A Special Encounter - Monday, September 7th

So I'm breaking with tradition and devoting a whole blog to an encounter we had just yesterday out in the northern Berkshires. And as I'm writing this, I'm trying to figure out WHY? I never devoted a whole blog to Gremlin -- or my grandchildren for that matter. So why did I decide to spend so much time focused on this was one little fox. I'm not sure....... but it has something to do with wanting to share the absolute joy Mark and I had watching him or her. It was just before 8 a.m. and we were on Whitcomb Hill Rd., just off Rt. 2 in the town of Florida. We had just turned on to Monroe Rd./Raycroft Rd. heading towards the DCR property on top of Raycroft when a fox darted out in front of us from right to left with something in his mouth.

She proceeded to stop at the side yard of a nearby house near and proceeded to "play" with her prey.

Never before have I seen a wild animal being quite so playful...and in full view of where we stopped the car. In fact at one point he left his food and trotted over to the car to check us out. He actually came so close to the back of the car that neither of us could see him in our side mirrors. Once he realized we weren't there to cause him any sort of problem, he went back to his immediate meal at hand. Since the animal never moved an inch while the fox came over to our car, I can only assume that the poor thing was already dead, so the playfulness displayed by the fox wasn't torture in any real sense of the word.

For the next 15 minutes we watched this fox leap and bound around to such a point that we couldn't really believe we were watching a wild animal.

At times she looked more like one our cats in a very playful mood, so concluded that she was a young fox and for some reason hadn't yet learned to be wary of humans.

After a significant amount of racing around and tossing the animal into the air, he finally settled down and within a few bites of those sharp teeth disposed of his breakfast very efficiently.

After licking his chops, he proceeded to turn his full attention to us.

We suddenly became something much more interesting than an appreciative audience for his antics.

Showing no fear whatsoever, she proceeded to come across the road towards the car and sat down to see what we would do next. I was truly afraid that someone would come down the road and hit this adorable vixen I decided to clap my hands and try to shoo her off into the nearby woods. By this time Mark & I both were outside the car and less than a dozen feet from the fox.

While she noted our noisy attempts to move her off the road....we were less than successful and, at times, seemed to increase her curiosity about what the heck we were doing. Finally after several attempts she seemed to realize we weren't going to be much fun for her, so she turned around and promptly trotted back to check for any remains of her breakfast.

This was definitely a unique encounter and one that I couldn't imagine sharing with anyone other than Mark! And probably one that we won't have again anytime soon.
When we got home we spent some time researching fox behavior in Alfred Godin's Wild Mammals of New England. It seems their curiosity and playfulness is well documented. Even to the point of red foxes making friends and playing with dogs, mountain sheep and caribou!

Now if only the skunk living in our backyard would be as playful and friendly....oh well, can't have everything.

Enjoy.....Sheila

A Spectacular Day at Gooseerry Neck & Acoaxet - 9/5/09

I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about going anywhere in proximity to beaches on Labor Day weekend, but we figured that if we got an early start we could hit Gooseberry Neck and be heading back up Rt. 88 before most of the beach-going traffic took over -- we were right! And I'm so glad we didn't wimp out! Gooseberry Neck had a fair amount of migration activity and the tide was high enough that it pushed shorebirds right up to the rack line in several places. Shortly after beginning the walk out to the towers, we noticed several warblers and empid flycatchers zipping back and forth across the road. Most just dove into the thick vegetation, but this flycatcher (one of the Trails?) put up for a second or two. There were lots of Common Yellowthroats, an immature Prairie and Mark had an immature male Hooded Warbler -- all disappearing before you could get a great look.....and certainly before I could get any photos.

Right after Mark saw the Hooded I took a quick detour on the first path to the ocean on my right and when I returned to the main road I heard a different "chip" and spished up this immature/female Mourning Warbler. At first I thought I was going to get the Hooded, but when this bird perched up I thought it might be a Connecticut. Unfortunately, Mark was further down the road by this time and unable to help my confirm it in the field.

But luckily this bird decided to stay out for a few seconds and allowed me to catch some nice shots before she, too, dove into the thick bushes. When we got home we checked to make sure it wasn't a Connecticut (bill was too small and even though it had an eye ring, it was bright enough to convince us of CT) when we checked MacGillivray's we could see that it didn't have the distinctive arcs above and below the eye.

