birding – Page 13 – brewster's linnet . com

250/200

Just noticed that the Canvasback last week was #250 in the state, about time I reached that number (only 80+ behind the record).

For another year milestone, I ran over to the Cambridge Res today at lunch hoping to catch up with the Horned Grebe that’s been around for a few days (thanks Marj and John). I pulled up and it was pretty much the first bird I saw, #200 for the county this year. Further down, I found the big duck/coot flock and was able to pick out 4 Greater Scaup, #201. That ties my mark from last year. With any luck, Pink-footed Goose will break it by Saturday.

Harry Hits the Press

All the winter journals are coming out and Harry gets several mentions.

In American Birds (the Christmas Bird Count Summary), Wayne Petersen, in the New England summary, writes:

Top billing for the 110th New England CBC belongs to the Common Chaffinch on the Greater Boston count. Although the bird’s provenance may never be known with certainty, this species’ periodic occurrence in northeastern North America has led to its inclusion on the A.O.U. Checklist of North American Birds (1998). Present at a feeder throughout December, the chaffinch was observed and photographed by dozens of birders and eventually banded, hence its identity was unequivocal.

An excellent photo taken on count day (at about 7AM so barely light out).

It looks like the magazine will be online at some point, link to be added here when I see it.

And in North American Birds, the Changing Seasons column by Ned Brinkley (2.4MB PDF) says (p. 221):

The backyard produces endless questions to which we have no answer. Shall we take a vote on how a Common Chaffinch got to Waltham, Massachusetts this season (Figure 12)? I suspect we would find a range of views. Two and a half months into its stay, the bird was captured so that feather samples could be taken, in hopes that the stable isotopes therein would provide clues to where the bird came from. With extensive releases of Eurasian finches (as well as Great Tits, Blue Tits, and Eurasian Jays) in the Chicago area in recent years, we may have a more colorful avifauna now, but we have a formidable challenge if we want to make sense of records of Common Chaffinch, European Goldfinch, and Eurasian Siskin, all of which stray to Iceland and are thus potential visitors to the Northeast, at least. To many birders, released birds might seem a negligible factor, because we ourselves see so few. One industrious birder-ornithologist, curious about a rash of reports, set out to locate as many records of European Goldfinch as possible (Craves 2008); she turned up over 400 records of the species, spanning almost half the continent, including multiple breeding records from the Midwest. So far, these escapee-expatriates have not begun to barnstorm their new continent in the way that Eurasian Collared-Doves have. But what do their patterns of dispersal look like? Might they end up in Massachusetts or eastern Canada, places that have most of the continent’s records of vagrant European passer- ines considered legitimate? Other Old World backyard birds, such as a Violet Turaco that frequented a feeder at Lac-Beauport, Québec through December—“a shocking sight in the snow,” according to regional editors—are less likely to provoke debates about provenance.

Figure 12 is one of Jeremiah’s excellent shots.

And in the New England summary, Pam Hunt writes:

On par with the Bay State’s shelduck was a Common Chaffinch that appeared at a Waltham feeder 1 Dec and stayed through Mar (J. Forbes, m.ob., ph.). The bird was captured 15 Feb and feather samples taken for isotopic analysis, the intent being to determine where it was hatched. Given the cluster of escaped European fringillids in the Midwest in recent years, this individual could certainly be an escapee; perhaps the isotopic truth is out there.

One of my banding photos is on page 232 (A Common Chaffinch that appeared 1 December 2009 at a feeder in Waltham, Massachusetts was captured 15 February 2010 for banding. In an attempt to determine the bird’s provenance, feather and blood [??] samples will also be analyzed.)

Weekend of Orange

Crowns

Cooperative bird at Busa Farm on Saturday.

And at Danehy Park Sunday. Somehow didn’t notice the missing tail in the field. Like the superlong twig-leg.

Big Sit and Other Long Weekend Stuff

With the 3 day weekend, I was out and about for most of it.

Saturday started with a walk around Beaver Brook North. I began by retracing the route of last week’s walk. Fewer warblers and sparrows but 4 Eastern Bluebirds were new. On the way back, I continued through the Met State portion of the reservation. It was pretty quiet on the whole but a Purple Finch on the parkway was nice. Even nicer was the Purple Finch that dropped onto the deck shortly after I got home (first in about 12 years in the yard I think):

In the afternoon, my parents and I went for a walk around Great Meadows. Beyond a big flock of swifts and swallows, there wasn’t much (still not a lot of visible water even with the new platform open) but it was a pleasant walk.

