brewster's linnet . com – Page 93

WIR 11/3-11/9

Wednesday 11/3: Tried Cambridge Res and Flint’s in the morning. Barely light and they had a layer of fog which made it really hard to see. Four goldeneye at the res were the only things I picked out. With extra time, stopped at Hardy Pond as well with 1 Bufflehead, many Ruddy, and a cormorant that appeared to be in the process of getting pulled underwater by something.

Thursday 11/4: Went to the riverwalk at lunch but the rain picked up, so I saw 15 Ring-billed Gulls.

Friday 11/5: Tried Cambridge Res again in the morning, too dark and not much. Went back to the riverwalk which was pretty quiet.

Saturday 11/6: Started with a Cambridge Res/Flint’s Pond loop. A female-type Black Scoter and an adult Bald Eagle at the res got my Waltham yearlist to 150. Flint’s had a female Surf or White-winged Scoter that was way too far out. On to Meriam’s corner which was pretty quiet (few pipits, lots of flyover robins and stuff but nothing of real interest). After lunch, I went back to Flint’s and spent 30 minutes wandering the woods before I found the scoter slightly closer and confirmed it as a Surf. Also had 9 Bufflehead, 7 Common Goldeneye, 6 Common Merganser, and 15 Hooded Merganser. Then went around the Arlington Res. Five shovelers and four coots were the only interesting things on the water. Busa was loaded with juncos and I managed a Fox (res bird #140) and White-crowned Sparrow among them.

Sunday 11/7: Went on the BBC trip to the NH coast. Stopped at Plum on the way home to finally get Cattle Egret onto my state list (not exciting enough a bird to chase and I’ve never been in the area of one until now somehow).

Monday 11/8: Somehow got out during the sunny break. Ran over to Purgatory Cove. Not much in the cove, but scanning across the river towards Edgewater Drive, I found 4 Gadwall, 3 Pied-billed Grebe, and about 5 each Ring-necked and Ruddy Ducks. John Hines had seen those and much more over the last week mostly further up the river, so it was nice to get them in Waltham.

Tuesday 11/9: Prospect Hill was pretty quiet beyond a Hairy Woodpecker destroying a tree (the falling pieces looked like they’d hurt if someone got hit). Not sure why they close the road on 10/29 for the winter.

WIR 10/27-11/2

Wednesday 10/27: Tried Great Meadows again before work for Le Conte’s and Nelson’s Sparrows. No luck with those but 2 Rusty Blackbirds and another bittern were good. Hardy Pond had over 55 Ruddies at lunch.

Thursday 10/28: Beaver Brook and Waverly Oaks Marsh for a change. Not a whole lot.

Friday 10/29: Flint’s Pond before work: Blackpoll, Hooded Merganser. BBN at lunch: nothing.

Saturday 10/30: Great Meadows in the morning. No luck with any Ammodramus but a meadowlark flew over (#171 for the refuge) along with a Horned Lark (flyover, only realized after another birder asked if that’s what it was) and a Rusty Blackbird. Purgatory Cove in the afternoon was fairly quiet.

Sunday 10/31: Rock Meadow and BBN. Highlights were a flyover pipit and a BT Blue at Rock Meadow and a Peregrine at the West Meadow. Quick check of the north end of the Cambridge Res after (1 Song Sparrow, 1 Blue Jay) and then Waltham St. Fields (1 snipe, 6 flyover siskins).

Monday 11/1: Paine was quiet beyond a couple meadowhawks still around.

Tuesday 11/2: Duck Ponds were quiet. Rusty Blackbird at the end of Leitha, 2 away from 150 in Waltham for the year.

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.)

WIR 10/20-10/26

Wednesday 10/20: Started the day at Great Meadows hoping for yesterday’s martin sp without luck. Tons of sparrows and ducks. Purgatory Cove at lunch: 2 Pied-billed Grebe, 1 wigeon, 1 Blackpoll. Back to Great Meadows again: Rough-winged Swallow, Bittern, Peregrine putting on a good show, and a Greater White-fronted Goose that flew in as light disappeared (luckily it was calling and drew attention). Also had a mink running around at our feet.

Thursday 10/21: Duck ponds had nothing.

Friday 10/22: Prospect Hill was too windy but a Hermit Thrush and 7 turkeys were good.

