Iceland Gulls Hanging out at Craigville Beach

One of the fun things about winter birding is that you can go to just about any beach parking lot and check out the gulls, mostly from the warm and cozy blind that is your car. Gulls will let you get pretty close in a car--but step outside it and they'll be off in a second. Unless they think you are bringing them food in which case every gull within 5 miles will immediately show up.

Anyway, we get a lot of random gulls here each winter, many of whom are out of their usual range but are not all that unusual because each year we get a few and sometimes we get a few in the same place, winter after winter. At first glance all gulls seem to look alike, at least to the unpracticed eye...

but can you see what is different about this gull?

Here it is in flight

If you said it is mostly white with no black on the wing tips and that it has a black bill, not a yellow or ringed one, you would be correct. It is a bit mottled looking so we know it is probably an immature or juvenile bird.

Now look at this one...

Looks sort of familiar, right? But look again...

No black wing tips and very pale gray back....hmmmm....it's not a Herring gull, a ring billed or a greater black backed gull and it is a good sized bird which rules out a few others.

This beauty is in fact an Iceland gull, as is the immature bird shown in the first few pictures. Both of them have been hanging out with their less fancy cousins at the Craigville Beach parking lot this winter and if you hang around for awhile and check the various gulls you see there you may come across both or one of them quite easily.

These northern beauties usually winter north of us but each year a few seem to straggle down our way. Reports from the north shore and the Plymouth area are not uncommon and they often show up with other gulls in parking lots. Yep, opportunists just like the rest of the gang.

Iceland gulls breed in the arctic, usually on rocky cliffs facing the fjords in Greenland and northern Canada so these guys should be leaving soon. If you're in the area though, check them out.

Brant geese

Brant geese are locally common on the Cape throughout the winter and their arrival in our coastal waters in the late fall is a sure sign that the seasons are changing. Found in areas where there is a good amount of eel grass brant can be found in many of our south facing beach areas, especially around estuaries. You may also find them in marshy areas and occasionally grazing in grassy areas. These brant were hanging out with the gulls at the Sandwich Marina on the canal on a recent blustery day.

Many people see brant and just think they are Canada geese but if you look closely you will see they have a dark front whereas the Canada goose has a light front (photo by NaturePhoto.com)

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Canada geese are also quite a bit larger which is easy to see if you see the birds together. Imagine a herring gull and a Canada goose standing next to each other and what the medium size bird between them might be and you will have an idea about the size of a brant.

Here you can see them in relation to the gulls around them.

Brant don't nest here but are arctic nesters, like many of our winter visitors. They come here because our coastal waters often stay open and their favorite foods are plentiful They will eat seaweeds, especially sea lettuce if their favored eel grass is in short supply. Back in the 1930s when eel grass crashed the brant population crashed along with it but they have steadily been increasing in numbers and are once again flourishing.

And if you are an old school birder, yes, brant used to be spelled brandt ;-)

Picture Perfect Morning

at Sandy Neck...

Ever since I was a little girl it has been one of my favorite beaches...

Even back in the day the snow/sand fences were there to keep the parking lot separate from the beach. You can walk along the beach into Sandwich toward the canal or you can walk back toward the tip of the neck to the point that protects Barnstable Harbor. In either direction you can walk for miles. The towns of Barnstable and Sandwich co-own this beach and I remember sitting up late at night waiting for my mother to come home to see if Barnstable had bought the land that extended out into the dunes and behind the great marsh. It was a long and hard battle and an expensive purchase and no one knew for sure which way the votes at town meeting would go.They had bought it! It was the largest piece of conservation land Barnstable had bought and managed at that time and today it is a true jewel in the Barnstable conservation and recreation system.

Even in winter the mystery and romance of the dunes lures walkers, horseback riders and hikers out to explore. The area is great for birding and other sighting of wildlife. Beware of hunters at certain times, however, for the area is also open to certain kinds of hunting. It is open as well to overland vehicles and campers, an agreement that irks some but has made huge supporters of the area in the larger community.

When I was in high school and college I spent untold hours roaming in the dunes, sitting in the sun with friends sharing bad poetry and hopeful dreams. We talked, we napped, we drew pictures, we rolled down the dunes in the warm sand. In winter we hid in the dunes to stay warm on sunny but cold days, days we should have been in a math classroom or history classroom but we were out in nature's classroom instead. At least that's what we told ourselves and in many ways it was true. The dunes are wonderful in the summer of course but they take on a very different quality in the winter, a quality that reminds young minds of quests and queries and questions about the meaning of life, survival and death.

Every time I walk on Sandy Neck there are layers and layers of memories of previous years, months and days spent walking here. And yet, as all good beach walkers know, no walk on the beach is quite the same as the one before, the one last year or 20 years ago....Like the birds flying above and the crabs buried below the beach is a living, breathing, ever changing thing....

Every visit is special but some days, like today, the morning is just picture perfect....

Ospreys

I know ospreys are more and more common here but I still get a thrill when I see one. They are one of the environmental success stories from my youth. I didn't see one until I was well into adulthood and I think I saw my first one in Florida...

This osprey platform was built by the utility company after several nesting attempts atop the bare utility pole ended badly for the ospreys. For the first year ospreys visited and perched there but it wasn't until this year that they actually have showed some nest building interest beyond a few random sticks.

Not far from where this bird was perched I could see another one.

Can you see the osprey? It is the black dot on top of the pole and yes, that is what it looked like from where I was standing. I have learned to look for a second bird nearby the first and they are often on a pole so I zoomed in on this one...

And this is what I saw...

and this....

Later on I headed to a different spot where I knew I would probably see multiple birds nesting. The Centerville River is a popular osprey hang out and sure enough....

