South Shore Journal

Snowbound

 
As of last Friday, this house in Marshfield looked the way most of us felt: snow-blasted.

 
But not all is lost. For those nature lovers out there, the fact is that snow makes some critters more visible, and even forces some into the open to find food. This short-eared owl on Duxbury Beach is part of a dying breed. Only one nest can be found in Massachusetts now, at a protected location. Needless to say, seeing one is quite a surprise for anybody in the state these days.

 
Other species come south when the winters up north aren't to their liking. Duxbury Beach has also been the home of this common redpoll, one of a flock of about fifty birds hanging out on the dunes. Don't even try to find one in summer in Massachusetts. It's a lost cause.

 
Glaucous and Iceland gulls, known as our "white-winged gulls," find our beaches in winter, like here at Ocean Bluff in Marshfield. Their overall whiteness makes them stand out from our usual trifecta of great black-backed, herring and ring-billed gulls.

 
If nothing else, the snow once in a while makes us look at our world a little differently.

 
These pictures were taken off the driveway at the North River Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield.

 
And, of course, some thnings don't change at all. Our little screech owl friend is still sitting in the sun in Marshfield, as it has been for two months. It winked at us the other day, making us believe that some day soon, all the snow will be gone, and we'll get on with our normal lives.

August 22-24: Old Shoalers

It wasn't the first time for me, but it was for everyone else. For those folks who have discovered the Isles of Shoals, nine rocky islands forming an archipelago off the Maine and New Hampshire border (which runs directly through the islands), the name evokes romanticism. Celia's Garden, Babb's Cove, Siren's Cove, Miss Underhill's Chair. Salt spray. Sea birds. Sunsets.

Yes, I'd been there before. In fact, I'd written a book about its history with two coauthors, Don Cann and Gayle Kadlik, Images of America: Isles of Shoals. I'd gone through my own moments of discovery in years passed. Uncle Oscar. The Appledore House. The Gosport Chapel. White Island Light. The Oceanic House. Sandpiper Beach.

So it seemed like a natural to arrange a trip to the islands for Mass Audubon, and for me to co-lead it. My projected co-leader, who desperately wanted to see "the Shoals," had to back out with twelve hours before kickoff. So Amy Quist, our newsest team member at South Shore Sanctuaries, jumped in. We started with some uninspiring birding in the midday sun at Plum Island and fried oysters at Bob Lobster. From there, it was up to Portsmouth and the Shoals Marine Lab dock for the ride to Appledore. Bonaparte's gulls greeted us on the way out of the mouth of the Piscataqua River, as did Whaleback Light and the tired looking Wood Island Life-Saving Station. In less than an hour, we were there, greeted by the lab staff. The Shoals Marine Lab is jointly run by the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University. Our visit coincided with the studies of a group of students working on the issue of sustainability and the carbon footprint the lab makes each day. As we loped around the island in search of birds and history, they toiled at their computers and in their classrooms. We would come together during meals throughout the weekend.

We checked into Founders Hall, dropping our bags into dorm-style housing. I shared a room with three other men, two of whom were separated from their wives for the next two nights by the arrangement. We met outdoors for our first walk of the trip, to Sandpiper Beach. We meandered down the stairs towards Babb's Cove, running across a muddy spot known as "the swale," where solitary and spotted sandpipers would spend the weekend picking away, sharing their feeding grounds with several least sandpipers, or "leasties." We passed the banding station, which was having a slow day, and pulled up in front of Celia's Garden, a site we'd visit several times in the next few days.

We poked around past "the swimming pool," a saltwater creation of the Laighton family in the 1800s that has outlasted the hotel for whose patrons it was concocted, and around the northwest corner of the island. We passed the northern reservoir where artist William Morris Hunt drowned himself so many years ago, and headed for the ledge overlooking the Devil's Dance Floor.

Dinner came, and then free time before lights out. Apparently, the gulls of the island, almost exclusively herring and great black-backed gulls, don't quite understand the concept of "lights out." They kept their noise up into the wee hours, lowering their calls to a decibel level still powerful enough to keep light sleepers awake.

Then, it happened. The sun rose, 5:20 a.m. The lulled gulls kicked into their version of the morning chorus, some just inches from our heads. Nobody spoke, but we were all awake. Are you kidding me? Thousands of gulls on the islands all start this early, this loudly, and we were subjecting ourselves to two mornings of this treatment? A staff member later told me that she had a dream one night that she was pumping up a rubber raft with a foot pump that gave the same wheeze as a young herring gull begging for food, only to wake up and find that gull really outside her window.