I haven't seen a lot of fall Mournings, so I wanted to be absolutely sure and sent the photo off to Scott Surner for confirmation. I can't tell you how excited I was to see this bird AND to get some good photos.

Further down the road I spotted something on the ground and as I approached it cautiously I realized it was an immature Harrier sitting on the road and preening. Since he/she was so busy it didn't notice me until I got fairly close. Sometimes young birds can be so oblivious I wonder how they ever make it to adulthood.

Gooseberry Neck seems to one of the places where I can always find an American Copper in the fall (yes I used the f-word) and Friday was no different. There seemed to be coppers every 10-20 feet along the road both on the way out and the way back. But besides the warblers and butterflies, we also came looking for shorebirds.

Gooseberry Neck never seems to have a huge variety (although Mike Boucher and Mike I-can't-remember-his last-name who we bumped into told me they had two Red Knot flying back along the shore from where we had jump come. Oh well, there was a nice assortment of the usual suspects -- lots of Sanderlings along with a smattering of Semipalmated Sandpipers and Semipal Plovers.

It was interesting to note those most of the Sanderlings where juvenile compared to the adults we had about 2 weeks ago.

And the same goes for the Semipal Sandpipers and Plovers as well.

One of the shorebirds that seemed to be showing up in good numbers was the Ruddy Turnstone.

We had numbers of both immatures and adults feeding along the rack line and, of course, turning over stones looking for little morsels.

This is one shorebird I never get tired of -- it just has so many plumage variations and the coloration (especially on the adults) is just wild -- very harlequinesque.

On the way back to the parking lot, Mark noticed lots of Fowler toads crossing the road. We were able to catch this little guy and photograph him so that Mark could add to his "photos of reptiles and amphibians I've held in my hand" list -- luckily we haven't come across any rattlesnakes.

After leaving the Neck, we made a quick stop by the butterfly garden at Allen's Neck. We were delighted to find both male and female Broad-winged Skippers using the garden.

We decided that if we wanted to even make an attempt to hit Acoaxet we needed to move on after stopping to witness the high tide chaos at Allen's Pond.

The numbers of cormorants and egrets using this area was mind-boggling. In addition to the Snowy and Great Egrets, we also had a few Little Blues and Glossy Ibis in and amongst the throngs of birds -- but not Tri-colored.

Again, we needed to push on and as we saw the traffic streaming down Rt. 88 I was starting to waiver on our decision to hit Acoaxet. I wasn't sure we would get any better looks and shorebirds (with the high tide) and the few beach overlooks were sure to be filled. But we decided to give it a shot. There wasn't much going on and the water was higher than ever at Richmond Pond so no shorebirds -- oh well. We decided to stop at the little conservation area along Old Harbor Rd. (the upper road) on the way out to take some shots of trees. Mark wanted to field test the upcoming Sibley field guide on trees so we thought it was worth a short stop and I could take some photos of leaves, bark, etc. and we could check it out when we got home.

Turns out for us it was a lucky stop. We had a medium-sized skipper in the parking lot that neither one of us recognized, so I took a few shots before moving on. When we got home and I uploaded my photos I realized that this was possibly a Zabulon Skipper (a life butterfly for us).

We sent the photo off to Erik Nielsen and Tom Gagnon for positive identification and the word came back that it was, indeed, a Zabulon. While the butterfly has been found in various parts of Rhode Island, this is only the second record in Massachusetts east of the Connecticut River Valley.

Needless to say it was a totally perfect morning on the southeastern coast....and we got back to Worcester early enough so that I could keep my promise (although a week late) to take a 5-year old, a 6-1/2 year old and a 9-1/2 year old back-to-school shopping -- now THAT's exhausting!

Enjoy.....Sheila

Westport & Acoaxet - 8/22/09

Trying to get caught up on my blog! You will likely see several posts this week as I look at the various trips we did in August -- that I did not blog about. We tried to get to the south shore during one of the "near misses" of hurricanes a few weeks back. We hoped to get out to Gooseberry Neck, but they closed the causeway due to the anticipated wave action. It was nice to see Osprey still in the area....but it won't be long til they're gone south.

While the skies and the ocean looked "promising" we didn't see one pelagic. So after checking a few beach stops and Allen's Pond, we headed to Acoaxet hoping for better luck.

