Massachusetts...

BlkVulture@aol.com
Tue, 6 Oct 1998 17:38:18 EDT


Hello folks,

Granted this has nothing to do with birding in this area, nor is it
particularly impressive, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

While in Lynn, Massachusetts (north of Boston, 8 miles, coastal) for my
grandfather's (wonderful naturalist) funeral, I managed very little birding.
What I did manage was to go to the beach.  Like I alluded, there was nothing
wholly impressive.  What struck me was how much of a difference it is being on
the coast.  I know.  This is quite obvious, and perhaps it is because I never
appreciated the coast while I lived on it as much as I do now, that i find it
remarkable.  

That said, what I did see was interesting enough.  Several thousand (maybe 4
or 5) white-winged scoters floating in the calm waters off of Lynn Beach.
Mixed in were a few surf and black scoters as well.  Peregrine falcons were
constant.  They all came in off the water. which is open ocean, no land east.
I would pick them up in a scope, perhaps a mile or so out, and they would
reach shore, and circle for a few minutes, then continue south.  One came in
ripping over the water, no more than three feet from the surface, only to land
on Nahant Beach, and remain there until after I left.  Peregrines are
seemingly always overhead.  Bonaparte's gulls were in in pretty good numbers,
maybe a thousand overall, and a few hundred sitting on the beach allowing me
to walk through them expecting to find a black-headed gull.  No luck.
Ringers, herring and black-backeds as well.  No terns.  Great Cormorants in
small numbers, DC Cormorants still appearing in large strings flying overhead.
A constant flight of Canada Geese.  Big formations, some with a few hundred
birds. Sanderlings running along the surf line, and a turnstone here or there.
In the vegetation at the edges of the beach were a handful of savannah
sparrows.   

If there were loons around, I missed them.  I was lucky to get the time I did
to look for any birds, and thus did not get to some of the more productive
spots that would have yielded many more species of waterfowl.  E.g. Plum
Island, Rockport, Gloucester, or Winthrop.  I also had no opportunity to look
for passerines, or any other land birds, so I only got the conspicuous ones.
I did see several red-tails and a few red-shouldered hawks.  

On Monday, the 5th of October, as I watched the birds become too dark to see
as the sun set, I was treated to the most impressive moonrise that I can
remember. There is a small spit of land that juts into the ocean, forming the
northern boundary that offers some shelter to Lynn Beach.  The harvest moon
appeared, blazing orange, and slowly climbed into the deep blue, but darkening
sky.  Above it, Jupiter, with four moons visible in both my 10 X bins, and
quite clear in my 30 X scope.  Lynn is a blue collar city, with a population
of about 75-80,000 people.  Yet somehow, with the surf gently lapping Red
Rock, and a light wind, I was unable to hear any man-made noise that was not
my own.  It was very easy to imagine the same scene centuries earlier.  I
suppose there would have been more birds.  

Cheers,

Todd Day
Jeffersonton, VA
BlkVulture @AOL.com