Cousin Carol's Cape Cod Birds

My cousin Carol is an enthusiastic birder, and I managed to get a few shots of her goldfinch hanging out near the feeders when I visited her down the cape almost a month ago. 

Actually, there were a few goldfinch darting in and out.  These two were usually together.


There were a few Baltimore Orioles, as well.  We could hear them singing away all afternoon.


On the way to Carol's house, we stopped at small nature sanctuary in the town of Bourne.  This is where we saw all the Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, Osprey, and Cormorants last August.  We were a bit disappointed to see only a few birds; mostly Canadian Geese, Mallards, and Gulls. 




My husband took this shot of two geese on the marsh.  (The metal structure on the left is an osprey nest.)



I cropped the image down to include only the Canadian Geese, but was hardly thrilled with the result. 


Then I zoomed all the way in to check out the osprey nest in detail.  (I've become quite skilled at deciphering the blurred results of photos taken from too far away.  It's a skill I picked up after spending hours peering at blurry images of the heron rookery!)  I'm fairly sure that there IS a bird of some sort sitting in the nest.  I also found at least half a dozen shapes that may or may not be birds too far away to see without much more magnification.  Even when these shapes are highlighted, as they are below, you can barely see them.


The red circles don't even help all that much.  I should emphasize that these might NOT be anything at all.  I have a very good imagination.  I actually identified more than the six shown here.  I'm fairly sure these ones, at least, are really birds.  What kind of birds I couldn't say. 


What do you think?  Am I crazy?  Or are there really so many wild things hiding in plain sight?

Tanager, Grosbeaks, Towhees, and MORE!

Memorial Day birding at the Sudbury Reservoir was a great success! My husband, my son and I walked along the northeast section of the reservoir on the Bay Circuit Path. Almost immediately we heard and saw a gorgeous Red Breasted Grosbeak in the trees.



You can't see the rose colored breast in these pictures, but you can't miss the flashes of red in the field. The word "Grosbeak" refers to the large, powerful beaks which are another very distinctive feature of these birds.



Then we saw a Scarlet Tanager! I consider this to be my first ever sighting of this bird, even though my mother tells me I saw them at our backyard feeders as a child. I almost missed seeing him on Monday, too!



My husband (who isn't an avid birder, by any means) was the first to spot him in the trees. When he called out that he saw a bright red bird, both my son and I assumed he meant a cardinal, and we almost didn't bother to look.



Thank goodness the Scarlet Tanager stayed put long enough for my son to recognize him, and long enough for me to see him myself! My son often sees these birds at the Broadmoor Audubon Sanctuary in Natick. He says they don't seem shy about people, and will often stick around long enough for you to get a good look at them.



We saw many, many Towhees that morning, but getting a good photo of a bird that rarely sits still is a challenge. The first Towhee we saw was a female. The females have the same markings as the males, but are brown where the males are black. This female was jumping backwards in a pile of last year's leaves, which is how they look for bugs. The males we saw were singing as they perched on various treetops, like this one. It is a poor photo, but a good representation of typical Towhee behavior.



A silhouette of a singing Towhee.



I decided this was a family of cormorants based on their coloring. The juvenile Cormorants are lighter in color than the adults, and look brown instead of black.



The younger bird in this photo is striking a typical Cormorant pose. Cormorants often stand like this, with wings outstretched in the sun.



While watching the Cormorants I saw a truly terrible sight: a desperately frightened squirrel swimming across the reservoir! I didn't even know squirrels could swim - and I don't think this squirrel knew it, either. He looked terrified! You'll be happy to know that he made it safely onto the shore, and he seemed none the worse for his experience.



Chickadees are hardly exotic, but I like this image of a chickadee in the wild. We are used to seeing them at backyard feeders, but this one preferred to catch his own dinner!



We saw numerous Baltimore Orioles on the forest path as we headed back to the car. By then the sun was directly overhead, though, so none of the Oriole pictures did them justice. The last image from our expedition is still unidentified. It is not an Eastern Kingbird, but I'm fairly sure it is a member of the flycatcher family. It's upper beak is black and the lower beak is yellow-orange, and it had a distinctly yellow tint on it's belly. I'm guessing it could be a Great Crested Flycatcher, or an Eastern Phoebe, or an Eastern Peewee . . . or something else. I really have no clue. I do know one thing, though - we had a great birding day at the Sudbury Reservoir!

