Spring Peepers and other things

   

Spring Peeper Peeping
They are only about an inch long

   I have wanted to see a Spring Peeper for a few years now. We all hear Spring Peepers every spring, they have been calling the last few nights. However, I have never seen one. I even did a Facebook post last year about all of the wonders I have travelled to see, yet I have never seen a Spring Peeper. Well my friends, today was the day!

   I spent the last two days doing local hikes and birding (more on that below). Since I was local, I came home for lunch. After lunch I went to the Chorney Property to see what I could find. When I was in the parking lot, I could hear some peepers from behind houses on the other side of the street. I knew there wasn't any access to them, but it got me thinking that they were already calling at 5 pm. 

  So I drove around. I didn't go far. I remembered a place I caught frogs with my first real girlfriend when I was a kid. It was a little pond off of High Street. I hadn't been down that road in years. When I got to the pond the area was an entire soccer complex. The pond was still there and it was loaded with Spring Peepers. The Peepers were so loud that they were piercing my eardrums. I figured if I don't see a Spring Peeper here and now, I may as well give up.

  I walked the edge of the shoreline hoping to see them floating in the water or hop off the land as I got close to them. Neither of which happened. So I tried a new tactic, I sat on some rocks with the setting sun at my back. I would be patient enough to wait them out. I scanned the edge of the water hoping to see them. I watched a Youtube video on "How to see Spring Peepers" and I scanned the water for movement. 

   Finally as the sun started to go down the frogs started moving around. A couple of the ones in the water crawled up on sticks and water muck. I finally got to see my first ever Spring Peepers. They were males trying to impress females. I got to watch them call by expanding their throats for an hour. It was really fun to watch.  Seeing Spring Peepers was probably the most important thing I have done this year. I know, I have weird priorities.

The other things I've done the last two days...

   If you read my post from Wednesday you saw I'm doing a North Attleboro Big Year whenever I don't feel like travelling. Birding was not my original intention today. When I woke up this morning, I really wanted to go trout fishing. Both of the ponds near me were stocked with Brook Trout. The thought of fishing for Brookies instead of driving an hour to see birds sounded great to me. However, the thought of trout fishing must have sounded great to everyone else too. I couldn't get near either pond. I regretted not putting my kayak on my car before I left.

 

Gadwall in perfect light

 Since trout fishing was off the menu, I went down to Blackstone Park in Providence to see if the Green Winged Teal was still around. It was not but some Gadwall and a Red Throated Loon were close. I stayed about a half an hour because I ran into my friend Dan F. I stopped at Swan Point to see if the teal had moved up river but it had not.

Red Throated Loon

   Next I headed back towards home. I  went to the North Attleboro Fish Hatchery. There is a nice hiking trail in the back that goes around a muddy swamp. I'm thinkin this could be a good spot for a variety of birds in a few weeks. The only things I got there were both American and Fish Crows. 

   From the Fish Hatchery I went to a land trust property in Attleboro called Nickerson Walking Woods Preserve. I stumbled upon this place when I was looking up places to walk in North Attleboro. The hike is off of Richardson Ave in Attleboro. I was pleasantly surprised when I heard and then saw Red Squirrels just as I was starting to walk. I do not see many Red Squirrels south of New Hampshire. This place was loaded with them. I counted eight throughout the walk. My best birds were three heard Hermit Thrushes and a Yellow Bellied Sapsucker.  After I left Nickerson, I went home for lunch.

   Lunch took a little while because I may have put on a the Ken Burns documentary about Baseball. When I emerged, I went back to the Chorney Property for the third time in three days. Today I was rewarded with wet feet but also I heard a Barred Owl. I felt very lucky to get that species because I would have had no idea where to find one. From there I went to the pond that had the Spring Peepers and you know the rest from there.  More photos below.

Yellow Bellied Sapsucker

Dark Eyed Junco

This turtle's reflection was crazy

Small Koi in an ornamental pond

One of many Red Squirrels today

Birding my Hometown

I did not take this photo today, but this species, 
Hooded Merganser was one of the ducks 
I saw this afternoon

 I live in North Attleboro, MA. This is a very convenient place to live in southern New England if I want to get somewhere fast. I live with a five minute drive of I-295, I-95, and I-495. This means if a good bird is in Rhode Island, I can be inside its borders in ten minutes. The Cape Coda Canal is fifty minutes from my house and the New Hampshire state line is an hour. 

