Just now, as I plod through my morning, taking care of email chores, contemplating a digging project outdoors in the boorish weather and hoping for clear birding skies later on, I caught a glimpse of strong black & white at the tail end of a bird at the back side of my biggest feeder, when I went into the kitchen for a coffee update.

My jaw dropped.  Had to be an Evening Grosbeak! I went to my office for the camera.  When I got back, there was a Cardinal at the feeder.  Up in the apple opposite my view was a male grosbeak.  I snatched a couple of shots, then saw the female outlined against the sky, also perched in the apple tree.  A couple more shots.  Then everything took off in a flurry.  Maybe, likely, an accipiter.  Whew!  And Whoopieee!  I hope the alert has worn off.  I’ll go back now and find out.

No big birds back yet.

Terrible photos, through the window glass, no light.   So who’s looking?!

Monsieur:

Madame:

Past visits of this great species here at my home have been infrequent, to say the least, but I would rather have a view like this one from a couple of years back, in the spring:

That’s more like it!  Stoked.  Evening Grosbeaks are a big deal on the Vineyard and the arrival is right in line with all the PUFIs and siskins and RB Nuts that we have had this fall.

While I have your attention, I should mention that there has been a hatch year male ruby-throated hummer up in Chilmark, coming to a feeder the last few days.  Things are rockin’, if your eyes are open!

Lan

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In order to have a chance of carrying out work on the beaches of Delaware Bay that might result in healthier (and heavier) Red Knots leaving on the last northern leg of their annual journey up to the Arctic, certain scientific requirements need to be met.  If anyone wants to access the restricted beaches where the birds feed, or if anyone wants to physically disturb the surface of those beaches, they have to apply for and receive permits from the state powers that be to do that work.  You can’t just show up and start digging up the sand.

Norm Famous, one of our number who is a wetlands ecologist by profession, put together GCA’s application to New Jersey Fish & Wildlife to conduct two experiments both of which we intend to complete during this next week, right at the tail end of the period that the knots , turnstones,  dunlin and other migrants are still feeding on the bay shores:  within numbered plots about 6 feet by 15 feet we will rake up the beach surface where there are horseshoe crab nests, at different depths, taking core samples and counting the number of eggs before and after the surface is turned over and also observing the reaction of the feeding birds to the disturbed areas;  secondly, we will feed gulls with other food products, principally Laughing Gulls, also within prescribed plots, to assess how this distraction of the gulls reduces their competition with shorebirds for the crab eggs.

Anyway, the applications were just now, as of two days ago, approved and the permits issued.  So it’s a go!  Late maybe, but some major last minute scrambling by the three GCA partners, including Porter Turnbull flying in from Hawaii and Norm Famous coming down from Maine, will get us down to New Jersey by this Tuesday to hit the beaches running and, hopefully, get these experiments under way before the birds decide to head out, which could be quite a sight in itself, if you are lucky enough to be on site when they lift off.  At least two other hardy souls will join us for at least part of the week we are there to help with manpower and equipment.

There will be more on this subject to share with you when I get back home to Martha’s Vineyard around the second day of June.  Stay tuned.

I just had to throw in a pair of oversized shots for all the detail, even though it looks a little strange with all the print overtop.  These two are from the shores of Cape Cod Bay on Chappaquiddick Island:

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

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Hot off the presses, straight from the fields of Chilmark to your monitor screen.  The phone and email thread went from Keith to Whiting to Manter to McDowell to  refinding with Whiting this very elegant and rather casual drop-in.

No frills, just bird photographs:

It is the Vineyard, after all:

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

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There is something about a connection between bird feeders and a big glass sliding door that occasionally provides me with a handson experience involving accident-prone avian navigators, meaning a bird hits the glass every once in a blue moon.  If I happen to notice, I pick it up and encourage it to reexamine the idea of leaving the living zone and suggest resuming life on earth and just above it.

Birders who have a sense of trends in the birding world this winter are aware of the not ordinary numbers of pine siskins that have frequented our area, including Martha’s Vineyard, that have stayed late into the springtime and which may be setting up little homesteads locally where they are very infrequent nesters.  A couple of these tiny speedsters have been sharing my niger feeders with the goldfinch regulars.  Yesterday I found one prone on the groundlevel deck under the feeders looking lifeless, beaten by the odds of eating lunch in a one sided glass box.  It had the look of one that is not about to recover, limp and oddly shaped.

I picked it up and felt a small reaction in the legs and feet.  This seems often the case when an unconscious bird’s inner gyroscope wants it to be head up and feet down.  Being a little out of whack with gravity disturbs them enough to send wakeup signals to retrieve them out of shock.  The photos that follow demonstrate the successful recovery.  The ones that follow the siskin pictures are a bonus sighting from an Edgartown residential neighborhood where people with feeders had noticed that male cardinals are not the only bright red bird on the block.

Summer Tanagers sometimes overshoot their intended southern territories.  Their mistake is our gain.

Spring greens come late on the Vineyard, but beauty is where you find it.  The vernal waters that reflect this abstract forest will be gone by summer.

By the way, I am headed out to southeast Arizona for birding fun in the sun the next week or so.  I cannot really know  if blog posts from there are a likelihood.   The places we will go are not obvious good bets for internet hookup, but we shall see.   So stay tuned.  There will be bird photography going on in abundance; and those avian images will be shared with you all upon my return.

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

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