Our second Christmas count of the season is the Worcester count. I love doing a
xmas count so close to home....so close in fact that we were able to pop home for lunch! Our territory is really centered in and around the town of
Boylston and includes some of
Northboro. We started
owling about 5 a.m. and I was able to get this shot of the tree lit up on the
Boylston commons. Much like
Sturbridge we ticked the four common species (Great Horned, Barred, Screech and Saw-whet) with the Great Horned putting on a great show of "
duetting" which is a sign of courtship.
Our goal is to be on the hill overlooking the
Boylston Town Offices at dawn, so that we can get the first birds flying over...usually crows and gulls. This time the sunrise was totally spectacular.
And the gulls were flying out from
Wachusett Reservoir in good numbers in the dawn light....
with some of the them actually being colored by the light. This Ring-billed Gull looked really exotic when it flew over at dawn.
We also try to hit South Bay at the reservoir early so that we can get any ducks that might have put down overnight. We were really excited to find a flock of
Goldeneye...and even more excited to find a drake Barrow's right in the middle!
We've had Barrow's inland before, but this is the first time we've found one on an inland Christmas count. It was even more special since this year is the first in about 30 that Mark & I decided to formally give up doing the Cape Ann count. And that's where we usually get a Barrow's.
When we got the compilation we found ours was only 1 of 4 (the other 3 females were in Lake
Quinsigamond.) When we checked on "ours" the day after the count we found that there was now a female with the male in South Bay. And a check of Lake
Quinsig only turned up 2 females.
Our walk out to Scar Hill bluffs was cold and windy....and there weren't
alot of birds on the reservoir.
However, we did have a pair of adult Bald Eagles perched in a tree off towards South Bay.
Tooling around the farmlands in
Boylston turned up a brightly-colored Red-shouldered Hawk. It seems in the past few years we've turned up more and more of these wintering Red-shoulders in Worcester County.
And, of course, there's always the search for the more common species...like this small flock of House Sparrows in a backyard in
Northboro.
We had a good number of Red-tailed Hawks as well. But we didn't get any
accipiter species at all, which was a little bit unusual for our sector.
Mockingbirds seemed to be fairly well-represented and they were defending "their" bittersweet patches vehemently.
One thing that was a little disconcerting were the numbers of USDA inspectors out in the Worcester/
Boylston area checking for the Asian Long-horned Beetles. Unfortunately, they have found them spreading north-northeast from Worcester. Some of the area around near the Worcester Country Club and the Department of Correction has already been clear-cut.
However, the folks we saw looked like they were doing the poison injection instead. I spoke to Dave Small recently and he said that while it's a good alternative to clear-cutting it's very labor intensive and you have to do it more than once. All of that equals $$$ so I can't imagine most towns have the budget.
We spotted this perky Red-breasted Nuthatch near the Correctional Facility in the later afternoon....
and this White-
throated Sparrow popped out when we played the screech owl tape. We also had about 3 or 4 Hermit Thrushes in the same area, along with a number of Robins feeding on the fruiting trees.
We finished the day back out at South Bay watching the gulls return to the reservoir for the evening. The numbers seemed much larger than when we watched them leave at dawn, but we didn't do a formal recount knowing that others from the count were stationed at other parts of
Wachusett expressly for the purpose of counting the gulls.
We met for the compilation with John
Liller (count circle coordinator) at MAS Broad Meadow Brook and got to compare notes on the full day's event. One of the highlights was that we were able to count one of the best feeder birds on any count we've ever done....
Rufous Hummingbird.
This little female had been coming to a feeder in Worcester since early October, and Mark had been in touch with the homeowner. Even though she had previously taken her feeders down when we had the warmish spell back in November, the bird lingered. Finally Beth opened her garage and put her feeder inside so that the bird could feed out of the cold. We discussed with her the likelihood that the bird would survive and since it didn't seem like it was going to leave we asked her how she felt about having the bird banded.
Mark got in touch with a registered bird
bander who came out to Worcester, caught and banded the bird (and confirmed it was a female
Rufous) and reported that she was in very good condition and he seemed to think she was putting on weight and might be getting ready to take off. Sure enough the next day she left...and hasn't been back to Beth's feeder. So we're all hoping to get a report from down south of this banded female at someone
else's feeder.
With a total of 84 species for the day, the Worcester count was indeed a very good one!
Enjoy....Sheila
The hardest part of all these storms is keeping a fairly clear path out to the feeders so you can keep them full!
Of course when the Bluejays come in with a flourish, everything scatters. These guys certainly know how to get to the front of the food line. They remind me of the bullies in school who would just cut in and push the little kids out of the way.....not much you can do.
The juncos are pretty resilient though....
That is until the real predators show up!
I was standing on the back porch just getting some typical shots of the White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos, when this young male Cooper's Hawk bombed into the bushes trying to catch a meal for himself.
He sat out in the open and then dove into the bushes trying to flush birds. With all the cold and snow, it seems we have 1-2 Cooper's Hawks (there's a larger adult bird) visiting regularly as well. 
It's nice to know that there's birds to watch, even if we can't get out as much as we'd like. And while I truly love these Cooper's Hawks, I'll be happy when spring comes and they guys move off to some more isolated wood lots to set up their nesting territory.
