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Posts Tagged ‘common eider’
Friday, February 26th, 2010
 Dichotomy. The wind roared last night. Roared. Steady, constant, loud. Dimly I remember awakening in darkness to a particularly strong roar—the wee hours, most likely. But when dawn broke and I looked at my bedside clock, the digital time display didn’t flash, so the power hadn’t gone out. And when I checked the sky, I saw blue. And when I stepped out on the deck for the first time today, the air felt positively warm—40-something degrees.
Crows flitted around during the day. I heard the song of titmouse and house finch. But then the clouds moved in again, and the wind picked up again, and the sky began to spit mist and spray.
In afternoon, I drove to town and saw no gulls or pigeons in the places they usually frequent, like the roof of the old stitching factory, now a local college. I did see some herring gulls floating in the empty gray sky. Off in the harbor, the line of the breakwater extended visibly from north to south, and I decided to walk the length of it.
 Black guillemot. The bay side had waves and whitecaps and wind-whipped mist; the harbor side had calm swells and a few red-breasted mergansers. The wind and spray quickly soaked the left side of my jeans on the way out, and I nearly turned back—but I didn’t, in part because of the crazy divergence of the height of the tide on either side of the breakwater. The tide was rising, I knew, and had reached about middle height. And the bay side seemed maybe five or six feet higher than the harbor side. Was this an illusion, perhaps the result of the chop on the bay side? Or was this in fact the case—did the incoming tide perhaps take some time to move around this long granite boundary?
As I wondered this, small groups of long-tailed ducks began flying on rapid wing-beats over the breakwater out toward the islands. Over the course of several weeks of walking out here—at usually late afternoon —I’ve notice the long-tails take up and head out late in the day. They must have special places out in the bay where they lay up overnight, then head back to feed at the rich, calm harbors and coves near mainland during the day.
Then I spotted a solitary black guillemot. A nice surprise. It’s plumage seemed closer to its summer attire than its winter wardrobe. In the minutes I watched it, it never dove.
As I approached the lighthouse, its fog whistle began to blow. The ferries to and from the island passed, as they do, I’ve learned, this time of day. The gray, the wind, the waves, the foghorn—I felt enveloped, surrounded, even protected by a wet, chilly marine world.
On the way back, I saw more long-tails flying eastward, as well as a big flock of gulls also heading that way. A male and two female eiders floated on the harbor side, preening.
Walking back up to my truck, I listened for a minute to the wind—and saw a pair of mallards at the shore.
Today’s List
American crow
Herring gull
Tufted titmouse
House finch
Red-breasted merganser
Long-tailed duck
Black guillemot
Common eider
Mallard
 Surf off the Rockland Breakwater, Rockland, Maine, 26 February 2010.
Tags: American crow, black guillemot, common eider, house finch, long-tailed duck, mallard, red-breasted merganser, tufted titmouse
Posted in Lists, Observations | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
 Surf spray, Rockland Breakwater, Rockland, Maine, 25 February 2010. Not so many birds today. A lot of weather, though.
First, I heard the blow. Then I saw the day was gray, when first I peeked out the blinds. Wet, too—blustery, dark, wet. Rivulets ran rapidly down the open, green February grass in the neighbor’s lawn. Three crows lit in the grass and began stalking about, pulling and tossing last fall’s matted leaves and sipping water from the rivulets.
The weather didn’t deter the jogger. I counted nine crows and a herring gull waiting for whatever he scattered on the parking lot across the road.
Toward the end of the day I took a quick trip to town. The wind lifted spray from puddles and rocked my pickup on its chassis. I saw not a single bird. On the way back, I decided to see what kind of surf was kicking up at the breakwater.
 Two crows, Glen Cove, Rockport, Maine, 25 February 2010. Big surf, as it happened. I had to lean into the wind even to get down there. On the island side, great waves broke and white spray exploded high into the gray sky before quickly blowing away into nothing. I began snapping photos down the length of the breakwater—but had trouble keeping steady. In fact, I had trouble standing up at all. I’d guess the wind speed at a steady 45 or 50 miles an hour.
I did see a raft of common eiders rocking in the whitecaps on the harbor side.
