Lots of Good Stuff in Gate 35

At the very end of May we took a few days off and decided to poke around Quabbin to see if we could increase our atlas coverage. We started on Memorial Day with this Starling in downtown Worcester atop the American flag and thought it was a good omen. We spent time in Gate 35 covering our Shutesbury 10 block. Birds were not plentiful along the road in, but we hit it when the Pink Ladyslippers were at their best.

We had a small group of warblers fly in across the Quabbin and this is a picture of a little Black & White Warbler that landed and proceeded to go directly to sleep. We watched him for almost 10 minutes and he didn't move a feather!

This Hermit Thrush, on the other hand, was very active and out feeding....but not making a sound.

We took the little side road that goes off towards the campground in the Women's State Forest and when we got to the marsh we were able to watch this American Lady feeding on the ground right in front of us.

It's nice to be able to get shots of both the upper and lower wings to ensure we've seen all the fieldmarks.

We also had Painted Turtle at this marsh which had just come out of the pond to lay her eggs.

As we continued down the road we had this male Scarlet Tanager feeding down on the road. Wouldn't you know my camera would be on the wrong setting one of the only times when I see this bird down low and not hidden by foliage! Most of shots were almost black....this was the best of the bunch.

We also had some nice Blue Flag growing on the wet roadside.

And there were a number of Canadian Tiger Swallowtails feeding there...

...along with Juvenal's Duskywing...

...and this combination Red-spotted x White Admiral, which was an interesting study.

Back along the "main" road to the end of Gate 35 the wind had picked up a bit and we actually had whitecaps on the water.

At one point I actually pulled over to photograph the "waves" splashing on the shore...not something you often see here.

We stopped to photograph a Question Mark.....and from above you could clearly see the black horizontal mark that tells me it's not an Eastern Comma...

and the white marking on the underwing does look like a real question mark.

This area at the end of Gate 35 is always a bonanza for odes. I think this Common Whitetail is an immature male.

We also had several Chalk-front Corporals....

And a number of unidentified odes, including this newly-emerged "teneral".

Not sure about this "green-eyed" fellow either. Or this unidentified one as well. Sometimes odonate identification is exhausting.....

We did have American Bittern calling again from the phragmites island, so we were able to consider this a probably breeding bird for the atlas. As we headed back out we had a nice pair of Common Loons fairly close to our shore....I wondered whether these were the same two as last year that we watched and watched, but never confirmed their breeding.

We also had flyovers again from Westover as we left the water area.....

Back at the powerlines the turtles were going to town with their egg-laying. We had this Painted actually laying her eggs very near the road....

and this Snapping Turtle doing the same.

As I was photographing the turtles, Mark spotted a snake sunning itself further up on the road. He thought it was a Black Racer.

Suddenly he yells to come quick with my camera because it was a Hog-nosed Snake!!! In the 35+ years we have been out birding together, I have never seen this snake.

One of the first things you notice is that it spreads the skin around it's head and tries to look like a Cobra....very cool.

Of course once Mark picked her up she was as docile as our own pet Rosy Boa at home. She didn't even try to bite him. She has that little pug nose (although I suppose it's really a "hog" nose) so she looks kinda cute.

She constantly "tasted" the environment and probably knew she was in no danger. This alone not only made my year at Quabbin, but might have made every trip ever made into Gate 35 worthwhile.

Going over to bird Gate 22 and finish the block for the morning didn't produce anywhere near the excitement...although we did have a female Common Merganser swim out from some bushes right next to the shore where we were standing.....no sign of ducklings though.

As we headed out a different gate I saw these "steps to nowhere" which I had never seen before. I now have to do some research and figure out whose cellar hole they were leading to.

These couple of recent trips to Gate 35 made me realize no matter how many times you go to an area, there can always be surprises and new things to find.

Enjoy.....Sheila

Last Class Trip to Southern Berkshires - 5/28

Our final trip of Mark's Spring Migration class for MAS Broad Meadow Brook was held on the Saturday of the long Memorial Day weekend. We travelled out to the southern Berkshires to try a route through Beartown State Forest and back through the Tyringham Valley. After meeting right off the Turnpike in Lee, we proceeded directly to the entrance of the state park off Pine Street and Beartown Mountain Road. Within 5 minutes we had our first Louisiana Waterthrush and upon entering the state park boundary we stopped to try and get looks at a fairly close singing Overnbird. This can be such a hard bird to see, until after he's flown. His song can be so ventrilocal! Amazingly, with just a little spishing, this bird flew in and perched so that everyone got good looks at him.

We stopped and checked various other singing birds and at the first brook crossing near Mt. Wilcox Road we spent some time listening to Alder Flycatchers and watching the territorial fights taking place between 2 or 3 pairs of Chestnut-sided Warblers.

We also had okay looks at Blackburnians along the road as well. They always perch rather high, so my photos tend to show the underbelly and maybe the throat.

This was a new area for everyone on the trip, and even though it was Memorial Day Weekend, we didn't run into any dirt bikes and it looked as though the park still wasn't in full swing.

So we had time and space to stop and check out even the more common birds, like this male Common Yellowthroat who was singing his little heart out.

It's hard to be in a place like Beartown and not be distracted by all the flora and fauna of the area. Even this Pinxter seemed more exotic!

