marthasvineyard

This is prime season for peregrines to move through Martha’s Vineyard.  One guy up at the Gay Head Cliffs at Aquinnah saw eighteen the other day, with four visible at one time.  Right place at the right time.

Sometimes the falcons  exert what seems from my vantage point like a lot of energy acquiring a meal, like chasing down a Sanderling, maneuvering one out over open water and cutting off its climb for height or an escape back to the  flock.  Recently I have been noticing, instead, some almost casual chases.  [click to continue...]

Thousands, higher numbers than I comprehend, of tree swallows were staging today near Crackatuxet Cove, an area at the southeast corner of Edgartown Great Pond accessible from the “right fork” at Katama.   A bunch of the Vineyard’s regular birders tried Aquinnah and Red Beach looking for storm birds this morning.  Two Black Terns and two Spotted Sandpipers are the only finds worth mentioning.  We then traversed the Island to the Farm Institute, which was way less than spectacular.  Disappointed, some of us drove the Atlantic leg of the Katama triangle and saw, far off, a swarm of swallows.  [click to continue...]

Scanning the plowed fields at the Farm Institute in Katama has been de rigeur for the past couple of weeks, anyway, for the regulars, and also for the more sought-after Upland Sandpiper and Buff-breasteds.  Neither of each until yesterday, when Rob Culbert, pro ecologist and local birding guide, emailed some of the local birders that on his Saturday morning field trip rounds he had espied up to five buffies bobbing and poking their way around the field. [click to continue...]