Spring Break, Part 3: A bird in the hand is worth...

     I have a lot of family on the East Coast. I also have a fair number of relatives on the West Coast. This turns out to be very convenient for birding, since I can find a lot of things we don't have in Illinois when I visit my grandparents.
     On an excessively cold morning (I was wearing two hats, as you' might notice in the photos), we drove out along the twisty, narrow, roller-coaster roads of New England to get to a wildlife sanctuary at Ipswich River, which is owned by the Massachusetts Audubon Society (referred to as Mass Audubon, which is an appropriate name considering how much land it owns). We met up with two of my uncles, my aunt, my cousin, and my sister's friend who lives in the area to take a tour of a small maple syrup manufacturing operation on the Audubon land.
     The tour was aimed at a slightly younger audience (there were numerous people under the age of ten in attendance), so I spent much of my time listening to the guide with one ear and using the rest of my senses to look for birds (it was, after all, a wildlife sanctuary). There were a fair number of species there: bluebirds, several types of woodpecker, Red-winged Blackbirds, Mourning Doves, House Sparrows, and the expected complement of tiny hyperactive forest birds such as titmice, chickadees, and nuthatches.
     At one stop, while we were waiting for the tour group in front of us to hurry up and move on, a trio of Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapilis) came tumbling into the bush next to me and didn't display much in the way of fear of humans. I then got a great idea: I would make them land on me.
     Chickadees are famous for being incredibly bold and inquisitive, matched only by certain species of jay. In areas with little human contact, they'll come right down and land on people to inspect them (especially when food and noises are employed). I'd seen the pictures and the YouTube videos; now was my turn to try.
The three little puffballs soon flew away, however. I decided I would need to take off my coat (which is bright blue) next time to appear a bit less artificial (I had my dull grey State XC hoodie on underneath).
     Luckily, there was a "next time." Wandering around in a smaller group after the tour, I got to a fairly secluded area of the woods and listened for chickadees. As soon as I heard them, I stopped and started "pishing." Pishing is an imitation of one of the alarm calls used by various small bird species to say, "There is a relatively weak predator in the area (like a small owl). We should go gang up and chase it way." Chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, kinglets, wrens, gnatcatchers, and a few other feisty little bird species are susceptible to these noises. Especially chickadees. They can't resist it.
     I held a stick in one hand as a compromise between my wanting the birds to land on me and their fear of humans (as minimal as it is). It worked. The little guys repeatedly came and sat on the branch and inspected me for a bit before retreating back to the undergrowth, only to repeat the process.

Look closely. There's a chickadee on the stick I'm holding.

     Eventually, one of them got a bit more adventurous.

Look closely. He's about to land on my left hand (and a second one flying in front of the tree trunk).

     Birds are relatively light for their size, and chickadees don't exactly have much in the way of size. I could barely feel the little guy except for the initial impact when he landed. He stayed on my hand for a few seconds, and stuck his beak up my sleeve to see if my watch was edible. SO. CUTE. But eventually he decided he had had enough, and went back to join his flockmates. The flock actually followed us along the path for a hundred meters or so before breaking off and heading elsewhere.
     To say the least, I was happy. I had just had a close encounter of the bird kind, and I had photo evidence. But as it turned out, my Poecile pal wasn't as unique as I thought he was.
     After all, sometimes bribery is more powerful than patience...

Spring Break, Part 2: Location, location, location.

     A lot of birding relies on being in the right place at the right time; some birds are numerous and widespread, but others require almost as much luck as skill to find.
     Just to clarify things, the first time I saw a White-Winged Scoter (Melanitta deglandi), It was most certainly not luck. Someone else got lucky first and discovered it hiding amongst the mallards at the First and Windsor pond, and emailed the rest of the local birding community about it. I then had to go out in the pouring rain at 6:00 in the morning (due to track and the play, I had no other time to go) to trudge through the mud and see just enough to identify it from really far away before heading to school. That wasn't luck; that was insanity. Below are the photos of the conditions and the bird.

Photo by the Author.

Photo by the Author.

