Yard Oddball

This interesting girl showed up at the feeders over the weekend:

Oddball House Sparrow

White wings and a lot of white on the tail, not quite the usual.

Oddball House Sparrow

(Un)fortunately, it is just a House Sparrow. It appears to be partially leucistic one though. It’s actually one of two that are in the flock that hangs out in the yard. The other’s a male that’s almost normal, except a couple of the tertials are white. He’s hung around for quite some time now (she just showed up) but hasn’t been back to the feeder when I finally got the camera out.

And here’s the closest to a flight shot I got. I hope to get a better one as it’s a very striking bird with the wings spread.

Oddball House Sparrow

Update: got the male finally

Other sparrow

And for pictures of more exotic birds:

Scoters!

Big fallout inland today. There was a very large flock on the Cambridge Reservoir and then a smaller flock on Flint’s Pond in Lincoln. How many can you count in each?

The Res flock:

Scoters!

View it full size to count better

Flint’s (this one was digiscoped, didn’t even realize it was possible with a 100-400 until I tried):

More Scoters

full size

I see about 130 on the Res and about 45 in the other. Both flocks were flying around for a minute or two and I got the same count on the Flint’s flock at that point. The Res flock was too big to count, especially on the water where they were constantly moving in front of each other and very tightly clumped.

White-crowneds

These two immature White-crowned Sparrows were at Great Meadows on 10/13. Gambel’s, Eastern, or integrade? I’m not sure if I have both birds shown singly or if I ended up with 6 of the same one.

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

Which White-crowned?

259

White-winged Scoter and friends

Thanks to Marj for Middlesex county #259.

Other highlights on the day included a White-eyed Vireo (unfortunately the only photo I snapped was of a blog going behind branches) and some great deals on books. And Pyle Pt. 2 came in the mail, more on that soon.

Duck Hunt

My field trip to the Waltham St. Fields had a rather interesting experience today. We saw a large, immature Cooper’s Hawk sitting in the trees along the channel. Once we got up to the water, we were getting good looks at the Wood Ducks and Green-winged Teal that were mixed in with the Mallards when the hawk decided it wanted one for lunch. It dropped over the water and hovered above the ducks for several seconds. The ducks flapped but didn’t take off and the hawk had to return to the trees. This repeated several times and by the third or fourth time I remembered I had my camera. Pictures aren’t great, but they do show a bit of the action.

The hawk was clearly concentrating on the smaller ducks but the ducks were smart enough to stay on the water, so it remained empty-taloned.

Cooper's Attacking Ducks

Cooper's Attacking Ducks

Cooper's Attacking Ducks

Cooper's Attacking Ducks

Calendars and Reading Comprehension

First, if you haven’t requested one yet, the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program is taking requests for next year’s spectacular bird calendar.

If you want one, the BBC had information. You can also find that link on about 50 deal of the day sites and apparently readers of those can’t find the email given in the middle of the instructions and are sending the BBC Webmaster (me) requests. SixTen of them today.

Sep update: link’s been pulled as the deal-of-the-day sites swamped them and the calendars are now out of stock. Another 15 requests to me as well, including several that didn’t bother with a mailing address. And exactly one of them thanked me for sending them the correct instructions.

Kites!

Wow.

Email started flying Saturday that two Mississippi Kites were found in Newmarket, NH. I’m not sure if I’ve followed completely, but it appears that Ben Griffith and Charlie Wright were driving on their way to birding elsewhere and had one fly over. Stopping, they found a second and it went from there. Soon people were reporting that the birds were copulating and carrying sticks! For a species that hasn’t been found breeding north of Virginia, that’s beyond incredible.

I had taken today off planning to go do some atlas work, but plans changed pretty quickly. I left the house just before 8 and was in Newmarket just after 9. As I walked over, 3 birds flew overhead. Two turned out to be Broad-winged Hawks, but the other was one of the kites. Too easy for a life bird around here. Reaching the area they’ve been hanging out (which is a yard right on Main St), two birds were flying back and forth. At one point, one of the birds landed in a tree behind the house but soon took off again.

One birder was already there as I walked up and several others soon joined us. The homeowners were out doing yard work and seemed excited, although I got the impression they didn’t fully understand the significance. We soon backed up across the street as one of the birds came in with a stick and disappeared into the tree right over the road.

After quite some time, I finally found the bird hidden in the tree. It appeared to be sitting on a nest and we soon had 2 scopes on it (not that they helped much). Traffic was getting to be an issue from curious drivers, but I stayed around until the second bird made another couple passes. Of course, I get home and see that 3 birds were seen today!

And for pictures:

Flying:

Flying Kite

Flying Kite

Flying Kite

Sitting:

Sitting Kite

Incoming with stick:

Kite with stick

And on the nest (you can see a bit of tail and some other feathers if you look closely)

Kite on Nest

Update: Christopher’s collecting links to photos.