotlight with a boreal chickadee. We had six eastern meadowlarks in a field off Clifford Road, and made a stop on Marshfield to see our little friend from late last year, the rufous hummingbird.

On January 11, with more rain on the way, we headed for a new site for us, Russell Mill Pond in Plymouth, as there had been some encouraging reports from there earlier in the week. We did better than we expected. On top of the northern pintails we sought we found a female northern shoveler, never an easy find on the South Shore, a common merganser, a half dozen American coots, and more. On the way out we scored our first red-breasted nuthatch for the year but oddly, by the end of the day, we had missed finding a single house sparrow for the second week in a row. It wouldn't last. When we locked the vans for the last time, we said bon voyage to one of our gang who was off to band American redstarts in Jamaica for four months. I begged her to take me with her until I realized I was wasting my time, and that my wife probably wouldn't be too happy about the whole ordeal anyway.

The next morning I led a 5:30 a.m. owl prowl at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary. We landed one great horned and half a dozen eastern screech owls, although we did much better at hearing them than seeing them. My eyes - trained through several of these programs - caught plenty of movement, but unfortunately we never had that spotlight moment we all seek. But no worries. This was "Owls and Omelets." Matt and Ellen Adams, our caretakers, had been up before dawn making breakfast for our attendees. We walked right out of the field and into the caretakers' cottage for souffles and omelets. I then left to run "Hawks and Harriers" at the Daniel Webster sanctuary. They both showed up.  We had hovering rough-legged hawks, feeding harriers and a jumpy long-eared owl. Our resident northern shrike called continuously near Fox Hill, after, of course, we got a wave of thirty common redpolls. On the way back we stepped out of the first observation blind to find a bluebird, then another, then...twelve of them. Sean McMahon, one of our gang for the morning, stuck around and photographed the young northern shrike shown at left. It was a beautiful day, but it was one of our last for quite some time.

  Friday, January 18 brought a new challenge. A Norwell resident had reported a red-headed woodpecker at her suet feeder on Thursday. We headed over after a stop at Fourth Cliff (from which I spied a flock of approximately 100 very cold dunlin) and staked it out for more than a half an hour. The bird noise in the area was terrific, including several singing Carolina wrens, but the cold weather, the increasing rain and the lack of a red-headed woodpecker sighting conspired to make us get back in the van and go elsewhere. Before we left the neighborhood we tuned into a calling red-shouldered hawk.

The next morning I walked Daniel Webster at sunrise, 7:07 a.m. The most exciting moment of the day, keeping in mind that rough-legged hawks were by then "been there, seen that," came when I realized that the American crows in the area were headed for a congressing session. A flock of about thirty-five headed along the eastern edge of the sanctuary and towards the nearby golf course. They landed and continued the cacophony they had carried with them, apparently to attract the rest of their murderous members from around the region. As I walked, crows flew in from all directions, one here, two there, one over there. By the time they had all gathered, my estimate was around seventy-five birds. They got louder and louder, and I got in my car and drove away. I just wanted to be safe in case it was me who was the problem.

Later that morning I led what we called "Friday Morning Rewind," retracing the steps of Friday Morning Birders for those who couldn't be there. In cases like this one, where we'd had an unsuccessful stakeout for a single species, I have to improvise, and I'm glad I did. We were driving along through North Scituate, headed for Minot Beach, and I was looking to the left and the long line of Canada geese out on the saltmarsh. I mentioned them aloud. "Canada, Canada, Canada, Canada, SNOW GOOSE!" I shouted as I slammed on the brakes and ran out of the van with the doors hanging open. First for the year, right there across from Three Ring Road.

Finally, the next day, David Ludlow, Matt and Ellen and I succumbed to the North Shore gull thing. We all wanted to add slaty-backed to the list for the year, and all of us wanted it for our life lists as well, so we drove north early. We reached the end of Route 128 and rotated between four spots: Niles Pond, Brace Cove, Eastern Point and the harbor. We had plenty of good sightings - glaucous gulls, Iceland gulls, a lesser black-backed gull (our second for the year, thanks to our trusty friend at Jenney Pond in Plymouth), three ruddy turnstones and a black-bellied plover in the wrack line at the cove, and a juvenile peregrine falcon - but never got the slaty-backed. I did a live radio spot on Ray Brown's Talking Birds on WATD 95.9 FM as we stepped out of the car at the point, pushed there too late by a reported sighting, the coldest non-report of my life. We moped into a diner and had a quick lunch, then headed home, only to find out the bird had settled onto Niles Pond for the afternoon while we were at lunch.

Bottom line? In the first three weeks of January I've picked up 85 species of birds, about a third of what I'll see all year in Massachusetts if all goes according to plan. Yes, red-headed woodpeckers and slaty-backed gulls would have been nice, but I can be patient. It's a new year list, but it's the same old life list. I'll get 'em eventually.