So we were up. Breakfast was at 7:30, and our boat trip was at 10. We ate and wandered down to the banding station for the first time, meeting bander David Holmes and his "band-aid," fifteen year-old Jeff. They had a bird in hand, a female American redstart, and gave our gang a show. They allowed us to walk the traplines with them, but we came up empty. We exchanged cell phone numbers, with promises to share sightings. We wandered off to see the Laighton family burial ground, Celia, Cedric, Oscar, mom and dad.

At ten we boarded the Heiser and headed for the exposed, raw geological features of Duck Island, Mingo Rock, Old Henry and more. Harbor seals met us on the inside of the islands, and gray seals on the outside. Rafts of common eiders floated by in big numbers, and ruddy turnstones inspected the rocks for food. We shot through the passage between Appledore and Smuttynose, by the Devil's Glen, past Dollar Rock, and headed for White Island Light, its lighthouse and the White/Seavey common tern colony. We circled Lunging Island, formerly the home of Uncle Oscar, and headed into Gosport Harbor. Stepping ashore on Star Island, we toured the Oceanic House, wandered out back to the Gosport Chapel and the Tucke Monument. We headed for the Smith Monument and the rocky southern shore, stopping at the old burial sites and, eventually, dropping way too much money in the island book shop.

I have to admit I was a bit sly. I knew the islands were small, and that our gang would have dsome down time. I hinted at the historical inconsistencies in the accounts of the Smuttynose murders, the tale that later became the novel The Weight of Water. I coaxed them into researching the story while they were there. At times, I'd step out onto the porch and find three noses in three books on three rocking chairs as the sun was going down. There's nothing like a murder mystery to get the juices flowing. That afternoon, we headed south, or at least planned to. The call came in. A sharp-shinned hawk had been caught in the nets!

We rushed across the swale, past the cove, to the banding station. We got an amazing up-close education moment. The run was on. Last year, the station banded three sharpies in three days. Since we arrived on island, they'd caught two. They'd make a third capture before we left.

So we moved south, past the old life-saving station, finding the foundation of the old academy for wayward boys, Crystal Lake (the hotel's ancient ice pond), and finally the rocky southern coast that offered views of Lunging, White, Star, Cedar and Smuttynose. We sat and accepted the sun's rays. A northern gannet, a youngster, zipped past, dipping a wing on the ocean's surface. We continued to sit, finding no reason to head back to our hall.

Dinner came, and we decided that if we lived on island for more than three days, we'd need to start a daily calisthenics routine. Some of us watched helplessly as a quick- moving gull swiped a burger from a plate just feet away. As he had a band  on his leg, we took his number: C58. We stuck around for the 8 p.m. presentation by the students working on sustainability, exchanging ideas for the betterment of the island. One birder, John, and I met with Mr. Holmes to compile the day's list. "When I was a young bander," Mr. Holmes said, "we considered thirty birds a bad day. Today we banded nine." Southerly winds were no help for this man and his trade. We headed home for one final evening's slumber.

Thank heavens for cloudy mornings. The gulls slept in until 5:50, giving us all a fighting chance. Those of us who roused early headed for the deck of the commisary. From there we were we could see from Boone Island, Maine, past Nubble Light in York, past Mt. Agamenticus, down the New Hampshire coast, all the way to Plum Island and Newburyport, Massachusetts. To the north, I called out an approaching bald eagle, a second-year bird that put thousands of gulls up into the air in fear. What power to hold! It continued in a straight line, oblivious of the effects of its mere presence, and disappeared to the south.

We had a plan of attack. We would start at Siren's Cove, visit the banding station, and then look for the rarity of rarities, the island's hybrid herring-lesser black-backed gull. The banding station was picking up pace. When we arrived, Mr. Holmes had a northern waterthrush in hand. Band-aid Jeff ran the lines while we scrutinized the bird, returning with a red-eyed vireo. Amy got the chance to release the bird and return it to the wild.

From there, we walked for Broad Cove, where Uncle Oscar landed his boat Twilight when the western shore was too rough. Gull Wrangler Bill, a volunteer from Pennsylvania, joined us on the walk and helped in our search. We came back empty, save for the filling lecture and anecdotes about the life histories of gulls he offered in the absence of our visual quarry.

After brunch, I offered to take anybody anywhere they wanted for the last few hours of our stay. We headed for Crystal Lake and the tidepools on the southern end of the island. Amy found herself a nice, wet, cooling seaweed scarf. Anne dipped her feet in the water. John and I scanned for birds passing the islands. But our time was up. We returned to Founders Hall, packed our bags, and headed home.

