Spring Break

A wave of early season summer birds swept in with the break in frigid temperatures that surrounded a record snowfall on Monday, March 2. First through was a crowd of robins, but the big day was March 7 when three grackles caught my attention, the first to be seen since November. Working in the yard a short time later, a chorus of Red-wing Blackbirds mixed in the trees with more grackles, all likely to be traveling together.

Another seasonal first at the weekend was a solitary cowbird, picking through seeds at the feeding station on March 9. A Purple Finch also joined the resident goldfinches at the niger feeder. They have been known to over winter in the area, but this was the first I have seen since Christmastime this season.

Suet drew a range of woodpeckers including a single male Hairy, three Downies and a Red-bellied. A Yellow-shafted Flicker also lit briefly in the popular woodpecker grazing tree, an aging but resolute choke cherry whose peel-back bark clearly hosts a plethora of tasty critters. A noisy jay flitted around along with the other visitors – whether they were traveling together or just happened to show up in the warm weather is hard to know, but the grouping was significant.

A female Cardinal, who may well have been around all winter but has been scarce, showed up on March 8 among the regular ground feeders: sparrows, juncos, mourning doves and the ubiquitous starlings. Crows have shown up in the area in large numbers, probably on migration, given multiple groups on different days.

On the pond, fishing has definitely improved as made clear by the daily work of a handsome Common Merganser and a juvenile Double-crested Cormorant whose unusually pale colors made him look more like a Yellow-billed Loon at first glance. These two skilled divers were harassed constantly by Herring Gulls who watched carefully for them to surface with hopes of stealing a meal. The gulls, however, were too slow to get moving after the rises with fish – each time I saw a successful run, the prey was dispatched before a gull was within 15 feet.

Mallards are continuing their dances around the pond, with flurries of lunge and parry mixing with bouts of splash and dive. A quick survey shows 20 on hand this morning.

Their antics stand in counterpoint to the somber presence of a Great Blue Heron, now sporting breeding plumage, who is here every morning and evening, sometimes hunched over a single long leg in sleep, but more often prowling the shallows for its next meal.

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