The tide was pretty high so it did force some of the more local shorebirds close in to feed along the disappearing rack line. It was great to sit and spend some time looking at the various plumages of shorebirds. We didn't get a huge variety of species, but we did get great looks at what was there.

The Sanderlings all showed signs of their previous breeding plumage (to various degrees) and it appeared that we had all adult birds.

It was really a great study with some birds having more rufous left in the face than others.

The other two species most evident were the "semi's" -- both Semipalmated Plover and Semipalmated Sandpiper.

The Semipal sandpipers far outnumbered the Semipal plovers. Again, an absolutely great study, up close, of the various plumages.

You could really see the transitional plumage from adult breeding to the paler non-breeding, winter plumage. And the differences in bill structure was also evident. Some birds really seemed to have shorter, blunt-tipped bills while other birds seemed to have much longer bills. But try as we might, we couldn't make any of the birds into Western Sandpipers.

It took a lot of shots to finally get a handful, in focus, of birds that also had their feet at such an angle so that you could actually see the semipalmation between the toes. If you click on the next photo to enlarge it, you'll see just what I mean.

We didn't have any Leasts for comparison purposes, but sometimes it takes just studying all the different birds to get really comfortable with the overall "jizz" of the bird. After all you don't always get great shots of the toes so that you can check the palmation, and even though leg color helps, I've seen enough muddy-legged Leasts in my time to make sure I don't rely solely on the black leg/yellow leg field mark.

And sometimes the birds just keep these field marks well hidden. So it's great to sit and study a bunch of birds up close when you get the chance. Even after 25+ years of looking at these guys through bins and a scope, I'm always glad to have Mark with me just to make sure.


So after peering at shorebirds for a few hours, and having Mark point out the minute details of feather wear and so on, I thought it was very apropos when we came across this former politician/now contractor's truck..........

Enjoy....Sheila

Quick Visits to Great Meadows & Bolton Flats

A few weeks back we headed out for an early morning visit to Great Meadows. By mid-August you start to realize that summer is definitely drawing to a close and sooner or later you have to admit it and then jump into fall migration. The shorebirds are always a sign for me and I have to keep telling myself that there are still glorious days in September and October ahead....but the tunnel is starting to loom on the horizon. As we started to walk out and join the throngs on the dike, we came across a young couple peering into the reeds at a snake. Of course Mark is always delighted to talk snake with anyone, so it allowed me to take a few shots of this Northern Banded Water Snake. They're often along the dike at Great Meadows and I can remember the first time we took our oldest granddaughter, Samantha, to Great Meadows and came across a huge water snake. She was only about 4 and I tried not to freak her out, but at the same time not have her first snake experience be getting bitten by one of these guys. They do tend to be quite aggressive and can give a nasty bite.

There were the usual Great Blues looking for an easy meal....

But it was actually quite disappointing to see how filled in the place has gotten. It certainly makes looking for shorebirds more challenging than ever. We heard Virginia Rail and Common Moorhen, but the water chestnut made it difficult to see much of anything. There were lots of Least Sandpipers, one Pectoral and quite a few Lesser Yellowlegs.

So we decided to head home via Bolton Flats and see if we could find some of the shorebirds there that folks had been reporting. This was the weekend of the Bolton Fair, so we weren't too sure we would even get near the place, but it was still early and the traffic wasn't too bad and the road was closed right at the main entrance on 117, so we were in luck.

There was definitely a quieter pace at Bolton Flats -- in fact we had the place to ourselves. We were greeted by this female 12 Spotted Skimmer as we walked the path.

And this Green Frog was also enjoying the wet roadsides as we approached the main fields. We heard lots of Killdeer flying around, but many of the pools had dried out so we didn't have too much close in.

There were numbers of Leasts foraging through the damp furrows in the field...

And we spotted a Semipalmated Plover as well. Suddenly a Cooper's Hawk buzzed the field and we watched lots of previously-unseen peeps take to the air, joined by multitudes of Killdeer. In addition to the Leasts, we had Semipal and Bairds Sandpipers, along with both Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Solitary Sandpiper and even a number of Snipe.

A Great Egret dropped in to join the remaining shorebirds in the far pool, and this is when I realized we really are in fall migration mode.

We headed back home having spent a nice morning engaged in our first fall birding trip....oh well, I knew it had to happen.


Regards....Sheila