Southern New England Outdoor and Nature Site: The Last Two Days were Awesome!

Friday, January 15, 2021

The Last Two Days were Awesome!

Orange Crowed Warbler

It has only been a few days and my decision not to worry about a list is already paying off. First off, I have gotten a surprising amount of positive feedback from my birding buddies about not listing. I had the last two days off from work and birded pretty much from dawn till dark both days. Both days I had a great time.

I started yesterday at a place my friend Jess found an Orange Crowned Warbler last Saturday. I didn't see it early, but I knew I was going to go back multiple times during the day. While I was there, I had three Iceland Gulls walking and feeding around me. Iceland Gulls are a rare species that will show up in the winter. However, these ones were easy marks and photographing them felt like picking low hanging fruit. I also got some photos of Sanderlings, they are a common little shorebird, but dang, they won't stand still!

Then I dipped on a few birds. I went to Quonny to look for the King Eider, no luck. Then I went to Perryville and did not see a Winter Wren. Nor did I see everyone's favorite Lesser Black Backed Gull, Lester. No worries, I'm not keeping a list!

About 10 am, I went back to where the Orange Crowned (OC) was. I waited about twenty minutes and all of the sudden it started catching flies. I watched it feed for around fifteen minutes before it decided to hide in the brush again. Some people have gotten amazing photos of this bird. It didn't come quite as close to me, but I had some decent light and could crop my photos a lot. Very much a photo upgrade from what I had.

After I left the OC, my friend Sue met me and we walked the South Kingstown Land Trust. There wasn't anything there. From there I went for some more low hanging fruit and watched the Northern Shoveler almost until dark. I have never seen a Shoveler so close, and they are rare for this area to begin with. I will happily take advantage of watching this duck until it decides to head for bluer water.

Today's plan was to take the Block Island Ferry with some of my friends. The hope is to see species you can not see from land. Species in the puffin family are known as Alcids. We have some of those species that winter in Block Island Sound. There were not a lot of birds today. However we saw a Common Murre on the way to the island and another on the way back. We had about a dozen Razorbills. Ducks and Gulls were pretty scarce. Still I was more than happy to see and especially photograph the Murre.

Black Headed Gull

After we got back, Sue, Tim and I went to Scarborough Beach to see the Black Headed Gull. We found it on the rocks at the Sheepspen. It was standing still, and being a gull, didn't care about our presence at all. We got lucky, besides the Black Headed Gull we found some more cool species. There was an Iceland Gull mixed with the gulls. Since I was basically petting Iceland Gulls yesterday, I only took a couple of photos. We also had a flock of Snow Buntings fly in. They were feeding and walking on the baseball sized rocks near the beach. We watched them for a few minutes until they were spooked by a dog. Finally, on our way out, Sue walked up a path through the brush and found an out of season Palm Warbler.

In my last post, I wrote down all the pros to not keeping a list this year. In my first weekend since making this monumental decision (that may be a tad dramatic, but only slightly) all of those things happened. I got to spend as much time as I wanted watching and photographing cool birds like the Shoveler and the two gulls. I waited for the Orange Crowned Warbler to show itself without worrying about rushing off because of time constraints. I got to spend time on the ferry with some of my friends. I got some really good photos of many different species because I had the time to enjoy them.

Most importantly, I wasn't stressed. I was happy to see the Common Murre, not disappointed that I didn't see Kittiwake. Dipping on the Winter Wren gives me an excuse to walk the road at Perryville again.