The list of birds we'd seen was interesting - an immature Baltimore oriole, a northern flicker on an island without trees, several sharp-shinned hawks, a passing whimbrel, a posing snowy egret. The Smuttynose Murders remained a mystery in the minds of many of our gang, while others thought they had it figured out. In any event, our trip had come to an end. I told our gang that while I would never steal the term "real old Shoalers" from the Laightons, the Thaxters, the Haleys and the other early families of the islands, the next time anyone asked them if they'd been to the Isles of Shoals, they could now say, "Oh, sure, Ive spent some time on Appledore. I'm an old Shoaler."

July 17-20: The Lowdown Downeast

It crept up on me this year. One early, snowy morning I was owling, and then BAM! Time to go see puffins in Maine.

We don't go directly to Machias Seal Island from the South Shore and Ipswich River Sanctuaries. Instead, we wander: through Bangor, have lunch at the Sea Dog, fly up the Airline and through the Deblois blueberry barrens. The first day is broken up well, as we stop here and there to seek a bird or two. The barrens this year were not quite barren. No upland sandpipers, but then, I haven't seen them there in any of the three years I've done this trip. Maybe it's me. We did score a vesper sparrow, three American bitterns, lots of ravens and a pair of turkeys in a distant tree. Even the eastern bluebirds were nice, adding to the indigo bunting we saw on the way up. Blueberries, bluebirds, blue jays, blue was the color of the day.

It wouldn't end up that way, though. We hit the Machias Motor Inn, our old familiar haunt. I walked out back with a scope and found our reliable American bald eagle, perched in a tree a ways down the Machias River, down from the "Bad Little Falls" that gives the town its name. We then went to Helen's for dinner and blueberry pie, but they were out! How could this be? You can't go to Helen's and not try the blueberry pie. But there we were, and there it wasn't. We voted to go without dessert, all fourteen of us, and to order three pies for the next evening's meal. The lobster, the scallops, the...well, everything was worth the wait.

At dinner, though, we compared notes with a group birding from the Carolinas. They were headed well north to find spruce grouses and boreal chickadees, and had not been able to land on Machias Seal Island. In fact, it had been a week since anyone had set foot on the island, due to the remnants of Hurricane Bertha. This was not good news for Carol Decker (the trip leader) and me. This happened last year. Circling the island is nice, but standing just a few feet from puffins is a different experience altogether.

Well, we had a day to wait anyway. We started birding early in the morning of the 18th, taking the East Side Road down to its lowest point. Warblers to the right, shorebirds to the left. Semipalmated sandpipers and plovers fed on the mudflats as the tide rose, while Swainson's thrushes called in the background. Up and down the roadside the smaller birds played: blue-headed vireo, chestnut-sided, yellow and magnolia warblers, and more.

The day continued at Boot Head Preserve. Two years ago, we got lucky and wandered into a family of spruce grouses, just after getting some audio returns from boreal chickadees in the dense forest. Last year, 0 for 2. This year, 2 for 2 again! That makes us 4 for 6 in three years, a .667  average. No major league manager could turn that away. The chickadees - multiple, yes - came zipping in and surrounded us. The spruce grouses, mother and two youngsters spooked, and then froze in a tree. Once they realized there was no danger, they resumed munching, giving us excellent opportunities to snap some photos. On the way back form the cove, I spied a tiny movement, what looked like a hummingbird moth, move from one side of the trail to the other. No! It was a fledgling black-throated green warbler. We didn't know that, of course, until the mother whooshed in and fed it. That afternoon we crossed the Rainbow Bridge to Campobello Island. We hit the hot spots - East Quoddy Head Light, FDR's summer home, etc. - finding a few pine siskins and a flock of red crossbills along the way. It was enough to keep us satiated until the next morning. That and the blueberry pie.

We hit the road at six a.m. om Saturday, on a straight line for Cutler. Just a few moments into the boat ride out to the island, bound in thick fog, the first puffins and razorbills showed themselves. It got better. We nearly ran over a northern fulmar, which, upon reflection, was probably injured. Soon, the island appeared, and the moment of truth arrived. The decision was made...we could land!

As fate would have it, I ended up in the same blind I was in two years ago. No matter. On Machias Seal Island, there's not a bad seat in the house. And, there are no seats in the blinds. Puffins lined up by the dozen a few feet away, and scurried across the roof like tiny reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh. Razorbills landed nearby, but kept a definite distance from the blinds. Common murres picked a spot even farther away.