By the time I returned to my truck, my backside was soaked from being turned toward the weather. On the short trip home, a small passerine flew across the road in front of me, but I couldn’t get a good ID. (Looked like a robin.)
All night it blew. The power stayed on, but my bandwidth conked out. Crazy that yet again great snows shut things down to the south of us, whereas we’re getting nothing but rain.
Today’s List
American crow
Herring gull
Common eider
 Penobscot Bay surf.
Tags: American crow, common eider, herring gull
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
 Pastels. Not a flake of snow. Not a trace of fresh new white stuff. Disappointing for this first-year snowshoer. Another dry, mild day—a sky of partly blue, partly gray. Chickadees were active first thing. Playful, flirtatious, randy. I watched them for a while from the deck.
 Horned grebe. But the big news today is that I got a pair of these yesterday—and would be trying them out for the first time. I can’t seem to get out of the office before 4 p.m., damn it—though I did rush out briefly about midday to take care of some errands and tick the usual town birds off my list (herring gull, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon). By the time I started for the breakwater, the air hung still, the temperature had bumped up into the 40s (F), and the brimming tide had began to fall.
First sighting: a group of common eiders mingling with herring gulls near the harbor shore. In the little cove beyond the breakwater’s base, a gaggle of red-breasted mergansers with their punk hair-dos argued and splashed. In a calm patch beyond the tidal rocks, a raft of black ducks—along with a couple mallards—floated calmly; beyond them, a little group of common goldeneyes.
 Harbor seal. Then I saw the harbor seal. The seal had reared from the water’s surface and looked to be mounting something. A tidal rock? Another seal? After a few minutes, it turned out to be a rock just about even with the water’s surface—but the seal kept slipping off. It would swim up again and begin flopping around on its blubbery sides, apparently trying for a good balance. I like how the seals lounge there with their heads and hind flippers raised, looking at a distance like a sort of disembodied smile.
And then I saw the grebe. A horned grebe, in approximately the same place I saw one a couple days ago—possibly the same bird. Just a slight, solitary diving creature with a little lump of a body and a long, thin neck. Reflected, it looked sort of like an andiron. I stopped to watch the grebe a while.
 Great black-backed gull. The length of the breakwater I walked swiftly. Not a lot to see out there—oh, a couple of loons, some gulls in flight, a great cormorant in the waves. A breeze had picked up, but it didn’t feel too uncomfortable. And my new binoculars are, well, awesome. And I didn’t even have to pay $1,000 to $2,000 for ’em. (I’m saving up for one of these.) On the return trip, the sun passed beyond the horizon over Rockland, and in the opposite direction the bay and sky turned pink and purple and calm. A seal lay on a rock. A small flotilla of mergansers splashed and skirmished. The day died calmly, beautifully, quietly. And for the first I heard the voice of the horned grebe.
It was riveting. High, thin, with a slight waver. Brief. It reminded me of what might’ve been the whinny of a tiny horse. Wholly unexpected. Truly mesmerizing.
 Red-breasted merganser. Tonight I read up on grebes a while. I’ve seen several species. Pied-billed grebes used to frequent a quarry pond I owned. Eared grebes tend to stick to the western part of the continent, and horned grebes—and wear their fancy nesting plumage—far to the north of here. They tend to float silently in winter. I wonder why this particular bird decided to call—three, four times, at least—when I saw no other member of its species there to hear.
(Did you know a group of grebes is known as a “water dance.”)
Today’s List
Black-capped chickadee
American crow
Herring gull
Rock pigeon
Ring-billed gull
Common eider
Great black-backed gull
Red-breasted merganser
Common goldeneye
Black duck
Mallard
Horned grebe
Common loon
Great cormorant
Bufflehead
 Gloaming.
Tags: American crow, black duck, black-capped chickadee, bufflehead, common eider, common goldeneye, common loon, great black-backed gull, great cormorant, herring gull, horned grebe, mallard, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon
Posted in Lists, Observations | 2 Comments »
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| Bird Report is a (sometimes intermittent) record of the birds I encounter while hiking, see while driving, or spy outside my window. —Brian Willson |
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