birdspot

Inadvertent or incidental birding: a wave of migrants came in to the yard behind the Visual Arts Center this afternoon:

Golden-crowned Kinglet (1)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (3)
Song Sparrow (1)
White-throated Sparrow (many)
White-crowned Sparrow (1 juvenile)
Dark-eyed Junco (many)

There were two groundhogs out, eyeing me balefully. I think I drive them nuts, always skulking around after everyone is supposed to have gone home.

Is there anything as soft as the gray on the neck of a loon?

I am tempted to spell it ‘grey,’ since that is removed, reminiscent of old England, more complex than gray. But I am not fond of deliberate attempts at appearing continental when one is, in fact, not. It is tough to come up with an adequate description for the mixes of color and texture to be seen on a loon neck: grey may be too romantic and pompous, but velvety (which sadly also immediately springs to mind) is worse. It sounds crass and cheap. I am at a loss.

There was a Red-throated Loon (our grayest-necked, with a shocking rusty-red patch on its throat) in full breeding plumage in the waters off of Plum Island yesterday. This was not the best bird of the day for rarity, but it was a little unusual, and very nice for the visually inclined. The bird was sitting calmly, in close to shore. I have only seen these loons in their summer breeding (definitive alternate) plumage once, while in Alaska during the end of one May, and then I was wholeheartedly distracted in looking for Bluethroats and stints of various sorts. The Red-throated Loon is a winter bird to New England, and it usually floats around in its drab basic plumage here - also gray, but not the same. The winter feathering has the speckled colors of rocks and freezing seas, but this was lustrous, profound, in the sense of having significant depth.

Birds of North America Online describes parts of the head and neck as “medium light gray or variable (bluish, ash, pearl, glossy dark, dove), occasionally darker dusky gray on lores and around eyes.” The writings of ornithologists may be a little dry, but there is something in this that is clearer than trying to get at it with florid language. citation

I suppose it is fairly obvious that I am an admirer of the subtleties of grays, but I kid you not, I only just now linked up my fascination of this bird’s neck with my drawing habits. Cause I was just sitting down to post this beginning of a drawing. It is pen on gray paper, 7.75 x 10.5.”

I am just back from a dawn to dusk trip to Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Center and the Parker River National Wildlife Sanctuary, and I have just enough energy to put together a day list… Winds were Northwest to West, up to 20 mph, and it was sunny to partly cloudy, and generally not particularly “birdy.” Temps were from 41 degrees at daylight to about a high of 58, though it often felt much colder in the wind. There were numerous migrating Monarch butterflies, despite the chill, which was amazing. Many species had left, save for a few stragglers, and not many new ones were moving through. The exception to this was for waterfowl - there were good numbers of most species of duck seen, with flocks of up to 80 or so individuals at the highest, 20 on the low end. Birds seen today were:

Brandt
Canada Goose
Gadwall
American Wigeon
American Black Duck
Mallard
Northern Pintail
Green-winged Teal
Redhead (1, male, at North Pool)
Greater Scaup
Common Eider
Surf Scoter
White-winged Scoter
Black Scoter
Red-breasted Merganser
Red-throated Loon (2, one in full breeding plumage - beautiful)
Common Loon (one in almost full breeding plumage)
Pied-billed Grebe
Northern Gannet (saw many throughout the day, feeding)
Double-crested Cormorant
American Bittern (1, at Bill Forward Blind)
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Turkey Vulture
Osprey (1)
Northern Harrier (3+, including one male)
Merlin
Peregrine Falcon (1-2)
Black-bellied Plover
American Golden Plover (2, possibly 3, at North Field and then North Pool Overlook, chased by an immature Northern Harrier)
Greater Yellowlegs
Sanderling
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Dunlin
Wilson’s Snipe
Bonaparte’s Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Eastern Phoebe
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tree Swallow (1)
Black-capped Chickadee
Carolina Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet (waves)
Ruby-crowned Kinglet (a small wave)
Swainson’s Thrush (1, on road near Hellcat, seen beautifully)
American Robin
Gray Catbird (2)
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
American Pipit (22 - North Field)
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Sharp-tailed Sparrow sp.
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
White-crowned Sparrow (3+, 1 adult)
Dark-eyed Junco (numerous)
Northern Cardinal
Blackbird sp. (1)
House Finch
House Sparrow