Saturday 10/23: Started with Cambridge Res (nothing) and Flint’s Pond (4 Black Scoter). On through Nine Acre Corner to the School St. Fields in Acton where the Barnacle Goose was very obvious. Lots of pipits as well and a huge flock of grackles went over. Almost everyone there ended up at Great Meadows. Spent 4 hours there with no martin but got the Grasshopper Sparrow and 2 bitterns, including one at very close range. Quick stop at the north end of the Cambridge Res on the way home for lunch (nothing) then back to Great Meadows with parents for another couple hours. A swift and a couple swallows overhead and the mink made another pass but not much else. Pictures coming in another post sooner or later.

Sunday 10/24: Spent 3 hours wandering around Dunback. Highlights: Fox Sparrow (finally one in October), American Tree Sparrow, and another Grasshopper Sparrow. Got home and found siskins on Miriam and then ruddies, ring-necks, and hooded mergansers seeing if they were anywhere near Hardy Pond. Trying for them again later, a Merlin was perched on an antenna.

Monday 10/25: Poked around BBN, tons and tons of juncos and not a whole lot else.

Tuesday 10/26: Prospect Hill had a bluebird or two flying over and nothing else.

WIR 10/13-10/19

Wednesday 10/13: Waltham St. Fields before work had a Vesper Sparrow. BBN at lunch had an Eastern Tailed-Blue and lots of the usual.

Thursday 10/14: Community gardens were quiet. Ran over to the Arlington Res and Busa Farm after work but couldn’t turn up the Blue Grosbeak.

Friday 10/15: Hardy Pond had Ruddies and the Cambridge Res had an Osprey.

Saturday 10/16: Cambridge Res had 2 Common Mergansers, Flint’s Pond had nothing. Caught up with the Blue Grosbeaks at Arlington Res along with an Orange-crowned Warbler (and a very brief view of the Tennessee).

Sunday 10/17: Started at Danehy Park with 5 White-crowns, 2 Blue-headed Vireos, a Merlin, a Dickcissel, and another Orange-crowned. McLennan Park was quiet. Great Meadows had a Chimney Swift, 20 Tree Swallows, and 4 Pectoral Sandpipers.

Monday 10/18: Merlin at BBN.

Tuesday 10/19: Cambridge Res and Flint’s Pond before work. Res was pretty quiet although one of the ravens flew over. Loon and Bufflehead on Flint’s (but no Red-necked Grebe). Lots in the trees, pretty sure I was hearing Pine Siskin but not positive. Paine at lunch: Blue-headed Vireo and Phoebe, but more interesting was a huge flock of grackles noisily moving through the woods.

[audio:http://www.brewsterslinnet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/grackles.mp3]

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.

WIR 10/6-10/12

Wednesday 10/6: Checked various ponds for sea ducks before work. Found a Ruddy at Hardy Pond and not much at the Cambridge Res or Flint’s Pond.

Thursday 10/7: BBN at lunch. Pretty quiet (multiple Accipiter passes and clouds clearing 20 minutes after I got back to work didn’t help). One Red Admiral was nice.

Friday 10/8: Back side of Prospect Hill: 2 Hermit Thrush, Winter Wren.

Saturday 10/9 – Monday 10/11: Separate post

Tuesday 10/12: Purgatory Cove: 2 American Wigeon, 2 Pied-billed Grebe (on the river), only 1 Wood Duck.

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.

WIR 9/29-10/5

Wednesday 9/29: BBN was very quiet along the parkway.

Thursday 9/30: Duck ponds were pretty quiet at lunch time. Final evening Great Meadows walk had a bunch of Chimney Swifts, a Cliff Swallow or two, and a few of the usual raptors.

Friday 10/1: Hardy Pond had more Chimney Swifts, a House Wren, and a couple warblers between rain showers.

Saturday 10/2

Sunday 10/3: Led a walk to BBN. Stayed cool and cloudy. Lots of Chipping Sparrows, robins, and Yellow-rumps and not much else. After the walk, checked Rock Meadow (nothing), McLean (Red-eyed Vireo), Waltham St (White-crowned Sparrow and Purple Finch), and Cambridge Res (Greater Yellowlegs).

Monday 10/4: Purgatory Cove had a few Chimney Swifts and way less Wood Ducks.

Tuesday 10/5: Prospect Hill finally had my first junco of the fall.