Other birds surprised us. Savannah sparrows we expected, but the brown thrasher that shot by we did not. Neither did we plan on seeing the grasshopper sparrow that apparently only my blind saw. We spent what seemed like two hours in the blinds, a fantastic opportunity to do some up-close behavior observation. We left the island and circled it by boat, before spinning off to Gull Rock, where the seals play. On the way back to Cutler, while minke whales and harbor porpoises played to port, I called out an arctic tern floating on driftwood to starboard, alone on the sea. That was possibly the sighting of the day, until the red phalaropes blew by.

We stopped for lunch in downtown Cutler, popping into the coffee shop (she kept it open for us) for supplies. OK, for a whoopie pie or two. After that, we walked Western Head Preserve, finding more crossbills, catching up with a few black guillemots and enjoying the view from the water's edge. At the end of the day, we tried a few more side roads, and scurried home.

Sunday brought fog, fog and more fog. It definitely set the scene for the Carrying Place Cove bog. The bog is a seaside bog, cutting away with every incoming tide. That means that it's possible to walk right up and touch 12,000 years in the past, a time before homo anythingus ever walked on the North American continent. Mindboggling.

The fog slowly lifted as we approached the penultimate stop of the trip, West Quoddy State Park. The walk in was quiet, but the destination was worth it. The raised bog, full of sphagnum moss, pitcher plants, sundews, miniature black spruces and tamaracks and baked appleberries (which do actually taste like apple pies, some of us found out on this trip) was just enchanting. More crossbills. White-throated sparrows sang "O sweet Canada" in the distance, and a ring-necked pheasant called in the woods. For the third year in a row, the resident Lincoln's sparrow appeared to one of our three-time trip-goers, Ava. What are the odds? Descending from the bog, we found more black-throated green warblers and their young, and, biggest surprise of all, an immature Cape May warbler. On the way out, we wished the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse a happy 200th birthday.

After a quick stop at the easternmost gift shop in the United States (I highly reccomend a copy of Uses for Mooses), we went to our last stop and picked up a Nelson's sharptail sparrow. Bird number 100. The northern cardinal on the highway was number 101, beating last year's count by one.

May 4-12: Cape Fear and Pensacola

Once in a while I get pulled away to do something outside of the realm of nature. I do, after all, have a degree in American history, as well as a side career as a writer and historian (go ahead, Google me - you have my permission). And so it was that on May 4 I headed south on historian duty, helping to arrange a future Coast Guard history conference in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina and thence to Pensacola, Florida, to speak at the joint North American Society for Oceanic History and Council of American Maritime Museums conference. But hey, wildlife is everywhere.

In North Carolina, thanks to the kindness of my hosts Gary and Judy, I visited Southport and Beaufort, Bald Head Island and Oak Island, staying for a few days in the old life-saving station at Caswell Beach. From Gary and Judy's deck I watched the brown pelicans retreating at sunset, and the red knots resting on the beach as the sun rose. Laughing gulls overwhelmed the area, hanging around store parking lots as much as they did the beach. Boat-tailed grackles made sure there was never a quiet moment.

I added a handful of life birds to my list over those few days. White ibises dominate the scene, and there's even a feeding area that goes from green to white during the day because of their presence in the thousands, a place known as "ibis island." A solitary wood stork surprised me as we crossed the bridge to Caswell Beach. A flight of six black-necked stilts loped along by Judy and Gary's deck as he and I prepared to take a walk to look for potential loggerhead turtle nesting sites (instead we found plenty of fiddler crab holes and tracks). A Carolina chickadee called from the woods as we awaited the ferry to Bald Head Island, where a red fox jaunted past us on our golf cart. And a summer tanager twisted my head briefly until a pileated woodpecker spun me the other way round. That bird was not a lifer.

In four short days I visited two North Carolina Maritime Museums, two lighthouses, two Coast Guard stations, old Fort Caswell, two Life-Saving Service stations, and more. In Pensacola, I gave my talk on the history of the Louisville floating life-saving station (only one other life-saving station built by the United States Life-Saving Service was a floater, and that was off City Point in Dorchester) and its uniqueness in search and rescue history. Other than that, I sat back, enjoyed the rest of the lectures, visited the Naval Air Museum, and enjoyed a few days in the sun. I only added one lifer down there, an Eurasian collared dove.