   However, within the borders of my town there is not a lot of places to go outside. There are two trout lakes in town, Falls Pond and Whitings. I live a five minute walk from Falls Pond. Both ponds are heavily stocked. Besides the trout, the bass fishing is at best, okay. 

  We do not have any large land trust properties, state parks, town forest, or any wildlife refuges. We do not have any saltwater or major rivers. We do have some farms near the Cumberland border but most of it is private. There is one farm that does have trail access. Long story short, I am glad to be near the Eisenhower Highway System. 

   I have been fooling around with the idea of doing a North Attleboro Big Year. This would mean counting all of the birds I see in town for a year. Since it is March, I would do a March 16- Ides of March year, not a traditional Jan-Dec. I've kind of thought about this for a while now. As I've said, there really isn't a lot of open public land in town, so much of any Big Year would be roadside birding. 

  Today, I decided to do it. Don't get me wrong, I'll be spending my days off where I usually do, the ocean and the mountains. However, this will give me something to do after work. Even if I go trout fishing after supper, I'd still have plenty of time to spend an hour looking in bushes for sparrows somewhere. I do not have high hopes. Without any ocean or swamps, the habitat is limited. If I get one hundred species, I'll be happy.

   Anyway... this morning while getting on the highway to go to work I saw a Raven harassing a Bald Eagle. I don't know why the eagle was there. There isn't any water at the Route 1@ I-295 ramp, maybe it was just passing through and I looked up at the right time. This was my first North Attleboro Bald Eagle. I've seen a few flying around Manchester Reservoir only a few yards from the NA/Attleboro line, but as far as I can remember, it was my first one in North.

   This afternoon determined not to waste the nice weather, I had hoped to go fishing. When I found out my best friend wasn't around I went for a walk instead. I went to an impoundment for Attleboro drinking water ( I don't know the name, but it is off of Old Post Road).  There is a dam and some hiking trails. Nothing very long but it is nice. I saw some Buffleheads, Hooded Mergansers and Mallards. The highlight was a muskrat that came up on the bank very close to me. It cut off a branch of a small pine tree and swam off with it in its mouth. I also saw a mammal swimming way across the pond that I'm positive was a mink. 

  I left the pond at sunset and went up to the farm fields by Ellis Road and Hight St. Never have I looked for Woodcock in my town and decided to see if I could find some. I drove up to Fales Rd and heard some there. I pulled over and one of them was in the air. When it came down it buzzed by me about fifteen feet away. It was a moment of satisfaction.

  I went back to the Chorney Property on Ellis Road and parked my car. I heard several more Woodcock peent and a few more fly. Along the way I saw fifteen deer and heard my first Spring Peepers and Killdeer for the season. All in all, it was a fun couple of hours, and it cost me less than one gallon of gas!

   

A lifer and a photo upgrade of an upgrade

 Today I went birding from sunrise to sunset. It was by far the most I have been outside since the new year started. A Northern Shoveler has been hanging around a small pond in Warwick for a week. I was not driving there just to see it and turn around with gas prices the way they are. However, today was a nice day and I went there before driving down to South County. I pulled up to the pond and before I shifted into park, I had the bird. The Shoveler was with a hundred Mallards right next to the shoreline. I got out of my car and sat down. I took photos for half an hour. The bird kept moving so I could choose to shoot it in light or shade, close or further away. At times it was five feet from me.

    Last year, there was a similar situation in Wakefield. There was a fairly tame Shoveler in the river behind the Contemporary Theater. It got close for a duck, maybe twenty five feet. Certainly close enough that with my big lens I could fill the frame with my feathered friend. I got what I thought were very good photos. But today, that bird could not have been a better photo subject if it were in a zoo.

  A little later on, I met my friend Tim at Great Swamp to find early migrants. We saw some Green Winged Teal, Wood Ducks, and a Northern Pintail. The woods were quiet, but the variety of ducks was nice. When we just got to the impoundment, a report came in of a Common Gull. The Common Gull was found by Sam Miller and Alan Kneidel. Common Gulls are common in Europe, but definitely not America. Since Tim and I just got to the pond, we didn't do an about face. Instead we walked half way around looking at the ducks. We ended up birding for 45-50 minutes then walked back to the car. It was a twenty five minute ride to the Narragansett Seawall.