Exotic Wildlife at the Framingham RMV?

Who would believe that the Framingham RMV is a good place for watching wildlife? Not me - until I went there last Friday and saw an exotic species of bird I had never seen before, another strange bird that may have been a pregnant mockingbird, and finally a gorgeous red tailed hawk circling overhead!


It was too nice to wait in the car while my daughter was in the Registry, so I wandered around the parking lot a bit. (If you have a camera in hand, I've discovered, you can walk around looking at things without getting weird looks from other people.) I crossed over to the railyard next door, and shot some pictures of the trains. I thought they looked pretty in the bright sunshine.


I was trying to get a picture of a beautiful red tailed hawk as he circled upwards into the sky, when a odd looking bird landed on the gravel about 20 feet away. I was amazed to see what seemed to be a wading shorebird standing in the middle of an ocean of gravel. He had the long legs and long bill of the plover type birds you darting along the beaches of Cape Cod. When I zoomed in on him and saw the distinctive markings, I knew I had never seen a bird like that on the Cape or anywhere else!


But here he was in downtown Framingham, walking around as if he belonged in the dusty railyard behind the Registry of Motor Vehicles. I honestly thought this bird must have escaped from a zoo or been blown in on a strong wind from South America. When I got home and looked him up in my field guide (which was very easy to do; you can't confuse this bird with anything else!), I found out I has spotted a Killdeer. Turns out they don't live at the shore, they are not uncommon, and they're often seen along railroad tracks. These birds have the largest, prettiest eyes I've ever seen, although you can't tell from these pictures. If you ever see one, though, you'll be amazed as well.


When the Killdeer flew off, I went back to the car. I was putting the camera away when a bird landed on the curb not far from me, so I shot some pictures even though it didn't look like much of anything. Once again, though, I was surprised by what I saw in the viewfinder. It had the head and coloring of a mockingbird, but the shape was more like a mourning dove. Not only that, but it had a distinct brownish yellowish tint to it's underbelly.


Even after searching all my bird books and dozens of web sites, though, I still swear this can only be a mockingbird. No other bird has the markings and the head of a mockingbird, but no mockingbird has a big swollen yellow belly. My best guess is that this is a pregnant mockingbird, although I don't really know if they get big and fat like like this even if they are about to pop out an egg or two. Maybe the bird is ill or disabled instead of pregnant, but it acted healthy and alert as far as I could tell.


Believe it or not, all these sightings happened during the forty minutes I spent outside the RMV last Friday at about 3:00 PM. It just goes to show that there are amazing animals all around us; all you have to do is look for them. As a matter of fact, you can see incredible things in your own backyard. The day before I saw a Robin catching his dinner (either a worm or a bug) on our front yard. Robins are familiar and common, but I think the checkerboard pattern around their eyes is pretty awesome no matter how many times I see it!


I also saw that a fierce predator, the little kitty cat known as Midnight, was on the prowl. The birds have nothing to fear from this cat, however. She might look like a kitten, but she's fifteen years old and no longer interested in chasing anything. The gravel in the picture is actually part of our new outdoor drainage system. We now have a drainage ditch around the entire perimeter of the house, and a second drainage ditch along the drive. The steep slope behind us and the all the clay in our soil caused a mini stream to form whenever the snow melted last winter, and to freeze whenever the temperature dropped. There was a frozen river of ice on the driveway and on the street all winter. We had to drive to the mailbox and wear ice cleats on our boots to get to the car.


That is all behind us now, and we will soon have a dry and comfortable house where you can sit on the floor without getting wet. Ours is no ordinary french drain, either. This system is much more comprehensive than traditional perimeter drain systems. It won't fail when the ground freezes, and it isn't susceptible to being blocked by roots or debris. Our system is so effective that when it is installed, most people don't even need gutters on their houses anymore! I can't reveal the specifics about the system, but I can tell you that it was invented by long time Framingham resident Chris Jackson of Jackson Brothers Building and Remodeling. Chris has installed his enhanced system on more than 75 buildings in the area over the last 15 years, and not a single system has failed even once! Compare that to the typical "basement waterproofing" that costs a fortune and inevitably fails within two or three years - assuming you found an honest company or contractor in the first place! (The failure rate in Framingham is probably even higher because of the high water table, thin soils, and all the rivers, brooks, lakes, reservoirs, and aqueducts running through the town.)


