February 20, 2008 - Looks like snow again...
Yup, that's what the forecast is telling us for next Friday and Saturday, and in this case, I don't mind one bit. February has been kind to us, with some rather temperate breaks here and there, getting up into the fifties at times. More than we could ask for, if you ask me. And the birding has been fun. So was the origami class our caretaker, Ellen Adams held, at left.
On February 8, David Ludlow and I took the Friday Morning Birders up to my neck of the woods, up onto a neck of land known as Hull. Yes, Nantasket Beach. Yes, where I grew up. We didn't mean, at first, to go there, but after an unsuccessful search for a Townsend's solitaire in Hingham, we suddenly had one of those "Well, we're this far north" moments that hit us from time to time, and as such decided to check out the Hull Redevelopment Authority land, a parcel now comically four decades in the "redevelopment" stage. In the meantime, some pretty interesting bird sightings have taken place here. That day we found a flock of forty or so horned larks, a winter specialty.
When we go to the HRA land, we also go to the Meade Avenue overlook, and would be remiss if we bypassed Straits Pond without a glance. We were glad we stopped. After finding another small flock of horned larks, we came across a nice discovery, a Barrow's goldeneye. Limiting ourselves to spots outside of Plymouth for a few weeks, we had become resigned to the fact that we had missed the Barrow's on Great Herring Pond, and would probably not see one this year at all. This guy made up for that one. The Iceland gull off Crescent Beach wasn't bad either. Neither was the flock of purple sandpipers off Minot Beach, below.
A windy morning on Duxbury Beach the following Sunday brought out nothing special, and the freezing temperatures on the following day made me thankful to be indoors. That morning I gave a talk on local history to the fourth graders in Hull, an excitable group that taught me a thing or two I had never known before about our common home town. On Valentine's Day I walked the trails of both the North River and Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuaries with the South Shore quest booklet folks, allowing them to test out my new masterpieces, "The Owl's Quest" and "Hannah Eames' Quest," in preparation for their launch in April. Heavy rains the night before had made the trails beyond soggy, but the trips were fun nonetheless.
On Friday the 15th, we birded again, with mixed results. We had been pre-alerted to a feeder flock of common redpolls, one that actually showed up on cue. On the way to see them, I spied a sharp-shinned hawk in a puddle, and when we reversed direction, we watched it fly off with what we believed was a northern flicker in its talons. After an hour, we had barely reached double digits in species. The woods around Scituate and Hingham were silent. We moved to the coast, and ended the day with a flurry, 46 species strong.
That afternoon, I joined our regional scientist, Robert Buchsbaum, in placing 40 coverboards on the North River Wildlife Sanctuary. When the spring rains arrive, it'll be time for red-backed salamanders to come out and be counted. Through briars and downed trees we marched, trying to move as adroitly as possible in straight lines. Hah! Fat chance. But we tried our best. The next morning, I led a walk at Daniel Webster at sunrise (6:38 a.m.), the Friday Morning Rewind trip (9-12), finding bobcat tracks at Wampatuck State Park, and then gave a talk at Kennedy's Garden Center on Route 3A in Scituate on attracting birds to your yard by landscaping with native plants. I gave the same talk last night in Pembroke for the Mattakeessett Garden Club.
As for this weekend, if the snow can hold off until Friday night, that would be nice. If it could give us a nice blanketing on the Hull peninsula, preferably one that lasts into Sunday morning, that would be cool, too. I'll be leading trips both day based on one of my books, When Hull Freezes Over. I could use the ambience.
