Herrick’s Cove is a small spot in Bellows Falls, VT, which happens to be designated an “important bird area:”

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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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Per today’s Rutland Herald:

If Mayor Thomas Lauzon had only trusted his gut Sunday, he wouldn’t have broken his ribs.

[…]

…Lauzon… gamely agreed to participate in a 21st-century re-enactment of the fabled fist fight over the naming of Barre during Sunday’s conclusion of the Barre Heritage Festival at Barre Town Middle and Elementary School.

Can we nominate the Vermont Mayor Lauzon “most likely to lose a hand trying to fix a lawnmower?”

At least there weren’t pies involved.

Just a few photos from the week, none of birds:

Mystery dragonfly:

Consider this an open thread.

Echinacia bloom, close-up:

Very large frog, with bug on shoulder (close-up here):

Toadstool, with water dripping off:

Mystery butterfly:

Mystery bug:

The word “absentee” has a context to it: it’s not always used to simply describe absence, but it’s often used to describe neglectful absence.  Its context is generally one that’s perjorative, which is why it was alarming to see the headline in today’s Free press: “Absentee rates rise for teachers in Burlington.”

But the article itself isn’t referring just to unscheduled absence or people disappearing from their jobs:

Burlington teachers were absent an average of 14.6 days for illness, conferences, personal days and other reasons in the most recent school year, and school-district officials are studying that number as they address a 23 percent jump in substitute-teacher costs since 2007.

Now… if this piece had been serious journalism, it would have done a little investigation: how did these breakdowns vary from previous years?  Are teachers really shirking off more (as the headline implies), or are they just being dragged to more work-related conferences?  “illnesses,” “personal days,” and “conferences” are three very different things and lumping them all together into a single factor is irresponsible and potentially misleading.

From my point of view, I can’t tell if this is a deliberate attempt to make teachers look like they’re not doing their jobs or just a poorly executed piece, but either way, there’s a level of irresponsibility here that needs to be called out.

Some weeks are really good for birding.

I’m going to start with a trivia question:

What are these two birds and what are they doing?

I’ll explain after the fold, but first, a quick note: these are all smaller versions of the images.  Clicking on them will get you to larger versions with more detail, location of shot, etc.  All these were taken in Southern VT or NH, not far from the Connecticut River.   Many were taken at Herrick’s Cove, one of my favorite birding spots.

The bird on the left is a chestnut-sided warbler:

It may look in the picture above like they’re in an argument of some sort.  

That’s not quite right.

The previous week, I got a very poor photo of one of these guys, seeming to argue with a much bigger bird.  At first, I’d thought the bigger bird was feeding it, but when I realized the smaller was a chestnut-sided warbler, I thought, “no.  That doesn’t make any sense.”  So I dismissed it.  

Then, days later, I saw this scene:

So what’s going on here?  Why is such a small bird feeding such a big bird?  Did a Chestnut-sided warbler adopt a much larger bird?  

Not exactly.

The other bird is an immature Brown-Headed Cowbird (the adults look like this).  Cowbirds are predatory nesters.  They don’t create their on nests, but put their eggs in the nests of other birds and some of those other birds will feed the baby cowbirds along with their own young.  Not all birds fall for this,  but many do.  Per wikipedia:

It seems that Brown-headed Cowbirds periodically check on their eggs and young after they have deposited them. Removal of the parasitic egg may trigger a retaliatory reaction termed “mafia behavior”. According to a study by the Florida Museum of Natural History published in 1983, the cowbird returned to ransack the nests of a range of host species in 56% of the time when their egg was removed. In addition, the cowbird also destroyed nests in a type of “farming behavior” to force the hosts to build new ones. The cowbirds then laid their eggs in the new nests 85% of the time.

Now, I knew that cowbirds were predatory nesters, but it had just never occurred to me that they did so with much smaller birds.  I had always figured they’d use robins or grackle nests, picking a host that’s of similar size and diet.  But they seem to be indiscriminate.  They’ll even put their eggs in nests of birds that won’t feed them what they need to survive (house finches are an example of this).

So, live and learn.  

Even without that fascinating scene, it was a pretty damned good week for birding.  In our yard, I accidentally found a pair of American Redstarts, with the mamma yelling at me when I was near the baby (I didn’t stay long):

I also found this immature Baltimore Oriole

Several good looks at Black and White warblers

A few Common Yellowthroats

An Eastern Kingbird, feeding its young:

One of the best looks I’ve ever had at a Great Crested Flycatcher

Several gorgeous looks at an Indigo Bunting

This Mystery Dragonfly

A Mystery sparrow (or Wren)

A pair of Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers

A Yellow Warbler (part of a whole family of them)

All in all, a pretty good week or so.  As birders, we often focus on the rare and unusual birds.  I get that, but I don’t have a single photo here of a bird I think of as “rare.”  Every one of these birds (except for the great crested flycatcher) has shown up in my yard at one point or another.  But I still think it’s one of the best weeks of birding I’ve had in some time, because the common birds were pretty fascinating.

As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birds & birding thread and post your own photos if you like.

This has nothing to do with GMD, politics, etc., but I’m performing Friday (7/19) in Saxton’s River, VT, at Pleasant Valley Brewing Company from 8-10.  Here’s an example of what I do:

Though a lot of my photography focuses on birds, such as this Northern Gannet…

…sometimes I get the opportunity to photograph whales as well.  