Moisture problems like wet basements are bad for your health and bad for your home. Moisture problems can NEVER be permanently solved by sealing the inside of your basement or even sealing the outside of your foundation. Both might be a part of the solution for your particular water problem, but sealing alone will not solve anything for long. It's like putting a band-aid on a crack in the dam; it can't hold. My advice to anyone with moisture problems in the Framingham area is to call Chris Jackman at The Jackman Brothers Building and Remodeling. My advice to anyone with water problems outside of the Framingham area is to do your homework, and understand the options available to you before you sign anything. Don't get scammed.

Great Blue Heron Rookery at the Foss Reservoir!

A few weeks ago I visited the Foss Reservoir (AKA Reservoir #3)for the first time. This is the reservoir right next to route 9 at the Jefferson Apartments on one side, and abutting the Mass Pike on the other. It isn't easy to get to the place, and when I finally found a way in, I almost turned around and left because of all the NO TRESSPASSING signs.


The DCR sign has the phone number of the State Police on it. I don't see why they bother, since anyone reading the sign is trespassing and probably won't call the cops on themselves.



The MWRA sign is short and sweet and difficult to misinterpret.


The MDC sign, on the other hand, prohibits lots of activities but it doesn't prohibit people. I chose to believe that sign instead of the others.



I didn't stay long because I forgot mt inhaler and could barely breathe. But I did notice another Pine Plantation here. Coincidence? I think not!



I returned to this reservoir early this morning. I was determined to see warblers and track down the elusive eagle's nest. I also wanted to try out my new camera with my old telephoto lens (an engineering feat that cost me $50.00 for an adapter!)It was so beautiful and peaceful in the early morning hours! (It wasn't quiet, of course. The reservoir is squeezed between the Pike and route 9, and the rush hour roar was always audible, but not overwhelming.) The surface of the water was as smooth as glass!


The water was so perfectly flat that the whole reservoir acted like a mirror, reflecting an impressionist's view of the traffic and the apartment buildings.


A pair of reservoir geese came to visit,


and a Baltimore Oriole posed very nicely for me. Otherwise I was having no luck finding warblers or anything else. I could hear them all around me, but couldn't see a single one.


I decided to sit quietly at the water's edge for a while, and instantly my luck changed dramatically! This is the first time IN MY LIFE that I have captured a recognizable photo of a bird in flight - and how incredible that it was my very favorite species in the world; a Great Blue Heron!


There were LOTS of herons flying around this Wednesday morning. I could believe how many. I quickly realized that the herons were congregating around the island in the middle of the reservoir. They would fly off and return a while later to disappear into the trees. Others were circling around the island and ducking in and out of the branches.I quickly set up my tripod and attached the telephoto lens, and what I saw through the viewfinder almost made me scream. The island was a rookery! It was a Great Blue Heron rookery that was packed with more Herons than I had ever seen in one place in my whole life! Unfortunately, I was too far away to get any really clear shots, but you can at least get a taste for how amazing it was! They were displaying,


and flying up and down and around,


but mostly they were carefully watching over their very, VERY large nests!


There were a LOT of very large nests, and the parents were VERY attentive. I couldn't tell what was inside those massive nests, but since both parents were mobile and no one seemed to be sitting on eggshells, I suspect baby herons were inside. All the activity was probably required to feed all those hungry chicks!


These last images are of a slow motion heron hunting trip. The competition was too much for one of the herons, and he flew off to find a new spot.


The other heron strolled along the beach just as casually as you could imagine.

He was really quite dignified and composed, like an English landowner surveying his domain.


He strolled right into the bushes and reeds, which camouflaged him quite well. At first glance, he looks like just another branch!


He stood quietly and very still for just a minute or two -


and then he violently attacked the water and grabbed up a fish in his powerful beak! (I actually couldn't tell exactly what he had, but it was moving and it appeared somewhat fishlike!)


I don't know if he ate his catch or not, but seconds later he flew off towards the island.


What an absolutely amazing, awesome, and astounding day! Now do you understand why I love living in this town? Who the hell wouldn't!