Thursday, November 15, 2012

Thursday's Birding - Salisbury Beach and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge

Today is Thursday, and if you been from my blog, you know, this is the day I usually go birding with my good friend Doug.  I also am trying to photograph what we see.  Our plan today was to travel to see if we could find the Northern Lapwing, since Doug has not ever seen one and needs it for his life list.  We searched the fields in Middleboro and in Bridgewater without any success.  So we changed our itinerary and traveled first to Sharon Massachusetts and found the Ross Goose very easily, it was too far away to obtain any photographs.  Since we were in Sharon, we went up to Moose Hill Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, since crossbills had been seen there.  We did see some Red Crossbills, as they flew from one spruce tree to another, but again no photographs.  I really wanted some photographs of crossbills and both Doug and I did not have crossbills on a Massachusetts list, so we went up to Salisbury Beach State Reservation, located in Salisbury, Massachusetts, where there have been reports of numerous crossbills.

After we arrived at Salisbury Beach, two birders told us where to go to find the crossbills.  We found a number of White-wing Crossbills, no Red Crossbills were present, however, I did obtain some very decent photographs of the White-wing Crossbills, feeding on the pine-cones.
White-winged Crossbill - female

White-winged Crossbill - male

White-winged Crossbill - male


We continue to bird around Salisbury Beach and got a good number of other species, including Horned Larks and Snow Buntings, which were feeding in the parking lot where grass had pushed through the asphalt.
Horned Lark

Horned Lark

Snow Bunting - female


Since we were in the area.  We then traveled out to Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island.  There we found more Snow Buntings, American Tree Sparrows and an American Bittern among various other species.  The American Bittern was the first sighting for Doug and me in all our birding trips together.
Snow Bunting - female

Snow Bunting - male

American Bittern


It was a long, but fruitful day of both birding and photography.

No comments:

Post a Comment