The 57th annual Christmas Bird Count was held on Friday, Dec. 30, 2016. Let’s just say that the weather was less than ideal for finding and counting songbirds, as it was blowing a sustained 15 to 20 miles per hour out of the west, with frequent gusts between 25 and 35 miles per hour.
Despite the wind, it was a fun day, a chance to socialize with friends while searching for birds. Our tentative results are almost 19,000 individuals and 123 species, very close to the average numbers for our count. A more detailed accounting will be in a future column, once compiler Luanne Johnson has vetted the tally results.
Some of the participants have shared their exciting moments with me. As might be expected for count day, their comments reflect some of the species they found.
Nancy Weaver reports that her field team’s highlights had to be finding two dozen eastern bluebirds at the Nature Conservancy’s native plant nursery, and finding eight wood ducks in the pond at Pilot Hill Farm.
On the beaches of Chappaquiddick — the territory covered by Lanny McDowell’s crew — highlights included getting close-up views of 11 brant feeding in eelgrass beds in Cape Pogue Bay, and seeing how they are “supposed to be feeding” and contrasting that to the ones that graze tamely at Ocean Park. They also searched all day for northern gannets out in the ocean, a search that was finally rewarded when they found two adult gannets in the ocean, east of Leland Beach late in the day.
Perseverance pays off. Liz Baldwin’s crew was tracking down birds in the center of the Island — the only totally inland territory —and one of their highlights was spotting a great blue heron perched in a spruce tree in the state forest. They also found a yellow-breasted chat in a thicket near the West Tisbury transfer station.
Tree swallows made the highlights for Warren Woessner’s crew. They found two large flocks that day, one at Brookside Farm and another flock zipping around the Canada geese at the Keith Farm.
Susan Whiting reports that her crew was looking at a large flock of at least 300 greater scaup in Chilmark Pond when the sun emerged from behind the clouds. All of a sudden colors were visible, and the glossy green heads of the males shown brightly. But wait. One of the ducks had a bright rufous head — it was a redhead, which could easily have been missed had the sun not come out.
The definite highlight for my team was having two immature bald eagles in sight at the same time, at the northern end of Oyster Pond. Both eagles were playing, repeatedly dive-bombing swimming cormorants which dove to get away. When the cormorants resurfaced the eagles dive-bombed again. While eagles will steal fish caught by other birds, these cormorants did not have fish in their beaks.
In Edgartown, Ken Magnuson’s crew spotted a northern shoveller in Sweetened Water Pond, the little pond right by the road just east of Morning Glory Farm. They were also pleased to find some green-winged teal as well as some eastern bluebirds.
Although Matt Pelikan says his crew really had to dig for any highlights — due to the wind and the scarcity of birds — he mentions that he saw both green-winged teal and northern pintail in his territory. He had not seen either species in that territory on previous counts. He also mentions “quality time with a small flock of bluebirds that were apparently hawking winter craneflies (insects).”
Olsen Houghton relates that Matthew Dix knew that Wilson’s snipe were always in a dense shrub thicket with a stream running through it near Indian Hill Road. But who would plunge into the brush — getting beat up and scratched in the process — to chase up a snipe? Mr. Dix was persuaded to, and sure enough he flushed a snipe and everyone got to see it. That dedication is what was necessary on this windy count day to chase birds out of protective thickets.
Gus Ben David summarized the mood of count participants: despite the wind “it was a great count and all of us had fun!”
Winter residents are still arriving and rarities are always possible; please look for them and report your sightings to birds@mvgazette.com.
Robert Culbert leads Guided Birding Tours and is an ecological consultant living in Vineyard Haven.
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