Taking the Mt. Wilcox Road loop we were amazed by the numbers of dragonflies on the road. Every time we stopped to check out a singing bird there were dozens of odonates flitting around. This female Common Whitetail graciously perched on a birch log so I could get a nice contracting photo. While their normal habitat is a variety of wetlands, they are known to stray very far from water foraging for food.

The same is true for the Chalk-fronted Corporal.

And the flowers couldn't be taken for granted either. This Columbine with it's exquisite color and unique flower shape can actually be fairly easy to overlook along the roadsides.

One of the always humbling facts about spending so much time out in nature, is for me to realize how much I DON'T KNOW. The best I could do with this little bug was to get it into the metallic wood-boring beetle family.....but from there I was stumped.

Doing the loop we stopped to try to spish in the one of the numerous Black-throated Blue Warblers, and we were obviously a little too close to this Red-eyed Vireo's nest....since he (or she) came in with a vengeance to see what the heck we were doing.

After coming out of Beartown in Monterey we headed back on the Tyringham Road to check out the valley. Of course we had spent the full morning in Beartown, so we realized that Tyringham would not necessarily be at its best in terms of bird song. Driving down one the roads that crosses the valley we came across some nice patches of Ragged Robin. Even when in full bloom this flower can look a little scraggily....the blooms remind me of a pink Witch Hazel!

This Corn Speedwell always tricks me into thinking it's a Forget-Me-Not.

We also had a fairly good-sized group of Eastern Commas on the dirt road down to the Town Pond in Tyringham. I think I've finally been able to separate this from the Question Mark...at least I hope so.

I find the marking on the underside to be less helpful in some individuals. If you blow up the photo of this individual it might look like a question mark....but the horizontal bar on the upperwing after the 3 dots days it's an Eastern Comma. Yikes, I'm not sure I'll ever be really good at butterfly identification.

And of course no trip to Tyringham would be complete without a visit to Jean Brown's grave in the small cemetery off Church Street. I've spoken about this before so I won't bore you with details of who and what this is....it's enough to say it's always fun to tie birds and art together in the same trip.

This beautiful Black Swallowtail was foraging in the fields at the other end of the valley at the entrance to the WMA.

A very nice way to end our last trip with this class. It certainly will be interesting to do some of these same spots in fall migration....but I refuse to even think that far ahead at this point!

Enjoy.......Sheila

Class Trip to Rutland State Park - 5/22

We had our fourth Migration Class trip to Rutland State Park and Barre Falls Dam and had a mostly breeders rather than migrants. We heard lots of warblers -- Black-throated Blues, Pine, BT Green, Redstarts everywhere, so some of them must have been migrants! Probably the most numerous bird of the trip though had to be Rose-breasted Grosbeak. They were EVERYWHERE! It seemed like migration was definitely on for them just based on the number we had.
We did have some Blackpoll Warblers (always a sign that migration is winding down) and we had two Parulas working the trees near the beaver marsh along Prison Camp Road.

At the same beaver marsh we had great looks at a pair of Brown Creepers gathering food and flying into a nest site in a big dead tree very close to the road. Since the photo below is almost a "Where's Waldo" shot, you really need to click on the pic and see it full screen to enjoy the bird.

Deb Berard spotted this Green Heron at the river crossing near the prison camp and it spent quite a bit of time out in the open looking for food, before some fishermen launched their canoe and scared him off. We also heard Virginia Rail in the big marsh and there were Bobolinks displaying over the open fields. Everyone (except me and my camera) got great looks at an Indigo Bunting along the road as well.

As we were tracking down a singing Northern Waterthrush near the river crossing, I snapped this photo of Least Flycatcher in full song. It's always fun to see the bird doing their call so that there's no question of what empid you're looking at. However, taking a photo and filing it away is always a little flat....without the song to complete the picture.

Similar to the Quabbin area, Lily of the Valley seemed to be everywhere this year.

And the same can be said for Wild Geranium too.

We stopped to show the class the leaves of Purple Trillium (since the blooms are long past) and we found this Jack in the Pulpit in the same area.

But, of course, everyone's favorite was the Fringed Polygala....some were past prime and had lost petals due to all the rain, but we still found a few lovely blooms.
The thrush of the day seemed to be Veery...they were calling at almost every stop we made. Although we did hear Wood Thrush singing as well; just not in the same numbers.

After driving through the major roads and coming out above the dam on Rt. 62, we took the class south on Grainger Road -- which also serves as a snowmobile trail in the winter. While Mark and I have birded these roads several times, I think this was the first time we had taken a class so it was a new place to explore for everyone.

Since it was cloudy and threatening showers, we weren't surprised to hear a very close Black-billed Cuckoo calling in the canopy. We stopped and Mark did a surprisingly-good imitation and the bird immediately flew in closer and started calling. Everyone got good looks at the bird -- which isn't always easy with cuckoos. And it turned out to be a life bird for Neil in the class.

The trip ended as a morning trip as advertised and Mark wondered if folks wanted to check one little pond in Rutland since we hadn't seen Wood Duck and he thought we might be getting close to a century run for the day. Unfortunately most folks had other plans, do we stopped over ourselves. We did not add any species; however, we got great looks at Catbird nesting very close to the rail trail...

and a pair of Canada Geese with only one gosling in the pond.

It had been a fun morning and Mark had been right -- we ended the trip with exactly 100 species on the nose!

Enjoy.....Sheila