Common Gull

   Luckily for us the gull was still there. It blended in with the other gulls well. The key features were its black eye and lack of black on the beak (Ring Billed Gulls have a black line down the bill). It was smaller than a Herring Gull and just a bit larger than the Ring Billed Gulls. Luckily, there were a ton of birders still there and we got on it pretty quickly. 

  Though the bird was at the Seawall for a couple of hours, we only had it for fifteen minutes then it flew off. It came back for a quick flyby before disappearing out of sight as it went south. We got pretty lucky the gull was still there when we got there. It was a lifer for almost everyone that saw it except for a couple of lifelong birders. I did not know when I was at the swamp that it was only the second recorded Common Gull in Rhode Island. The other was in 2005. Lesson learned about not leaving immediately. Luckily, it wasn't learned the hard way.

I only got average proof photos of the Common Gull, but lots of photos of the Northern Shoveler. Many more below.

RISD Museum

 

Georgia O'Keefe painting

 In my attempt to break out of my winter funk, I did some research last night to find things to do that I might enjoy. Bonus points if they were free, and double bonus points if they did not involve long gas guzzling drives. Somehow I managed to remember the RISD Museum of Art.

   The RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) is a college in downtown Providence a five minute walk from where I spent many winter nights in years past striper fishing. The Art Museum is really a hidden gem. 

  First the important info: The link below will get you all the info you need. However here is some of it. It is open 10-5 T,W,S,S. It is open 12-7 Thurs and Fri. The cost is $17/adult. However, the museum is free on Sundays and after 5 pm. You need to buy tickets online in advance. As of now MASKS ARE STILL REQUIRED. The fact that the museum is free on Sundays and only a twenty minute ride from my house sealed the deal on what I was going to do with my Sunday afternoon.

https://risdmuseum.org/

Once inside the museum you take an elevator to the third floor. This is where the galleries begin. Right away you see a small statue made by Auguste Rodin along the small sky bridge. From there you go into Modern and Contemporary Art. Not exactly my cup of tea, but there is a  Georgia O'Keefe in the room. 

   The museum is not big. We were there a little over two hours. Though there aren't hundreds of galleries like in the MFA or Smithsonian, there are pieces from multiple periods. There are rooms dedicated to Egypt and Greece. There is a wing with American Art. 

My favorite section is the European Art. The museum has many pieces ranging from the Renaissance to the French Impressionists. I am not religious, but I enjoy the religious art form the Renaissance. The paintings tell a story. Since most of the people in the late Middle Ages were illiterate, the paintings were a way to show Bible stories to the masses (and to keep them under papal control). 

   Later on, when art was created for art's sake, artists diversified. They experimented with color and light. They painted nature and ordinary scenes. For me it is fun to watch the transformation. The museum has one big "Great Gallery" that has huge paintings that you can sit and admire or get up close. 

  There are quite a few French Impressionists paintings. I believed I counted three Monet's. There were paintings by Renoir and Paul Cezanne, and one by Picasso.  There is one painting by Van Gogh. I won't pretend Van Gogh is my favorite painter, but in this particular painting, which is in his most famous style, he used really thick brush strokes with really thick paint. I realized that because I could see the thick paint, I could "see" exactly what Van Gogh was thinking. There it was twelve inches from my face, each stoke a look into his mind. 

   Besides the Rodin in the skyway, there was another called the "Hand of God". This piece was actually bought straight from Rodin by Samuel Colt (the maker of firearms). The statue features a hand creating Adam and Eve. It is unfinished but in my mind a masterpiece. 

The Hand of God

    I could go on, but all and all, the museum was awesome. It did not hurt that it was free today and so was on street parking (Sunday). I think I will go back more often. Being that it is twenty minutes from home, I probably should have gone a couple of times over the winter. I highly recommend. A couple more photos below

The largest wooden statue from
Japan in the United States

The Sachem Ninigret

A thousand year old wooden sculpture od Jesus

This little Hippo is 4000 years old!