It all had to end, of course. I came back on the 12th, and on the 13th, was back at work finding our local wildlife.

Finger Lake'n Good

On Thursday, April 24, for the third time in twelve months, I found myself pulling into the town of Skaneateles ("long lake" in Iroquois), New York, hoping that the public restrooms were open, and that the lake that shared the town's name would have a wide variety of ducks on it. You know, just like your average tourist does.

Well, one out of two ain't bad. The restrooms were open. Such was the inauspicious beginning of our third Finger Lakes birding adventure.

We - Carol Decker, director of the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, our thirteen program attendees joining us from Mendon to Sandwich, and me - headed west for Cayuga Lake, which we would circumnavigate over the next twenty-four hours in search of birds, mammals, amphibians, wildlflowers, and more. We started in the town of Cayuga, at the head of the lake, finding our first of many ospreys, a northern rough-winged swallow and several carpenter bees, one of which is pictured at left with his shadow.

Onward through rolling farmland we drove, pausing at promising, yet strangely disappointing spots along the way. We had calls and songs, but mostly distant. We couldn't even get the squirrels right. At Long Point State Park, we found a gray squirrel that was more red than gray. Still, nobody complained. By the end of the day, as we pulled into Ithaca and the parking lot of our hotel, we'd scored 47 species of birds, mourning cloak butterflies, woodchucks, a brown snake, and more.

We started fresh on day two, waking up for some 5 a.m. owling that went absolutely nowhere, except to the tree branch hangout of a singing purple finch. We regrouped and headed for one of our target destinations, Sapsucker Woods and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (I thought I heard a fish crow in the parking lot of the hotel as we left, but then realized that, according to Sibley, that would be too far west for their range). Each trip I've taken to Sapsucker has produced sapsuckers. Finally, the birding gods were with us. Our first sapsucker (of about ten), desperately wanted to be heard; we found it drumming on a metal sign on the street. On the way around the Wilson Trail, we spotted a singing swamp sparrow, a nest-building house wren, and a pair of bluebirds performing the same task. Later, from the Woodleton Boardwalk, we heard a pair of northern waterthrushes singing their spring song.

We poked through the Lab, spending some money at the gift shop, and then headed for the western shore of Cayuga Lake. After a quick visit to Buttermilk Falls State Park, we walked the gorge into Taughannock Falls, where ravens and northern rough-winged swallows took the day. A single black-throated green warbler sang on the south slope and white and red trilliums dotted the landscape. Our day ended with a teaser run-through of the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge.

Day three began in the town of Victor, with a short drive through Rochester on the way to Braddock Bay. We lingered at the hawkwatch there, amazed at the building kettles in the distance, and awed by the beauty of broad-winged hawks soaring closely overhead. Two American pipits flew overhead, a bald eagle perched in a tree in the distance, an orchard oriole flashed in and out of view, and four caspian terns dove into the bay. Yellow warblers sang heartily and a gray catbird made a very, very brief appearance.

Southward we pushed through a powerful thunderstorm, to the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, where the site's fiftieth anniversary celebration was taking place. There we met a man who brought up the name of Dutch Barney, the gentleman who provided Mass Audubon with one of its little known gems, the High Ledges Wildlife Sanctuary. He had brought Dutch and his wife in for their last visit to their beloved site before they passed, and wanted to know how it was being kept. And did I mention there was cake?

On a pretty good sugar rush, we headed toward the Cayuga Overlook, where we sighted pied-billed grebes, an ancient bald eagle's nest, white-crowned sparrows, northern pintails, and more. Nesting black terns were due any day, and there had even been a brief sighting that morning. A short walk down the Onondaga Trail brought out calling gray tree frogs, more yellow warblers, a brown creeper and a surprise blue-headed vireo. Two kestrels emerged from a box and put on a show for us on the way out. Day total? Seventy-two species, plus twenty-two woodchucks on the road from Iroquois to Victor, just over a one-a-minute pace.

Day three began back in Victor again, with a quick run west to Mendon Ponds Park to find our only cedar waxwings of the trip. At 9:45, I joined Ray Brown on his Talkin' Birds radio program. (Don't tell him, but it was at a rest stop and not Montezuma as I said on the air; we were less than four minutes away when the cry for a bathroom break arose, and I had to oblige our guests). At Montezuma, the purple martin colony had returned, northern shovelers, blue-winged teals, American coots, redheads and canvasbacks fed in the main pool. Carp tried crazily to force their way in from the nearby feeder canal, and from the overlook at the Tschache Pool we spied seven bald eagles, approximately twenty-five great blue herons (nesting on the ground), another pied-billed grebe, two tundra swans and more. As we watched, a fish crow called, circled the tower, and flew away. We posed for a group picture, and we drove through the Mucklands for home.

