It's barely daylight but there's lots of movement all around. I can see the early birds, including several ROBINS, at least 3 FLICKERS and a couple WOODCOCK probing for the proverbial worms.
We have only tiny remnants of snow but the ground isn't completely thawed and worms are mostly keeping cosy below the frost. SOW BUGS (WOOD LICE) are becoming quite evident as are various small flies and occasional LADY BUGS.
The ubiquitous black spiders are also evident anywhere there is rock and gravel along the shoreline.
There's also an increasing number of sparrows on the patio, lawns and surrounds.
It's too early to guess whether these are mainly new, over-night arrivals or hold-overs from yesterday but I suspect some of both.
Yesterday saw more JUNCOS than SONG SPARROWS and a handful of IPSWICH-TYPE SAVANNAH SPARROWS.
Good Friday's mild temperatures and light winds, as was widely noted, produced quite a few new arrivals.
Here on MSI, we saw a black bird flock of some 20+ GRACKLES, 10+ BROWN HEADED COWBIRDS & 8-10 RED WINGED BLACKBIRDS.
Other 1st arrivals were several FLICKERS, an unverified but probable HERMIT THRUSH and several WOODCOCK.
A couple of the latter offered fun observations as they fed around mowed areas and, in typical calm-weather Woodcock fashion, allowed themselves to be followed closely without disrupting their feeding
.
Still another spring arrival was a single BLACK DUCK. Not exactly earth shaking news for many people, especially when one considers how many of this species over-winter on the salt water. Nonetheless, Dabbling Ducks in general, and Black Ducks in particular, are rarely seen here except in early spring and never in any real number.
Friday also brought the first strong vocalization from the afternoon raft of RAZORBILLS. That late-day congregation hasn't grown much in recent days, likely never getting much over 800. Add to that smaller groups and COMMON MURRES and we get the the 1000 to 1200 Acids that staged another sunset reconnaissance over-flight yesterday.
Still no PUFFINS in the mix so I'm not expecting the birds to come ashore very early this year. (April 5th is the earliest and April 28th is the latest that I've seen them come and stay).
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maine birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to maine-birds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment