Herrick’s Cove is a small spot in Bellows Falls, VT, which happens to be designated an “important bird area:”
It is, to me, with all its flaws and problems, a very special place. It’s probably, more than anything else, what got me into birding.
The cove is a fairly straightforward area. It’s owned by a power company, and doesn’t have a huge amount in the way of trails, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can find all sorts of fascinating birds there (not to mention cool insects, plus the occasional turtle laying its eggs). It’s got picnic tables, grills and people will come in to fish and party, but I prefer it first thing in the morning, before anyone else has arrived, while the day is relatively unspoiled by cars, teenagers with loud music, and people running their motorboats off the dock.
It was a May morning, three years ago, that I first attended the Herrick’s Cove wildlife festival. It was on that morning that I first saw an American Bittern, something a lot of birders never get very good looks at. This one was just hanging out in the reeds near the end of the cove:
I’ve been visiting the cove a lot lately. Warblers nest there, such as this American Redstart…
These black and white warblers…
Chestnut-Sided Warblers…
Yellow Warbler
And common yellowthroats:
Other birds that nest there include the baltimore oriole…
Song Sparrow
Veery
Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker
…the blue-gray gnatcatcher…
…the eastern kingbird…
Northern Flicker
The great crested flycatcher…
and (one of my favorites), The Green Heron:
On the right day and time, you can see tons of other birds there. Eagles, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, to name a few. One of my favorite experiences at the cove was when I got there a little past 6am, on a misty July morning, when I got the range from one of the largest birds there (Osprey) to one of the smallest (Brown Creeper) in a matter of minutes. On another occasion, a pair of juvenile eastern kingbirds flew right in front of me. They must have been playing with one another as they flew by because right in front of me were four tiny feathers left in mid air after they passed, suspended momentarily like something out of an old road runner cartoon. I’ve seen five species of woodpecker there (Pilleated, Downy & Hairy, as well as the two pictured here), and once I saw a trio of Green Herons (two adults and their newly fledged kid) fly up from reeds in the water by the boat launch into a nearby tree, the same tree from which I once saw a pair of adult bald eagles take off a few weeks earlier.
In the spring and fall, waterbirds migrate through, including Green-Winged Teal (we’ve had both American and Eurasian varieties of these), Northern Pintails, all three varieties of Merganser, lots of sandpipers and plovers (Killdeer, greater & lesser yellowlegs, Dunlins, semipalmated plovers and sandpipers, plus lots of others). We’ve also had red-necked grebes pass through a few times as well. I’ve had sightings of three varieties of Vireo there (Yellow-throated, Warbling, and Red-Eyed), plus plenty of other passers-by, such as…
Black-Throated Green Warbler
Blue-Winged Warbler
Louisiana_Waterthrush
Magnolia Warbler
Palm Warbler
Savannah Sparrow
I break the cove into a few basic areas. The main parking lot is the boat launch area. From there, you can look for warblers in the surrounding forests and even take a trail into the back woods, or you can head out to the main part of the cove, which ends at a point (we call it “the point”) from which you can see Eagle Island (not its real name), where sometimes we can see eagles perching and hunting, as well as the occasional Osprey, plus plenty of the shorebirds mentioned above. In the spring, we’ve seen as many as eight varieties of warbler in an hour just in the area near and around the point.
On the way to the point, there’s spot over on the left: an open field with woods on two sides. I don’t spend much time there, but we’ve had some nice looks at waterbirds across the shore and at warblers in the woods. There’s also a spot on the right where you can see some amazing looks at Great Blue Herons as well as the occasional waterfowl passing through.
I used the term “Important Bird Area” above. You might wonder what that means. I doesn’t mean the land’s protected, nor does it mean that the land is preserved. Specifically, it means (per Audubon:
To qualify as an IBA, sites must satisfy at least one of the following criteria. The site must support:
- Species of conservation concern (e.g. threatened and endangered species)
- Restricted-ranges species (species vulnerable because they are not widely distributed)
- Species that are vulnerable because their populations are concentrated in one general habitat type or biome
- Species, or groups of similar species (such as waterfowl or shorebirds), that are vulnerable because they occur at high densities due to their congregatory behavior
My guess is that the Cove’s prime reason for the designation is the last item above, but I want to focus on the understanding that it’s not a wildlife refuge– people use it without regard for the wildlife there and people drive through it freely and, sometimes, recklessly. There is no one species of bird that will be devastated without Herrick’s Cove, but it’s a place of value. It’s a place to connect children and adults with the natural world in a context that does not require television, cell phones or much of anything other than our ears and eyes.
I don’t mean for this piece to be anything special. I just want to share my experience with you all of a place that I see as of immense value. I never go there when there are likely to be lots of people around (weekends past 9am, sunny afternoons, etc.) but I get immense pleasure from my fairly routine early morning walks there. I’m saddened by the way some people treat it (there is often trash left in various spots), but while it is mistreated, it is rarely abused.
Our public spaces… our small little parks which are often overlooked… they are where I go, where I think, where I frequently feed the mosquitoes, where I find things that are often ordinary, simple and beautiful, but occasionally, simply magnificent:
A few closing notes. First, these are all smaller images, linked to larger ones. Clicking on them gets you to the larger versions, with details about the type of camera used to take the photograph, the lens used, etc.
Also, a shameless self-promotional plug: I’ve put together a 2010 Calendar of birding. Here’s the preview:
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