Upcoming walks

   If you are a member of the bird club, you may have noticed we have started up walks again.  This past spring Dan Berard has ran multiple walks. Last Saturday he did a five hour marathon walk at Great Swamp where I can assume participants not only saw birds but learned about trees, insects, and anything else that came their way. 

  

   I ran my first walk (ever) on Friday April 8 at Great Swamp. I was hoping we would see all of the early migrants such as Tree Swallows, Great Egrets, and Eastern Phoebe. The real goal were Wilson's Snipe and Blue Winged Teal. The night before my walk it rained. The rain was scheduled to end at 8 am. My walk started at 7:30. I considered cancelling it, however, I had to work the weekend so there wasn't a rain date. I figured if anyone showed up we could just suck it up if we got rained on. I had a forty five minute drive to the parking lot it rained the whole time. As I was pulling down the dirt road to the parking area, the rain stopped.

  When I got to the parking area there were eight participants that showed up. My friend Tim Metcalf co-led the walk with me. He was also kind enough to keep an ebird list and shared it with the group when we were done.  As we started our journey, my target changed from teal and snipe to just being happy we weren't being rained on. As you can imagine, on a wet dreary morning, birding was slow. We did not see any Blue Winged Teal or many ducks at all. However, we did have one Wilson's Snipe. It spooked as we walked around the shoreline. It flew in a circle then out of sight. Some participants got on it while others did not. 

 Both Tim and I had fun leading a walk and plan on doing another later in  the month. Upcoming, we have two other scheduled walks. One is at Great Swamp (it seems many of us love that place) that Patrick Felker is going to lead. Another is at Miantonomi that Jan StJean will be leading. Lastly, we will be doing a Birds and Beer at the Tilted Barn one day in May. I suspect, we will all have a lot of bird stories to talk about. 

  If you are a member you will receive the specifics on the date and time for these events in the next few days. 

   If you are a member and would like to lead a walk please let me know. You do not have to be an expert to lead a walk. There are plenty of experts on any walk and there will be lots of eyes and ears. I know many people would prefer to bird with others especially at an unfamiliar location. Bird walks are a great way to introduce people to new locations and to meet other birders. So if you are a member and interested in leading a walk please let me know. My email address is canalrat74@aol.com. 

   You will have to sign a waiver that you won't do anything stupid and have participants sign a waiver also. However, you can choose the date, place and time. My goal is to get as many events and walks out to our members as we reasonably can.  

   If you are not a member and would like to become one click here https://www.oceanstatebirdclub.org/become-a-member.html

The cost to join the club is $15 for a household. Walks are free. Many of our walks are limited to fifteen registered participants. 

Sitting Quietly

Blue Winged Teal pair

  I consider myself a fairly patient birder. I have friends that bird much faster than me and some much slower. If there is something I want to see I'll stay on a stake out until it shows, I'm hypothermic, or its dark. That said, I also have friends that will stare at a Robin to make sure its a Robin and I find myself far ahead of them, especially if I have a target bird to find. However, the last couple of weeks I have had a couple of productive sessions in nature where I neither walked too fast nor too slow. I just sat.  

   It started a couple of weeks ago. There was a pond where I could hear hundreds of Spring Peepers. I can not tell you how badly I had always wanted to see one. Seeing a Spring Peeper has been on my bucket list for a couple of years now. When I pulled up to this pond I knew there had to be so many, the odds were in my favor. However, if you've ever tried to spy a Peeper, you know they stop croaking when you get close to the water and they disappear.

   Since I knew so many where there, I decided to wait them out. I figured at some point they would have to get active again. So I sat, and sat, and sat. For about twenty minutes I sat as still as I could comfortably. I did watch a Youtube video on "How to see Spring Peepers". After about twenty minutes I started seeing some swimming and even a couple climbing up on mud and muck. In my binoculars I could watch them blow up their throat. They were so small and it was after sunset and I could barely see them naked eye. But my patience paid off. 

   Since this is a bird club and you are all presumably all birders, you probably don't want to hear about a frog. Fine, so while I was sitting still I had a Red Shouldered Hawk land over my head about thirty feet up. It was not bothered by me, but it was bothered by something because it was squawking away for a solid five minutes.  Though I was there for frogs, if I hawk lands above me I'm not going to look away.

   

Yesterday I decided to go to Lonsdale Marsh to find the Blue Winged Teal. I was also hoping to find the Wilson's Snipe that was there a few days ago, but I thought that was a long shot and I wasn't counting on it. As soon as I got to the Birch Island I accidentally flushed the Blue Winged Teal. They were very close to my shoreline and they saw me but I hadn't seen them. When they flew I followed their path. They only landed about thirty yards away in the same swampy oxbow.

   Knowing the teal were spooky, I knew I couldn't just walk up to them and take a photo, I had to be stealthy. I walked over the obnoxiously loud dry leaves as far as I dared and sat down. I knew my only shot at seeing them close was for them to come to me. So I sat, and sat...just kidding. The whole time I was sitting I could watch them in my bins. I did have to wait for them to come close for a long time, but I watched them in beautiful light in a pretty marsh. While I was watching them, I saw two deer, mallards, wood ducks, and a huge snapping turtle. A muskrat decided to join the party too. It was swimming through the shallow swamp looking for newly emergent vegetation. When it would find some new green shoots it would stop and eat a couple of stems then swim to others, It was oblivious to my existence. It swam past me multiple times within feet of the shoreline. 

   Finally after half an hour the teal drifted by me to their original spot. I got some okay photos of them, nothing great but still well worth the trip.  When they went back to their original swamp address I got up and repeated the process. I walked back to my left as far as I dared and sat. 

   There is no question the teal knew I was there. Every step on the dry leaves sounded like a stampede. I had no chance of getting close. However, when I sat down the teal seemed to accept where I was. They drifted extremally close to me. There were two pair. I concentrated my photos on either the males or all four together. While I was sitting in this second spot, a pair of Green Winged Teals flew in. Also, I did not see one Wilson's Snipe, I saw five different ones! The snipe were going about their business. They were flying around the marsh from spot to spot looking for food and hiding places. 

     Lastly, I decided to try my luck today at Lime Rock Preserve in Lincoln. Thee is a vernal pool there that usually has breeding Wood Frogs. Spoiler Alert, I didn't see any Wood Frogs today. I knew when I got there I wasn't going to see any. The pool was quiet. I sat anyway. I'm not going to  tell you I was rewarded with a Stellar Sea Eagle or even a Wilson's Snipe, but I did have a Brown Creeper show up. For about ten minutes the Creeper would fly to  the bottom of a tree near me climb its way up looking for something to eat. Then it would fly down to another low trunk and repeat the process. I've seen plenty of Brown Creepers, but they are such a cool little bird. Watching it for ten minutes with a wet from mud bum was much more fun than identifying it and moving on. 

Spring Peeper- the photo isn't much, but the
sense of accomplishment is huge

   Like everyone, sometimes I need to relearn things. Sitting quietly I relearned how nature will sometimes come to you. A Red Shouldered Hawk, Blue Winged Teal, Wilson's Snipe, a Brown Creeper, a Muskrat, two deer, and Spring Peepers were all seen because I was willing to sit still and wait.