I saw this pair (the second one is hidden in this picture but is behind the first)

This pair....and I especially love this pair because the homeowner has obviously gone to some lengths to keep them off...

And this one was a loner for the moment though there were other birds in the air. There were 2 other nests along the river as well, both with birds but I would have had to go on private property to photograph them so I left it for another time...

When this bush blooms...

it means it is time for something wonderful to be going on....See the little white blossoms?
I'll give you a hint....
This is called shad bush....and I'll write more about what it signifies tomorrow.

This spring we have had such good weather that the shad bush was not the first blooming wild bush, which it often is. Most years it is the first sign of life along the ponds and streams and in the yore of old it meant something very special....do you know what it was and still is?

Which frog is this?

Is this a green frog or a bullfrog?
Check in tomorrow and we'll talk about how to tell the difference....

Go See the Whales....

Now!

The right whales are feeding in Cape Cod Bay and so are the returning humpback whales, pilot whales and dolphins. You can see them from the Provincetown beaches with both binoculars and your bare eyes. Having said that, young children may have difficulty because the sightings are quick and far away....

But if you can, skip work, skip school, skip your appointments and run, don't walk, to Provincetown and go see the whales!

Seriously.....it is a most amazing show!

A Rare Sighting....

Something very rare is happening on Cape Cod right now....



Spring! I hope you can get outside and enjoy it!

Watching for blooms....

One of the earliest, sweetest wildflowers to bloom on Cape Cod is our state flower, the trailing arbutus or mayflower. If you look at the picture below there are two green plants (not counting the moss) The smaller, shinier leaves are of teaberry, also known as common wintergreen. The larger, lighter green leaves are of the mayflower. They feel quite tough and leathery, not smooth like the teaberry.You can find mayflowers in many of our woodland areas and often along side a path as they seem to like sunny locations on a bank. Even my dog wanted to check them out to see if they were blooming yet....
Not quite! But maybe they will be ready when the sun comes back out later this week. If you are headed out for a woodland walk this weekend keep your eyes open. The blooms often hide just under the leaves. If you can get down on the ground to smell them they have a most wonderful, heavenly scent....

More Swans....

I was at South Cape Beach in Mashpee yesterday when I saw these swans. There must have been 60-70 of them just hanging out on the edge of the marsh during a high tide.Many swans are already on nests but obviously these ones aren't. The weather has been so awful that some swans lost their nests and may try again but many of these may simply not have found nesting areas yet or are too young or otherwise unable to be paired off and reproduce this year.
I was photographing these at quite a distance so ended up with more back ends than front ends as the swans faced into the very brisk winds....
I will see if I can find out more information about these large gatherings of swans since it seems late in the year for them to me....

What are the Swans Up To?

If you have been in an area where swans are common you may have noticed that one of the swans seems to be missing. Where once there were two....there is now just one.Don't be alarmed. The second swan is probably not too far away. She is just otherwise engaged.
She is probably sitting on her nest. Swans build huge nests and lay anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen eggs and they will need room for all those little babies.
Baby swans, called cygnets, will hatch somewhere around mid to late April. If you know where there is a swan nest do not approach it. Swans are very protective, especially the males and can cause quite a bit of harm if they think you are intruding. Be especially careful with children. Watch and enjoy from afar!

The Red Wings are Here!

One of our earliest signs of spring here on the Cape is the all out return of the blackbirds, both the red-winged blackbirds and the grackles. Some stay all winter and some straggle in the last week in February and the first few weeks of March but today was the first day I saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them....everywhere we went.
They were stirring up quite a racket in the trees, in the bushes, even on the wires all along the marshes and wetlands.
In the fog and gray their colors were not as distinctive or bright as they will be on a bright sunny day but you can still see this fellow's red epaulet as he lets everyone know he's in the area.
I love how they put their whole body into their exclamation. There's no doubt who is king of this here branch....
Listen for their "rusty gate" calls that sound sort of like "conk-a-reeeee." These birds were photographed today in Harwich.

Visiting the National Marine Life Center in Bourne

We are very lucky to have this wonderful organization on the Cape. The National Marine Life Center began as a dream about 15 or so years ago and although it is far from complete plans are in motion to make this a top notch place for research and rehabilitation for marine life such as sea turtles, seals, porpoises, dolphins and even pilot whale.The outside may not seem auspicious at first...
but inside there are many exhibits in the discovery center, most of which are hands on.
All visitors can peek into one of the "hospital" rooms and see the animals that are being rehabilitated there. Because today was a special open house we got to go on a tour of the whole facility.
This volunteer is putting together the skeleton of a porpoise.....
Inside the hospital room we were shown an X-ray of the shell of the diamond back terrapin that is a patient there. She has been there for quite a while and is actually losing her shell. She will grow a sort of replacement shell but it will take a while longer. She may be there another 2 years.
The picture is sort of distorted since she is under water but this is Patty, named because she was found on St. Patrick's Day last year. Turtles brumate, or hibernate, and this little lady woke up too soon and was not in good shape when she was found.
In a different part of the building we got to see the tank full of the Plymouth Red-bellied cooters that the center is "head-starting." I will do a separate post about them later.
This little baby is a hatchling diamond back terrapin that hatched late last fall, too late to winter over safely. It and 7 of its brothers and sisters are getting the royal treatment and each has its own small aquarium.
Next the director, Kathy Zagzebski took us into the room where the big turtle and seal tanks are being installed. This area is not finished yet but she explained what would need to be done before they would be ready to be used.
This last shot is of the area where the really big pools will be for the dolphins and even pilot whales. At this point the center needs to raise more money to complete their project but it's pretty amazing all that has been done so far. If you didn't make it to the open house today there will be another one in April. Check it out!