Southern New England coast

On Wednesday, I had my longest workday at the Ryan Center, clocking in at 5 1/2 hours. The notable task of the day was cleaning the court with a mop and wood shining fluid in preparation for the URI men's basketball game against St. Joe's. I went home before the game, and uncommittedly watched some of it. The Eric Lantz reported that one of the St. Joe's players slipped on the floor- that's home court advantage! Eric brought home a bag of popcorn, which has been a lot of work.


Thursday I went into work with The Eric Lantz, but it turned out they didn't have any work for me. So I took Eric's jeep up to Bourne to look in two areas that have recently been reliable for KING EIDER. I spent about 1.5 hour drive each way, and about 3 hours of scanning the railroad bridge at the Cape Cod Canal, and Scusset Beach for the eider. I waded through what had to have been about 500 COMMON EIDER looking for the semi-rarity, but had no luck.


In the morning on Friday, Eric and I headed off for a full day of birding. We got to the Middleboro Cumberland Farm fields at about noon, and had a very productive bout there. Great looks at a dark-morph ROUGH-LEGGED HAWK, as well as a variety of sparrows including a VESPER'S, and at least 50 HORNED LARK. We then drove up to Nile's Pond in Rockport to check out a huge flock of gulls sitting on the ice. Other birders had reported GLAUCOUS and ICELAND GULLS on the ice. It was quite far, but I was able to deduce an ICELAND GULL in the pack. That night, I met up with John and Matt for some black beans and rice. Then we checked out the Needy Visions, who played at The Milky Way.

Saturday morning, Dan and I went along the south shore looking at the nature. We looked around the marsh on the backside of Wollaston Beach, and the Squaw Rock in Squantum. While it wasn't overly birdy, Saturday was the best weather of my entire visit in MA. We then met up with John and got some Weymouth House of Pizza. John and I met up with Doug and Sherry, and hit up the Soul-Le-Lu-Jah at Zuzu in Cambridge.

Sunday morning, Sherry, Eric and I got some breakfast at McKay's in Quincy Center, and then stopped by BK's house to say hi and hang out with his daughter Diana. Eric and I then went to the north shore to bird. We stopped in Marblehead at Devereaux Beach to look for a KING EIDER, but no luck. I have a new Bogey.

Then we went to the Parker River NWR on Plum Island. SNOWY OWLS have regularly been seen here, as well as a good diversity of alcids. We went to an area that a snowy had been seen earlier in the day, but no luck. We then went to the Hellcat Observation area, where some birders had conglomerated. When we got up to them, a woman asked if I had seen the SNOWY OWL that had just flew down, and I told her I didn't. She said to wait, because it frequently was landing on an osprey platform. We waited awhile, but never encountered it.

Our last stop in the refuge before sundown was the One Ocean. Some COMMON GOLDENEYE flew over, but despite looks out into the choppy ocean for soem time, no other birds were visible. We took the long ride back to Newport, me falling asleep, and had a relaxing night of comedy on t.v. This morning I came with Eric to work, despite being another day off for me.