After four days, we could claim 103 species of birds, snapping turtles, deer, muskrats, spring azure butterflies, trout lilies, Carolina spring beauties, garter snakes, marsh marigolds, and even a bullfrog. The skies darkened and the temperature dropped as we drove east, from 75 to 45. There were plenty of jokes about turning around and heading back, but that day will come. I know that next year at this time, I'll probably be making this report again.

Back from the Rock

It was a weekend full of Nantucket surprises, even despite heavy prep time. I did my due diligence, contacting Nantucket's birding guru, Ken Blackshaw, for hot sightings, and brought the list with me. Carol Decker, the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary director, and I chased down some of our old favorites and mixed in some of the new.

We started in the fields of the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfieldon Friday morning. Our walk around the grasslands was highlighted by a male osprey who was so adamant about not sharing his fish with his mate that he actually ripped it away from her and flew off with it; northern harriers hunting over the fields; a Cooper's hawk perched on a heavy vine about twenty feet away; a belted kingfisher on a wood duck box in the wet panne; a gorgeous male eastern bluebird; and a wild turkey that ran away upon our approach, but diligently stayed to the mowed trails, as any visitor should do.

The ferry ride from Hyannis to Great Harbor was, as usual, invigorating. Either that or it was so cold topside that I was happily delirious. Actually, I take that back. The ride over was tropical when compared to the ride back. The wildlife stole the show - red-throated loons, common loons, northern gannets, long-tailed ducks by the hundreds, all three species of scoters, a pair of Bonaparte's gulls, a razorbill and a belted kingfisher chasing a red-breasted merganser. American oystercatchers greeted us as we pulled into the harbor.

We shared breakfast at 5 a.m. before heading for Smith's Point - or what's left of it. Last year we walked for more than an hour on the sand to watch the lift-off of the long-tailed ducks, a Nantucket nature specialty. This year we barely had gone ten minutes before we were greeted by an impassable, 150 to 200 foot wide cut that had separated Smith's Point from the Madaket mainland. We stood there dumbfounded by the power of nature as common eiders and common loons flew over our heads, and four piping plovers peeped at our feet. We lingered, but knew that as the sun came up our options would begin to wane, and so headed for other points of interest: North Head Long Pond, Eel Point Road, Miacomet Pond, Polpis Harbor and Sconset.

Sconset did not disappoint, as we located numerous Iceland and lesser black-backed gulls. Buffleheads by the hundreds had formed tight flocks, ready to head north. An eastern phoebe flicked its tail in some seaside thickets, and a lone early barn swallow worked the beach for goodies. At Sankaty Head Lighthouse, two snow buntings lifted off in the face of a peregrine falcon that was sitting nearby. It turned out that when he flew, he had bells attached to his legs, a kept bird wearing his jesses. The owner appeared and called him back in with the promise of a frozen quail, which he readily devoured. We learned that what we were watching was a peregrine/gyrfalcon hybrid. He allowed us to take all the photos we wanted before getting into his master's truck and perching on the seat back for the ride home. As the sun set, we found a beach that offered a northern gannet feeding frenzy before heading to dinner at the Atlantic Cafe.

Sunday morning, we slept in - til 5:30. At 6, we stood in the state forest off Lover's Lane listening to the strange hoots of a northern saw-whet owl and the sweet little song of a singing brown creeper. As we left there, a migration wave of several dozen, perhaps as many as a hundred yellow-rumped warblers swept past. We tried Miacomet Pond again, and added a pied-billed grebe; visited the marshes by the Nantucket Life Saving Museum and encountered the man himself, Ken Blackshaw, calling in a Virginia rail; and found the island's famed glaucous gull working the remains of the scallop pile at Jetties Beach. While standing there I reported live to Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds on WATD 95.9 FM about all the fun we'd had during the weekend. Seventy-six species of birds, in all light, in all habitats. We rode the ferry home in the cold (yes, we could have gone below decks, but where's the fun in that?) and parted company.

Tonight I'm off to find ritualizing American woodcocks at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary, and am preparing for "Timberdoodles and Tapas" this Saturday. In three weeks, I'm off again, to Sapsucker Woods and the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Six days after that, it's North Carolina and Florida!  What a spring this is going to be.

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.

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.

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.