Plymouth Beach

Here it's looking at you

Here is the second part about my morning at Plymouth Beach.  There were a number of youngsters (bird variety, not human) seen, including common tern, piping plover and a first laughing gull.  Both the common tern chicks and the piping plover chicks were moving around, but still under the watchful eye of an adult.  The laughing gull adult was very protective of her chick and kept the chick close to her and didn't let it go wandering.

We want food

Skipping along

Laughing gull and chick

There were many chances for birds in flight.  The terns were flying back and forth bringing food, either to their mate or to their young ones.  One adult tern took a dislike to one of the group at kept attacking him.

Common tern with fish

The angry young man

In dawn's early light

Black skimmer landing

Walking back to where we were to meet the boat, which will return us to the mainland, my friend Dan and I saw a bird which we could not identified.  The next day all ornithologist friend told Dan, who told me it was a juvenile horned lark.  I had searched my Stokes field guide to the birds and had thought it may have been a thrush, but, after finding out that it was a horned lark and checking out Stokes, the pictures matched.  That is one advantage of the Stokes field guide is that it has multiple pictures of the species showing adults, juveniles, summer and winter plumage and different age of birds.

Horned lark juvenile

Horned lark juvenile

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Tuesday's Photos from Birding

Pair of Mute Swans

After spending most of the week processing my pictures from my trip to Alberta, Canada, I went out for a morning of birding with my compadre Doug.

Our first stop was Jenney Pond to see if any of the winter ducks had arrived.  The Gadwall's were in and at the far end of the pond was a Hooded Merganser.  The ubiquitous Mute Swans, where there and did give some nice photo opportunities.

Mute Swan Flapping Wing after Preening

Male Gadwall

Kinglets were flitting around the trees.  They seem never to stay still for more than a second or two, which makes them hard to photograph.  The trick is not to use autofocus since there are usually too many leaves that get in the way, but to use manual focus, and burst mode.  I was able to come up with some decent pictures, by using this methodology.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

 We visited other locations in Plymouth, including Nelsons Beach, the harbor, Plymouth Beach.  There were many gulls in all locations along with a large number of Brandt.  There was one Black-bellied Plover at Nelsons Beach.

Black-bellied Plover

Off of Manomet Point, the Harlequin's were back, the males in gorgeous color.

Harlequin Ducks

Harlequin Ducks

We finished off the trip at Scuesset Beach, where we found our first Horned Larks of the season.  I photographed the Horned Lark right for my car window.

Horned Lark

Horned Lark

Additional Photographs from Thursday's Birding Trip

Common Goldeneye - female

Here are some photographs of some of the birds that that we saw during our Thursday birding. On a Thursday birding trip we stopped and birded Jenney pond in Plymouth, Plymouth harbor, Ellisville State Park, Cape Cod Canal both on the Sandwich side and the Scuesset beach side.

Horned Lark - male  I was down low on the sand to take this picture

Horned  Lark - female

"I am resting but keep in my eye on you"  Female Red-Breasted Merganser

Red-breasted Merganser Flapping Wings

Red-breasted Merganser - male sitting on a seaweed covered rock

Female Common Eider

Common Loons

Razorbills, there were at least a dozen razorbills feeding in the canal, when we were on the Sandwich side, they were across the way on the Scuesset side and when we went to the Scuesset side they were on the Sandwich side.

Lesser Black-backed Gull feeding

Initially when we visited Plymouth harbor, the tide was extremely far out and there were no birds in the parking lot, not even rock doves. However, as we made our way back home we re-stopped at the harbor and were able to add the Iceland go to our list (no picture however).

Friday's Birding

"Yawn"

Harlequin Duck

From left to right, juvenile Great Cormorant, adult Great Cormorant, juvenile Great-crested Cormorant

Because last Thursday was Thanksgiving, I did not go out with Doug for a usual Thursday birding trip.  However, we did bird on Friday.  We first went to the summer Street fields in Bridgewater, with Doug finally got to see the Northern Lapwing.  The biggest problem was that it was extremely foggy and you could barely make out the bird due to the fog.  In fact, I didn't even bother taken my camera out of the car.

We then traveled down to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where we stopped at Jenny's Pond and was surprised since there were so few birds around.  We then traveled down to Plymouth beach, where they are still working on the seawall and did cite a number of different duck species offshore, but again too far out for photographs.

Our next stop was Manomet Point, with the sun was now finally out.  Looking over the rocks, there were a good number of harbor seals resting on the rocks.  Both Great and Double-crested Cormorants, the usual gulls species and some beautiful Harlequin ducks swimming and feeding in the water.  All the seals were making a racket.

We then traveled down to the Cape Cod Canal Visitors Center, in Sandwich, Massachusetts and walking down along the canal we observed a large number of Common Loons feeding.  In fact, at one point, one of the loons started calling flapping its wings and running over the water, looking like was going to take off, went into the air and landed across on the other side of the canal.

Common Loon

Feeding among the rocks and seaweed was one of the brightest song sparrow's that I have seen, it had such gorgeous color, that it took a moment to identify the bird as a song sparrow.

Song Sparrow

 Off of the mouth of the canal around one of the furthest green buoys Razorbills were feeding and there was a flyby by a pair of Dovekie's.

We finished off our trip to the Cape Cod Canal by traveling back to the other side of the canal in Bourne, where we sighted some horned larks in the field.  On the lower rocks a herring gull was eating a starfish.

Horned Lark

Herring Gull eating a starfish

Northern Lapwing

Northern Lapwing in the setting sun

We decided on our way home to go back to see if we could get a better look at the Northern Lapwing.  On arriving at the Summer Street fields, we joined a number of birders and photographers who were observing the lapwing at the top end of the field in the corn stubble.  A much better outlook the early this morning.

So ended another great day of birding.

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.