Late winter

Late winter, and nothing much doing.  The neighbors have a feeder up, hence the flock of sparrows above. Chickadees, juncos, and the occasional nuthatch have also been partaking.  Meanwhile, there's a robin stationed almost permanently in my privet, slowly stripping it of berries.  Those berries must not be very palatable until they've had a winter's worth of freezing and thawing.  No one ever gives them a look in the fall.

But it is March, and we should begin to see the first migrants within a couple weeks.  Judging by history, it'll be hermit thrushes and woodpeckers first, warblers later.  I'm a bit worried this year, and why?  Have a look:

As clearcuts go, this one is not much to write home about -- maybe six to eight mature trees, and a number of smaller ones. That said, if there's one thing Somerville doesn't have a large supply of, it's stands of big trees.   And I know for a fact that that particular stand of trees was well used by the different migrants. What possessed someone to go to the trouble and expense of clearing it is beyond me.  All I know is that they've made our poor little habitat still poorer.

Mystical birds

In my accounting of birds in Somerville, I've been a bit remiss in not giving any attention to the Mystic. Lately I've made a few trips down there to see what there is to be seen. The swans are so prominent you can see them from the highway, but there's actually a good variety of other aquatic birds. This morning there were several kinds of gulls, a flotilla of Canada geese, a couple of coots, a red-breasted merganser, some mallards, and a trio of buffleheads.

In the picture above, you can see a flock of ring-billed gulls surrounding a juvenile herring gull, which you'll notice is banded on the leg. If anyone was looking for Gull 8R5... why, there it is.

New camera!

After complaining for a year, I finally got a new camera -- better resolution, and above all, a better zoom. It's still a point-and-shoot model, but a vastly better one. I'm really hoping it'll help me better identify birds from a distance, which has always been a stumbling block. Of course, there's no mystery about the bird above -- though it was a little strange to see a flock of a hundred of these things come through on Thanksgiving morning.

Owl!

I went out this morning hoping to get a picture of some of the thrushes. There were a number in and around my apple tree, but as I was looking up into the branches, I spotted a small, obscure feathered mass. An owl! Specifically a northern saw-whet owl. I was excited, because I'd never seen a wild owl in my life. I had to show the kids, and they're like, "OMG, maybe it has a message tied to its leg!"

The picture could be better, of course, but my camera is now, on top of everything else, semi-broken: the zoom no longer works.

Okay, a few updates: here are a few more pictures from today. The first is a pair of Carolina wrens, taken by my photographic assistant Mimi:

Here's a hermit thrush:

And finally, another rare juxtaposition (remember the ovenbird and catbird one?), a downy woodpecker and the aforementioned owl:

Hermit Thrushes

The migration season has been nicely bracketed by the appearance of hermit thrushes. They showed up in early April to begin the season, and now, in late October, they're back again. When they're gone, that will probably be it for migrants for this year. In the spring, these birds are pretty much ground feeders, but now, in fall, they're up in the trees and hedges, eating wild grapes, if that's what those things are. I wonder if some of these birds I'm seeing are the same individuals who passed through in the spring. I guess there's only one way to tell, and it's probably illegal. In any event, they're pretty numerous.

Limping into fall

This blog ran out of steam a bit after the spring migration. It's true that bird-wise, summer is duller here in Somerville. We have our regulars, of course, but not so much in the way of birding excitement. Now it's fall already, and the birds have started to go the other way. But at least around here, the fall migration isn't nearly as notable as the spring. Probably that's because birds are following a different route back to the tropics.

That said, we still do get a few migrants here, such as the red-eyed vireo shown above, and a ruby-throated hummingbird. I admit haven't been that diligent about looking. I really should turn my attention to filling out the bird list.

Warbler wrapup

May is gone, and so are the warblers. When the cold and the rain went, so did they. Time, then, for a summary of what the season brought. The first warbler (a black-and-white) appeared on the 27th of April, and from then until the 23rd of May, I saw warblers nearly every day. I logged 12 or so species, as follows (and some are a bit doubtful, based on a quick sighting, or a murky photo):

Black-and-white: 8 individuals
Black-throated blue?: 1
Black-throated green: 2?
Common yellowthroat: 7
Magnolia: 12+
Mourning?: 1
Northern parula: 8-10
Northern waterthrush: 1
Ovenbird: 2
Wilson's: 1
Yellow: 2

The magnolias were the big winners, but northern parulas were also notable this year, as were black-and-whites. Last year I saw some species that I didn't see this year (American redstart, blackpoll), but overall this year, I saw a lot more species than last year -- which, to an extent, reflects increased attention on my part.

But the warblers were only a part of the migratory picture. We also had thrushes, native sparrows, vireos, catbirds, swifts, flycatchers, hummingbirds, woodpeckers and phoebes -- two dozen or so species that came, and for the most part, went. The catbirds are still here, as are the swifts -- and, of course, robins by the thousands.

In the end, this small number of left-behinds reminds us of the basic poverty of bird habitat in Somerville. And with the migrants gone, we're left with the same dozen-odd species that are so familiar to us here year-round -- the Villens, you might say, of the avian world.