Life has gotten in the way over the past few weeks, a new, precious life, to be precise. While my wife and I have welcomed our first son into the world, my time outdoors has been limited. But the few times I have been out, I've been able to snap some photographs that have captured some of the essence of the season. Here they are, with brief comments. I'll resume normal postings next week, as I return to the great outdoors more frequently.
This guy, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, we found down at High Pines on Duxbury Beach. We have four woodpeckers that are quite common in our region - downy, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers and northern flickers - then yellow-bellied sapuckers, pileated woodpeckers and, extremely rarely, red-headed woodpeckers. On the list, therefore, of woodpeckers we expect to see, this comes in fifth of seven, a nice sighting.
I was walking through the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary talking about foliage with a friend when I heard a peep, and saw a chipmunk scurry away. Once in his heart-shaped tree hole, it pointed a wary eye out to watch until we walked away. I had time enough, though, to snap this shot.
We have a weird relationship with eastern bluebirds at Daniel Webster. Is it the wood? Is it the grass? Are we too close to the ocean? Whatever the reason, bluebirds visit the sanctuary in spring, inspect the boxes we have throughout the grasslands, then fly away. They return in the fall and inspect them again. And that's it.
I'll spare you the gory details of this sighting, other than to say there was an English house sparrow involved that would rather have not met this merlin, a small bird-hunting falcon. We found it atop a utility pole in the heart of Center Marshfield, and in the end, we were the spectacle. When two vanloads of people are staring at something through binoculars, people want to know what the heck is going on.
We got grackled. One rainy day at the office I heard a squawk outside my window, pulled up the shade, and was blown away by the sight of several hundred common grackles at our feeder stations. When they arrived, our regulars - chickadees, titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers - vanished from sight.
Although much maligned for their noisiness and belligerence toward other birds, grackles can be quite beautiful. The iridescence of the feathers on their heads can be stunning when viewed up close. My advice? When the warblers are gone for the year, the leaves are off the trees and snow is on the ground, examine a grackle. You'll see what I mean.
This great blue heron was rushing from one side of the Green Harbor River to the other on a very foggy Friday morning. His cousins, the black-crowned night herons which we had tried to visit, were nowehere to be found.
Elsewhere, this northern harrier was taking a break from hunting over the grasses of Mounce's Meadow in Marshfield. While the grounds have gone from meadow to community gardens and corn fields over the past year, they're still good for birds. Meadow voles, which have been wreaking havoc on locally grown pumpkins, are simply delicious to predators like the harrier.
It's a shame that something so beautiful can be so bad for us. Invasives species like bittersweet provide their pulse of color to the late fall, but do so at the expense of some of our native plants. Perhaps the color is their defense against us tearing them out. We hate to destroy what's beautiful, even when it's the right thing to do.
Fall is nearly over, but we'll keep rolling right into and through winter. This Friday, it's Friday morning birders, and Saturday it's a walk at Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in search of hawks and owls. I'm still checking in on the North Hill Marsh Wildlife Sanctuary every week, compiling data for our migration season waterfowl survey. As always, I hope to see you on the trails.