Quote of the Day: "I stopped being bored, it was too boring." - a teenager with magenta hair at Fowle's

Journal of a Sabbatical

March 17, 2000

spring snow

Today's Bird Sightings:
Plum Island
many Canada geese
7 American robins
1 killdeer
2 mallards
32 American black ducks
1 gadwall
11 dark-eyed juncos
5 song sparrows
5 herring gulls
1 greater scaup
1 rough-legged hawk
Salisbury Beach
8 common goldeneyes
10 song sparrows
5 dark-eyed juncos
2 American robins

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake, The Cat Who Saw Stars by Lillian Jackson Braun, The Cat Who Robbed a Bank by Lillian Jackson Braun

It's snowing. It was supposed to stop at noon, but it has continued all day, not accumulating much, but snowing nonetheless. Song sparrows are all over the place singing like mad. This correlates with what Thoreau was seeing/hearing in Concord in the 19th century. For the last couple of days, every entry has mentioned song sparrows (except I think for 1842). They're really noticeable hopping around on the ground and then flitting into trees and singing. The interesting thing today is they are hanging around with juncos. The song sparrows and juncos are distributed in small mixed flocks, which are usually majority junco. With the snow covering the grass, they're foraging on the edges of the road and parking lots and on the trail at Hellcat.

The wind is fierce. Much fiercer than I expected. Snow is drifting sideways over the road. I give up on the notion of taking a long walk on the beach and instead look for birds from the car. Besides revealing the hitherto unknown (to me, not to science probably) association between song sparrows and juncos, this strategy yielded a female greater scaup all by herself at Stage Island Pool. I'm notoriously bad at distinguishing greater vs. lesser scaup unless they're right next to each other for comparison, but I had absolutely no doubt about this one. The first thing I noticed apart from her general scaupness was her really large bill, almost big enough to be a shoveler's well maybe not quite, but definitely big. This being one of the keys to telling the scaup apart, it gave me a little confidence. Anyway, this is the first scaup of either species I've ever seen on the refuge. There's something new every day. Even in the snow.