Even when I go on whale watches, it’s primarily about finding new birds, and Monday’s trip was no exception.  But this time, something happened that I’d never seen before.

But first, the birds.

Almost every whale watch I’ve ever been on has involved a single sighting of a Common Loon.  This isn’t a very good look, but it was enough to ID it clearly:

Another common sight is double-crested cormorants.  This trip both began and ended with them:

Northern Gannets are birds I’ve seen in both small and large numbers on different trips, but this trip yielded some of the best looks I’ve ever gotten of them:

This Parasitic Jaeger was a real treat.  I’d never seen one before:

Same with this Roseate Tern.  I spotted it from a distance and just kept photographing it as we got closer, hoping it was something other than a common tern.  I lucked out.

We saw three kinds of Shearwaters on this trip, and I managed to photograph two of them.  The ones that are all one color are the Sooty Shearwaters, named for their relatively gray appearance.  The Greater Shearwaters are the brown and white ones:

Wilson’s Storm-Petrels are one of the most common birds in the world, but they’re difficult to photograph.  They’re sea birds, but only the size of robins and they dart around very quickly.  Again, I got lucky, not just for the Wilson’s, but because some of these might be Leech’s storm petrels (they both have that white rump marker, but the leech’s are known to have theirs split).  If anyone can positively ID these as either Leech’s or Wilson’s, I’d appreciate it.

And now the whales.  I got a few photos of fin whales, but I’m not including them.  They’re great animals, but they’re a little dull from the surface photography perspective.  Instead, I’m focusing on humpbacks.  First, a humpback skimming the surface, getting ready to dive:

Notice the green in the water.  Those are the whale’s flippers, which are white, appearing green through the water.  Next are flukes, which are the whale tails, sticking up as they go in for a deeper dive:

Finally, the most exciting part.  I’ve been on lots of whale watches.  There are two I will remember above all others.  The first was getting to see a mother and baby humpback do synchronized swimming together.

The second was this.  

When humpbacks feed, they sometimes do a trick with bubbles: they will blow up from underwater, creating these pockets of bubbles which trap fish in them and make it easier to take a big gulp of fish in one try.  I’d heard of this, but never seen it.  My impression of it was that it was something that happened underwater.  

But.  Not.  Always.

What you see below is the result of that bubble feeding, not by a single whale, but by a pair of them, which pushed the fish to the surface and then simultaneously popped out of the water with their mouths wide open.  I did not get this photo the first time.  The 2nd time, I was ready for it, but the light was poor, so I made the best of the opportunity.  These are by no means the best photos I’ve ever taken of whales, but there’s something about being witness to this that was pure exhilaration, and I’m just hoping I can convey some small part of it.

Take a careful look at that first photo.  What you see is the open mouths of the whales– you’re only seeing part of the mouth.  In the second photo, you can see both the upper and lower part of the whale’s jaw.  In the third, you can see its mouth almost closed, while the one behind it still has the jaw wide open.

Wow.

A quick note: all of these are smaller versions of the photos on my website.  Clicking on them will get you to larger versions with more details (ISO settings, lens settings, etc.).

This was part of a 5-6 hour trip, a specialized tour for both whales and birds, put on by a joint effort with Joppa Flats Nature Center and Newburyport Whale Watch.  They do a few of these each Summer, and they’re well worth it.  

Per today’s Rutland Herald:

In a repudiation of the state’s handling of wastewater treatment plant permits, an environmental court judge has tossed out an approval granted to the Montpelier facility.

There are significant potential long-term implications as a result of the ruling for all wastewater treatment plants that discharge into the Lake Champlain watershed – which includes two-thirds of the state and the majority of Vermont cities from Rutland to Burlington.

Judge Thomas Durkin, appointed by Gov. James Douglas, ruled that the Agency of Natural Resources had not done enough analysis of the impact of the plant on Lake Champlain before granting a permit renewal to the city of Montpelier.

This is kind of big.  Not only does it put every other plant producing similar pollution on warning that they may have to upgrade, it strikes a major blow against the laissez faire attitude towards pollution shown by the Douglas administration.  

Yes.  It’s true.

You won’t have Sarah Palin to kick around any longer.

You know what this means?

No Palin/Jindal 2012.

That’s right, comedians: no one’s going to do your work for you.

What’s on your mind today?

Until about two weeks ago, I was out walking and birding every morning.  It has been so soggy lately that I’ve been seriously missing my walks and I’m not certain, but I think I may have forgotten what the word “crisp” means.  

But still, I’ve managed to have a little luck here and there. After the fold, I’ll be presenting photos from the last few weeks of a few different birds and insects, but I’ll start with this Butterfly from last week:

No idea what it is, but I love the look of it.

UPDATE: I’ve since learned it’s a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell.  Cool!

A few quick notes:

• all of these photos were taken with a Pentax K20d using the Sigma 50-500mm lens;
• all of the photos are clickable to larger versions with more details (where they were taken, camera setings, etc.);
• they were all taken in either Vermont or New Hampshire, Southern region, near the Connecticut River.

Baby Barn Swallows

Baltimore Oriole

Blue Jay Feather

Eastern Kingbird

Mystery Butterfly

Mystery Dragonfly

Northern Flicker

Northern Rough-Winged Swallow

Red-tailed hawk in flight

Scarlet Tanager

Veery

Yellow Warbler

Once again, I hope you enjoy this collection of birds, birding and insects, and feel free to use this as an open birds & birding thread.