Thanks Brian, Kim, Jeff, etc! And everyone else along the way too.
Tag: milestone
Mac 2
The Fenway MacGillivray’s isn’t the only one currently in Massachusetts. One was found on 11/21 in Medford by Anna Piccolo. It’s in an area that’s less accessible than Fenway and isn’t as cooperative, but it’s a new bird for me in the county so I headed over today.
After a bit of GPS confusion, we arrived at Wright’s Pond and started to look for the correct spot. Luckily, Leslie and Barry were walking out successfully. They told us that there were plenty of people looking so we hurried over.
At the correct spot (which was only a short distance away), we ran into Anna and Patience and could see Marj and Renee working down below. Almost immediately I heard the bird chipping right up close. It proved to be illusive but after starting down the hill, I got two brief flashes of yellow (enough to count it combined with the chipping).
Everyone moved partway down the hill and we began to wait. There were long periods of silence followed by a quick chip or two. Occasionally there’d be a little bit of movement but it never stayed in one place and was very hard to get anything approaching a view. At one point I did get it on the ground and could pick up the eye arcs and gray head but couldn’t get anyone else on the spot.
This continued for almost an hour. At times the bird was fairly noisy but the call was very hard to pinpoint (often sounded to be bouncing back and forth between several spots). Finally, it popped up in the open at the bottom of the slope and everyone got acceptable views. I even managed a couple photos, the best (I use that loosely) of which is below.
Not surprisingly, everyone took off after that. So, county bird #268 but more importantly, county year bird #200. That’s the first time I’ve hit that number and is not overly easy to do working full time (although given the number of regular birds I’ve missed this year, it shouldn’t be all that hard). The lousy butterfly season ruined my goal of 325 combined birds, butterflies, and odes, but that appears to be a decent goal and hopefully one for next year.