My Chickadee Haiku

One of the people I follow on Twitter is the editor for Wild Bird Magazine. Every once in a while she Tweets a contest to write a poem and today she had a Haiku contest.  You had to use the word “chickadee” in the Haiku so I wrote this:

The feeders are full. I await the chickadees ~ As I would a friend.

I won!

I’ll be receiving this prize: http://www.mainebirdingtrail.com/GuideBook.html

How cool is that!

New Year’s Day Birding ~ 2010

For the past 14 years (hard to believe), Mark and I have led a New Year's Day birding trip for the Brookline Bird Club. Each year we are warmed to see our old friends who have been coming on the trip since year one and look forward to meeting new ones! As usual, we greet everyone at about 9:00AM with sparkling apple cider to toast in the New Year.  As part of our introductions, I like to ask everyone to share their first bird of the year - my first bird of 2010 was a Blue Jay seen feeding at at our feeders.

We usually bird right up to sunset (weather permitting) and cover territory between Newburyport and Cape Ann. This year we birded Salisbury Beach State Reservation, Cashman Park/Merrimac River, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, and north Plum Island.  Because the birding was good in the Newburyport area, we never made it to Cape Ann!  We tallied 51 species for the Club list but I only saw 44. Here is the complete day list and a few photos of the group:

Red-throated Loon – 2 ; Common Loon – 12; Horned Grebe - 9
Red-necked Grebe – 1; Northern Gannet – 18 ; Great Cormorant – 4
Great-blue Heron – 1; Canada Goose – 500; Brant – 6
American Black Duck – 90; Mallard – 180; Northern Pintail – 5
Common Eider – 350; Surf Scoter – 3; White-winged Scoter – 25
Black Scoter – 2; Oldsquaw – 12; Bufflehead - 40
Common Goldeneye – 18; Red-breasted Merganser – 47
Bald Eagle -1; Northern Harrier – 3; Red-tailed Hawk - 3
Sanderling – 30; Purple Sandpiper – 12; Ring-billed Gull - 90
Herring Gull – 175; Glaucous Gull – 1; Great Black-backed Gull – 35
Razorbill – 65; Black Guillemot – 1

Rock Dove – 250; Mourning Dove – 28; Snowy Owl – 1
Downy Woodpecker – 3; Blue Jay – 37; American Crow – 52

Horned Lark - 22

Black-capped Chickadee – 18; American Robin – 400

Northern Mockingbird – 5; European Starling – 600

American Tree Sparrow – 23; Savannah Sparrow – 7 (5 = Ipswich)

Song Sparrow – 5; Dark-eyed Junco – 8; Lapland Longspur - 1

Snow Bunting – 2; Northern Cardinal – 9

American Goldfinch – 33; House Sparrow - 25

 Happy New Year and Great Birding in 2010!

Christmas Bird Count 2009

Yesterday, Mark and I participated in the 110th Christmas Bird Count (CBC). We spent the morning in our sector of the Newburyport count circle (Salisbury) and tried to see as many birds as possible despite the wind, rain, and poor visibility.

As we were driving around the Salisbury Beach State Reservation campground, we came across this very wet Merlin perched on an abandoned dock. I was so excited to see this bird and wanted to get a photo but, as I pulled my camera out of my bag, I realized that I left the photo-chip in my computer! I was so disappointed that I would miss getting a photo of the Merlin until Mark pulled a chip out of his GPS for me to use. How lucky was I!

We continued driving around looking for birds and found this small flock of Horned Larks feeding on grasses growing in-between cracks in the parking lot pavement. They too were soaking wet.

Waves crashing in on the jetty combined with a wind-swept rain made it very difficult for us to scan for seabirds ... we did manage to find a small flock of Purple Sandpipers hunkered down among the rocks.