So the Waltham Land Trust duck walk was today. Luckily it was fairly warm (although the wind made it feel a bit cool) and the path was mostly clear.
I don’t want to say unfortunately, but 50 people showing up was rather scary. Once we got to the first wooden overlook, it turned out ok. Until then it was a big clustered and crazy (the fact the the hoodie disappeared before most people got on it didn’t help much). At the overlook, we were able to get nice looks at the Hooded Mergansers and Ring-necked Ducks and spent a good bit of time getting everyone to the front to see. The ring-necked show at the second overlook was even better and the female Common Goldeneye was around for a while as well.
We lingered there for quite some time. I debated ending the walk there as there wasn’t likely to be much up further, but someone who had walked over to the start mentioned seeing a few things he didn’t know across Newton St. so we headed over. A few more mergansers and mallards were about it, although a few of us spotted 2 black ducks as we returned.
Although not the birdiest walk, people seemed very excited. Many commented on how they weren’t aware of how much could be found along the Charles (or any small bit of habitat in general). Between seeing this and corresponding with others about various places in Waltham, I’ve realized that there’s a need to document as many places publicly as possible. I’m going to start adding to the 3 site pages I already have up (both more sites and more details about the individual sites) and need to start looking at the eBird import tool to get all my old data up there.
And we saw:
- Canada Goose – 30
- American Black Duck – 2
- Mallard – 100
- Ring-necked Duck – 12
- Hooded Merganser – 11
- Ring-billed Gull – 40
- Rock Pigeon – 2
- Downy Woodpecker – 1
- American Crow – 4
- American Robin – 4
- Northern Mockingbird – 2
- European Starling – 25
- Dark-eyed Junco – 2
- Common Grackle – 1
- House Sparrow – 20