     Now, back to Spring Break.
     After landing in Boston, my family collected up our bags and got a rental car. It's always a bit of a lottery when obtaining a vehicle in a far-off place, since the online registration says you will get a "Halfway Decent Car X, or Similar," which usually means you get the Not-Even-Halfway Decent Car Y, which is supposedly "Similar" to what you wanted. Such was the case this time: the vehicle we were assigned was a Dodge Avenger. Not to make any commercial judgements here, but I kind of have this thing against American cars with small windows, lousy gas mileage, and uncomfortable back seats. Luckily, the rental facility had a new deal where you could switch to any other car on the lot (of "Similar" size) for free. My dad, knowing that I was the obsessive Consumer Reports reader in the family, let me pick the car. I found a nice Hyundai Elantra and we took that instead.
     We soon found ourselves on the incredibly confusing road system of Boston as we tried to make our way to Revere Beach, a local birding spot. I must say, Driver's Ed really didn't prepare me for the real world, considering the fact that I learned a dozen new types of road layout I had never even heard of before (T-Intersection Jughandle? What?). There are also a ton of large roundabouts (they call them "rotaries") out there. Not to mention 1-way streets that dead-end into each other. And train tracks cutting the beach off from the rest of the world. And nothing going in straight lines. And... yeah. We eventually got to Revere Beach, and I quickly hopped out with my spotting scope to check out the huge flotilla of dark diving ducks that were fairly close to the shore.

Photo by the Author.

Photo by the Author. SO MANY SCOTERS! (and there are even more out of the frame)

Photo by the Author. Close up, brought to you by the spotting scope.

     You gotta be kidding me.
     Only two weeks earlier I had trudged out in the rain to see that White-Winged Scoter in Illinois. In Boston, all I had to do was go to a local beach on a sunny day and I could find upwards of 500 of them offering perfect views. Not that I wasn't happy to see them, of course...
     This actually isn't too weird of a phenomenon. Though I highly discourage identifying birds solely on where they are, there is no problem with going to where a bird is most likely to be. Illinois does not have good habitat for scoters and other sea ducks, so it's expected that there will be more of them out on the East Coast. Finding the right location and habitat was what allowed me to find another duck species that you will hear plenty of later...
     But up next, we have an adventure involving birds, maple syrup, and extended family.

Spring Break, Part 1: Birds from a Plane

     I think I can claim bragging rights for having a busy Friday. First, I woke up at 5:30AM to go to track practice, after which I went to MLK Elementary School to perform Jack and the Beanstalk, then finally went to school for my afternoon classes (well, I guess before that I had to lug huge chunks of wood up three flights of stairs) and, once school was out, get in a car and drive straight up to Chicago. At least I didn't have to fly out that night.
     Instead, I had to fly out early the next morning. Midway airport was super-crowded (as one would expect on the first day of spring break) but not as bad as the one time where the line for check-in was long enough that they routed it through one of the parking garages (but that's another story). The plane ride was much shorter than the Pacific coast flights I'm used to, so I barely had time to take stock of all the items advertised in Skymall that I never knew I needed before the announcement was made to "prepare for our final descent into Boston Logan International Airport."
     I'll admit that I'm a connoisseur of airport approaches. Boston probably ranks in the top ten for best pre-landing scenery (I'll have you know that #1 is Portland, OR). The best part came about a minute or so before landing, when we were low enough over Boston Harbor that I could start birding before I was even on the ground.
     Actually, this is nothing new. Ever since I spied a White-faced Ibis (Plegadis chihi) during touchdown at Salt Lake City, I've tried to identify at least a few birds before I land whenever I fly off to some locale for birding. It usually only works in coastal cities. Luckily, Boston is a coastal city.
     The first bird to show up was an American White Pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) flying below us--birds are much easier to see from a plane when they're also flying, especially if the bird has a wingspan of over 8 feet. Next I spotted a couple of gulls, thought I couldn't tell which species they were.
     Right before landing, the plane passed over a small jetty with guidance lights mounted on it--and several birds swimming next to it. Dark backs, light fronts, angular overall shape: unmistakable as Common Loons (Gavia immer). I took the fact that I had just seen three somewhat uncommon birds before setting foot in the state of Massachusetts to be a sign of impending good birding.
     Which was more or less correct.