Sunday was the Big Sit, the annual event where you confine yourself to a single spot and try to rack up the most species. This was the first time I’ve done it and if the wind was a bit less constant it would have been a really great day. Not that it was bad.

I wasn’t quite as crazy as my co-sitters Chris and Josh and I joined them at the Parking Lot 7 tower at Plum Island around 7:30. Hopefully one of them will post more, but here’s some highlights:

Two Whimbrel dropped in for a few minutes.

Chris found a Yellow-billed Cuckoo late in the morning.

I took a lunchtime break for the Curlew Sandpiper (and Black Skimmers). Probably 50 people have almost identical photos but here’s two of mine:

The Cuckoo returned for the afternoon:

Those photos were a second apart at most, didn’t even realize I had a flight shot until reviewing them.

It was pretty dark at 6:30, so we headed out content with 68 species (one of us should have stayed to count the woodcock that flushed a few feet up the road).

Sunday began with the Menotomy walk at Rock Meadow. Birds all over, including several White-crowned Sparrows and 5 species of warbler but nothing really good (Merlin did turn out to be #99 for me at Rock Meadow). A few birds were photogenic:

After the walk, we headed to the Arlington Res where a Snow Goose had been hanging out for the last couple days. We were joined by Leslie almost immediately and ran into Bob and Chris on the way. They had no luck with the goose or Rusty Blackbird that had been around as well, but did have a lot of sparrows and warblers (mostly what we had just seen at Rock Meadow). We found most of those and added a Blue-headed Vireo. Most of the warblers and sparrows were at the Busa fields and on return from there, many geese were noisy, which suggested that they had just arrived. I plopped the scope down to scan through and sure enough, the Snow Goose was among them.

We worked our way around, chatting with Soheil and Bob (again). There wasn’t much else the rest of the way, so we finished pretty quickly (and I ran back around to get some goose photos). Just over 100 species on the weekend.

Baird's

Today’s highlight was a Baird’s Sandpiper at the northern end of the Cambridge Res. When there was one (or two) here a few years ago, views were way distant and in bad light. Today’s bird started at medium range and ended up being the closest bird to the road (within 5 feet!).

Slightly larger size and much longer wings compared to Semipalmated Sandpipers are obvious here.

Size, long wings, and dark rump. Think that’s a Least below.

General buffiness, long wings, very fine-tipped bill.

And another flight shot that I really like.

Extreme Pelagic 2010

Not going to write up a full report (will link to the BBC page when it’s online) but the overnight pelagic was quite spectacular. One of the first birds was a Great Skua and things got better from there. By midmorning of the second day, the following announcement was made: “To put things in perspective, the one day high count for White-faced Storm-Petrels in North America was 5. Set yesterday. We’re approaching 15.”

Only complaint was that I spent the first day on the upper deck and had a brutal time getting things in focus. That and I never got a good feel for the Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, only picking out 1 or 2 out of the 5. Missing some of the better landbirds (Red-headed Woodpecker and Purple Finch) wasn’t great but they were distant and only identified through photographs later.

So, some photos:

The skua

Long-tailed Jaeger (didn’t realize I had this shot until I got home), thought I only had the adjacent Parasitic.

The adjacent Parasitic

Manta Rays

Only a couple White-faced Storm-Petrel shots, up to 8 different birds are in the flickr set (along with more skuas and some phalaropes and other stuff with more common stuff to be added later).

Four life birds (Skua, storm-petrels, and Parasitic Jaeger (yes I got both skuas before I got a Parasitic)) plus state Long-tailed Jaeger.

Already can’t wait for next year!

#271

After this morning’s birding, I came home, watched tennis, and then took a nap. Not too long after getting up, the doorbell rang. John Hines was passing by and figured I might want to know that he just had found a Yellow-crowned Night-Heron at the Cambridge Res. After last year’s screwup, this was a very wanted bird in the county for me.

I got boots, camera, and binoculars in seconds and five minutes later we were at the res. Fortunately, the bird was right where John had left it and it stayed in the general area for the few minutes we watched. It was dark and the bird was behind vegetation, but I managed a couple passable photos of county bird #271:

Forgot to up the ISO on these but not too bad (and there was a chance it would have walked out of sight while I fiddled with the camera).

Five minutes later, we were back home ready for dinner. Hope the bird sticks around and others get to enjoy it.

Orchard Orioles

The big highlight from Rock Meadow today was a family of Orchard Orioles. I’ve been hoping to confirm breeding for several years now and finally succeed today.