A day of moderate rest, though while teaching a rather nice group of people this afternoon, I added two species to my MMAWS list:

Red-breasted Nuthatch
House Finch

Tomorrow: Joppa Flats Wildlife Sanctuary & a wee side trip to Plum Island…

I had a great fall morning walk around the Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary in Sharon, MA, which I will try to write a bit more about later. There were some roving flocks of migrants scattered throughout the sanctuary, again, not huge numbers. Highlights from the walk:

Blue-headed Vireo (1)
Hermit Thrush (1 - making a “vreeh” call)
Cedar Waxwing (small flock)
Yellow-rumped Warbler (numbers - I knew when a cluster of birds was moving through when I would first hear their “tchep” call)
Palm Warbler (1 - drab Western race)
Black & White Warbler (3+)

Is it possible? Is it finally finished? I think it might be…
The second landscape is having a little rest in a box so I don’t have to look at it.

Iteration number 3:

The big news this morning: Al Gore received a Nobel Peace Prize.

My second reaction to this was that I didn’t realize that a Nobel could be given as a consolation prize. I mean, there are conservationists who have spent their lives working themselves to the bone, with little reward, to achieve land or species preservation, and scientists who have risked careers to warn us of the dangers of emissions and carbon fuel consumption, long before Gore put a power point presentation together. And yes, the United Nations climate panel represents this. So why give it to Gore at all? Is there a subtler way to say “stupid American administration?” So political. I don’t think I like it.

My first reaction: a little welling of tears. This was because I felt some of that collective relief that these issues are receiving significant attention. It moved pretty quickly to reaction 2.

My favorite snarky comment over on Gawker.com: “Will he use his Nobel money to buy a small generator for his house?” See the article here.

I suppose this is the moment to point out that all opinions on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not reflect the positions of any associated organizations…

The weather today was schizoid. Not global-warming schizoid but New England fall temperamental. Even when I spend hours working, I am connected to the weather, not just because I am a geek, but because my studio is currently in a sun room here, with windows all around me. Pretty nice. I kept getting lost in my drawing, occasionally looking up and finding myself in the middle of a squall. And then I would look up and it would be sunny again. There were heavy clouds scudding through, so I decided to put some in the drawing.

I spent part of the afternoon visiting the Visual Art Center’s art collection. After walking me through an impressively organized computer catalogue, director Amy Montague left me with a couple of hundred years’ of works all curated around natural history, and primarily focused on birds. You might think that rummaging through an underground vault with rolling stacks and flat files full of art that carefully spends so much time out of the light might feel a little musty, a little Victorian, but I found it to be exactly opposite. There is something very unique about this collection. At one point in a past life I received a faculty study grant and spent a few months looking at paintings in the Museum of Art at RISD, also combing through rolling stacks, but this experience was profoundly different. When in the vaults there, the famous historical associations with various painters, and the brash and blatant egos that screamed out from the canvases colored that experience. Each artist was competing not only with each other for greatness but also with themselves - anyone who regularly visits museums begins to get a feel for when a work by an A-list artist may in fact be one of their B-list works - and this made the collection very inward-looking and almost stony. In contrast, the works today were all outward-looking: regardless of time periods or culture, there was a singular focus, and instead of artistic ego, as I pulled each potential treasure from its slot, I was overwhelmed by a such a strong sense of life. Even the Andy Warhol pieces were tamed, they seemed less ironic and more an expression of joie de’vivre. Here was a room full of the recordings of natural life, and of the quiet and more humble lives that were spent in pursuit of this. No Nobel Prizes.