Plum Island 4th Feb 2008

 

Yawn...06:30 start on the island means a 05:00 alarm...and I am going to have to get up earlier as the year marches on...deep joy.

The thick, solid clouds didn't make me feel any brighter on my drive in...although when I got to Lot 1 on the refuge I noticed a narrow slot in the clouds on the horizon...which meant I could be in for some vivid colour just as the sun rose, and I wasn't disappointed.  The sky lit up for about 2 minutes, with fantastic colour reflections in the relatively calm ocean.

...

The calm ocean allowed me to find a lot of Razorbills in several rafts of 20 -50 birds, a fair way offshore, plus 4 'feeding frenzies' of gulls, Red-breasted Mergansers, Razorbills and the odd Northern and Red-throated Loon.

Whilst scanning and counting the Horned Grebes, I came across a single alcid, much closer than the Razorbills.  The paler/duller plumage, pale cheeks and pointy bill all said 'Guillemot' to me (Common Murre over here) and I had my first island year tick of the day.

A quick pit-stop at wardens, and 2 Mute Swans flew over head, giving me another easy year tick...before I headed to the southern end of the island.

White-winged Scoters...thousands of 'em.  Well, thousands of duck on the ocean, the closest of which were White-winged Scoter, with the odd small group of Common Eider.

The regular Rough-legged Hawk was joined by a couple of Red-tailed Hawks for breakfast - it looked to be a good serving of Plum Island's best carrion - at the scenic location of Cross Farm Hill.

The salt marsh at cross also had a good sized flock of dabbling ducks, including 41 Northern Pintail, 2 Green-winged Teal and a pair of (early) Northern Shoveler (2 more island year ticks).

A Hairy Woodpecker (which seems to have lost its reputation of being a scarce species on the island by being seen regularly since October last year) briefly distracted me from the Snowy Owl perched on the Osprey platform near lot 5.

An adult Kumlien's Gull was sat on the beach at lot 5 and a brief walk around the Pines Trail produced a pair of Hooded Mergansers on the marsh and not a lot else...not even a Red-breasted Nuthatch!

A distant Northern Shrike and fly-over Horned Lark at Hellcat provided a brief interlude before I settled in to spend some time trying to photograph one of the Northern Harriers...

...three hour later I had a single useable image but had really enjoyed watching the Harrier hunt over the field...and every moment I spend learning more about this particular bird's behaviour the more likely I am to getting pleasing images of it.

All in all a very pleasant day.

51 species, my island year ticks in bold:

Red-throated Loon
Common Loon
American Red-necked Grebe
Horned Grebe
Great Cormorant
Mute Swan
Canada Goose
Gadwall
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
American Black Duck
Northern Pintail
Northern Shoveler
Common Eider
Long-tailed Duck
Black Scoter
White-winged Scoter
Common Goldeneye
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
American Harrier
Eastern Red-tailed Hawk
Rough-legged Hawk
Ring-billed Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Kumlien's Gull
American Herring Gull
Black-legged Kittiwake
Common Murre (Guillemot)
Razorbill
Rock (Feral) Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Snowy Owl
Short-eared Owl
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Yellow-shafted Flicker
Horned Lark
Northern Mockingbird
American Robin
Black-capped Chickadee
Northern Shrike
Blue Jay
American Crow
European Starling
House Sparrow
American Tree Sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow

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