The big prize:
Unfortunately, he never got closer than probably a hundred yards, so I couldn’t do much with the camera. Luckily, he was distinctive enough that I didn’t have to run back for the scope.
But before he was found:
Yes, that’s sawdust from him.
There were birds all over, including 6 species of woodpecker, singing Winter Wren, too many Tree Swallows to count, and this guy:
Even further than the woodpecker and after it had clouded over, but still was worth trying.
A few shots from the BBC walk to Crooked Pond today:
Note the closed eye:
Among other things, I took a walk around Lyons-Cutler Reservation today. Walking through the woods, I noticed an eggshell on the ground:
I started looking up and noticed a couple sticks in the tree right on the path. Looking carefully, a tail was visible:
At this point, I was fairly sure it was an owl, but not convinced. I took a few steps off the path and couldn’t find the bird. A few more steps however:
Guess that confirmed it. That’s Block Framingham 4. If the owner of the block wants more details I can try, although it was pretty much see the egg and look up.
Also had at least 4 Great Blue Herons on the nest.
Finally got to take my new toy out and use it a bit. Click around and you can get closer to the original size. Already learning a bit about the advantages of RAW as the first shot was raised 2/3 of a stop in Lightroom. Not sure if I want to use Lightroom or Aperture yet, although it seems like Lightroom is easy to use with multiple disks.
Unfortunately the dove was just about finished when I got home. Every last bit of meat was plucked off. After the hawk left, we walked over and looked around and could barely find a trace other than the feathers.
Watching the hawk as it finished was quite interesting. Working on the last piece appeared to be difficult. The bird was having trouble holding it down to rip off the meat and kept pulling it up from under its other foot. Eventually, it moved to a branch where it was able to hold it down. After finishing, it spent quite a while wiping its bill on the branches, before shaking off a few times and taking off.
Stealing an idea from the Canadians, here’s a December-February list for Waltham. Dates and locations are the first sighting. Birds in bold are my first Dec-Feb sighting in Waltham.
Dec: 1: 16, 2: 33, 6:34, 8:35, 9:36, 11:37, 13:38, 15: 39, 17: 49, 20: 50, 25: 51, 28: 52
Jan: 4: 53, 20: 54, 21: 55, 31: 56
Feb: 1: 57
So final total 57, which is the same as last year. Overall total is now 74, with the additions of Brown Creeper, Eastern Bluebird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Hermit Thrush, and Iceland Gull. From my calculations, there were at least 210 on the overall Massachusetts list this year.
A few pictures from the weekend:
Both at the Charles. And at Lyman Pond:
Those should be the first birds I’ll confirm for the BBA
And today I found my first Killdeer of the spring at the UMass Field Station. Too bad it’s going to be frozen to the ground tonight and the rest of the week. Things should be picking up after that.
It’s been too cold to do much of anything lately and what’s out there hasn’t changed much.
I have been doing some work on the site, see the new Paine Esate page.
I just finished fixing up the code for the checklist and have finally updated the Waltham checklist. If you want to see how it works, I’ve got some details up in the projects section. I do need to figure out how to tweak the formatting a bit, but it’s up and updated.
My father decided that he really should see the Townsend’s, so we went back over this morning. Although the sun made the drive over pretty rough, it was well worth it. Before we even rounded the corner, the bird was sitting on the fence at the front of the yard. It alternated between the fence and tree for a while, before dropping to the ground. Eventually, it flew to the big tree on the street and then took off. Not only did we get excellent looks, but we heard it calling this time, a very different buzzy note.
Given that it was on the fence, I got a few pictures, much better than the previous ones.
Today I finally caught up with the Townsend’s Warbler that has been hanging around in Cambridgeport for the last few weeks (at least).
After spending almost 5 hours last Sunday (with one person getting a likely sighting) and another 3 hours yesterday (seen 10 minutes before and several times after), today’s effort was almost too easy. We left the house at about 6:50 and were parking by 7:10, which was pretty good for lots of red lights and a detour at Mt. Auburn. We walked over, said hi to Phil Brown and a minute later the bird popped up and proceeded to sit in the open for probably 45 minutes.
I took several photos, but that’s the only one that’s good enough to show publicly.
So that’s 450 in the US now. Should have gotten to that in New Mexico, but within 3 months isn’t too bad.