Author: Richard

“While most common songbirds migrate south for the winter, our part of the world is “south” for several birds of the far north. Snow buntings, common redpolls, and rough-legged hawks, among others, regularly move into our region in the winter months.

These northern visitors make cold-weather birding interesting, but one bird – the northern shrike – stands out because of its unusual hunting habits. The bird’s Latin name, Lanius excubitor (“watchful butcher”), gives some clue as to what comes next, but we’ll get to the gory details in a moment.

The shrike is an attractive bird, with grey on its head and back, a white chest and throat, black patches on its wings and tail, and a black mask-like band across its eyes. From a distance, you might mistake it for a blue jay.

But what makes the shrike notable is the fact that it’s a predatory songbird. Like hawks and owls, it hunts and kills for a living. But unlike most hawks and owls, the shrike is small – about the size of a robin – and unlike the raptors, it kills not with its talons, but with its sharp, notched beak….”

So writes Tom Slayton, editor emeritus of Vermont Life magazine and a Montpelier, VT freelance writer, in the online Outside Story of Northern Woodlands magazine.  (Read the whole story)

Yesterday, with rain and snow in the forecast, I volunteered to drive Mary down to a doctors appointment at Dartmouth Hitchcock Med. Center in Hanover.  (My truck has better tires.)  As I often do when visiting an area with time to bird, I checked Birdseye for what folks had seen in the last few days.  I saw Black Scoters listed for the Wilder Dam and since I have never seen them in Vermont or New Hampshire, thought I’d try to check them out.

After a drive in crappy weather, I dropped Mary and took the 20 minute drive up to the dam — where I had never been.  I missed a detour and hit the Connecticut River at a park upstream, where I found a lot of juncos, sparrows, and a lot of cold rain.  I backtracked, found the dam and noted from the truck window a raft of about 50 scoters on the water. 

There was a local birder there and together we watched through rainy binoculars and scopes seeing all three types of scoters, a few buffleheads, and a couple of cormorants.  The temperature was about 38 and the rain made it miserable, in spite of all the birds.  I got back in the truck, warmed up my hands,  email, finding this message from Chip of North Branch Nature Center:

Wrightsville Reservoir in Montpelier/Middlesex is often devoid of avian
life, but not this morning. A huge raft of approximately 200 Black Scoters
were the center feature. Mixed in were 4 White-winged Scoters and a small
group of 6 Surf Scoters, which mostly kept to themselves.

And added bonus was a lone female Northern Pintail, which was associating
with a flock of 6 Common Mergansers.

Wrightsville is about a mile from my home and here I was 70 miles away!   I picked up Mary and we drove home, hoping the birds would stick around.  About noon, we showed up and the flock had diminished but there were still over 50 scoters there along with the lone Northern Pintail.  It was a treat to share them with Mary as they paraded back and forth in the scope.

VTBird, our listserve, was alive with reports of huge rafts of scoters on bodies of water all over the upper half of the state — one veteran birder noted that: “I don’t recall Black Scoter numbers like these, including even wintering concentrations off the coast of Maine or at their favorite locations along coastal Rhode Island.”

I went down this morning and there were only two scoters left on the reservoir and most others reported few if any left after yesterday’s scoter fallout.

Just about when the leaf peepers begin flocking to the roadways to observe Vermont’s spectacular autumn foliage, an equally-enthusiastic set of nature lovers is trekking up the peaks to watch a different seasonal event: the fall migration of raptors. Also known as “birds of prey,” this majestic group includes the eagles, falcons, hawks, vultures, ospreys, and the less-familiar but no-less-impressive group called the harriers, of which North America has only one (the beautiful Northern Harrier). Perched on a mountain outcropping, one can predictably see large numbers of these birds as they make their way to southern climes.

Whether you’re a veteran bird-watcher or a novice, raptor-watching (usually referred to as “hawk-watching,” even though other types of raptors are included) is a great way to spend an autumn afternoon. One of its draws is that the birds are highly visible. Unlike the diminutive songbirds, which hop around incessantly and hide in dense shrubs, raptors are large, steady, and during migration, exposed. Also, because each group of raptors flies differently and has a distinctive shape, these birds are easy to tell apart. The peregrine falcon, for example, has long, pointed wings, which it flaps continuously for its fast, powered flight. In contrast, the bald eagle rarely flaps and its broad, sturdy wings make it look like a flying plank. At the popular hawk-watching sites, you’re likely to find fellow observers on the summit to help you with identification; learn the shapes and flight patterns of the major groups and you’ll be a hawk-watching maven in no time.

So when and where is a Vermonter to begin? The peak of fall raptor migration is from mid-September to early November; try going at different times of the season to see different species. The most popular hawk-watching sites in Vermont are Mount Philo, 15 miles south of Burlington, and Putney Mountain in the southeast corner of the state. Snake Mountain in Addison and Mount Ascutney in Windsor are also decent spots, as are Coon Mountain, just beyond the ferry terminal in Essex, New York, and Mount Tom in Massachusetts, straight down the Connecticut River from Brattleboro.

In addition to being a popular place for recreational hawk-watching, Putney Mountain is also an official migration monitoring site. Because raptor migration is predictable and easy to watch, people have been counting migrating raptors and recording their numbers since 1934, when the first official count site was established at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. Since then, numerous similar counts have been established all over the globe, from the Panama Canal to the Strait of Gibraltar. The long-term migration data collected at these sites allow scientists to monitor raptor populations; numbers vary greatly from year to year, but over long periods of time, scientists can identify trends. The decline in juvenile Bald Eagles migrating past Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in the 1970s alerted Rachel Carson to the threat of DDT to these important predators, and she wrote about this trend in Silent Spring, the influential book which led to the ban of that harmful pesticide. Visit the Putney Mountain Hawk Watch just for fun, or participate in the count to play a role in history.
(read whole article from VTDigger.com)

This piece is by Emily Brodsky, a master’s candidate in the ecological planning program at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at The University of Vermont.