Birding Western Mass: Birding While In Motion
Thoughts on Birding from the Quabbin to the Berkshires
Study Up
Separate from last issue’s peeps are the lesser and greater yellowlegs. This week brings them — along with the commoner solitary sandpiper — into resurgent numbers here.
When you’re watching, the quick field mark I use is bill length and orientation. The greater yellowlegs looks like its bill was screwed on one half turn too few, and it’s still pointing just a little upward. (That is not what happened.) The lesser yellowlegs appears to have had the bill screwed all the way in, and properly aligned, so that it sticks straight out of the bird’s head to a shorter length.
I had them in the Meadows at this potato field.
If you’re not familiar with the East Meadows, last week’s post had significantly more detail.
Overflight
The abundance of summer here defines what you can see. There was a baby mockingbird in the andromeda bush this morning; it moved to the rhododendron by the time the storm rolled in; there’s enough bugs for it to find food on the shaggy lawn. We have enough abundance to draw migrants from the far north — still mostly sandpipers.
When you can, move faster than walking to see what’s not coming to where you usually are. I spend more time on my bike in the summer and winter, when I can’t rely on specific sites to wee more birds as they attract migrants with abundant food or shelter.
Today I took my bike to the East Meadows again. I traveled a few miles on the dirt roads to touch the biome on the river, the corn fields and the potato fields and the oat fields, as well as the harvested wheat fields. Moving kept the flies off me. I passed through song sparrows’ realms of vigilance. The edge species like red-eyed vireos and killdeer are still visible. An indigo bunting in a treetop stayed out of sight. Post-breeding dispersal reveals more than what I might have expected to see a few weeks ago.
Birds surround us now. They aren’t novel as often — you are less likely to be surprised, these weeks — but they are everywhere.
Birdscape
The Riverfront Conservation Area just south of the Pioneer Valley Yacht Club lets you put a kayak in the water near the sandbar near Fannie Stebbins and the Longmeadow Flats. I wanted to feel the water there. I expected the river to be swift and unforgiving between the bank and the bar.
Water conditions can change; you should evaluate them for yourself any day you go, focusing on water safety that matches your abilities.
The day I went was idyllic. The water was gentle and shallow. Ripples of sand under the soft current were as beautiful as they are on the Cape. The sandbar is a healthy paddle south of the conservation area, and the walk from the gravel parking area would be demanding with a heavy boat, but it was easy for me (I have a new foldable kayak).
I did not get any of the sandpipers who have stopped recently on the bar. I did get plenty of ring-billed gulls and zero other gulls. But because I was floating, the gulls did not perceive me as a bipedal threat. I could listen to them chat and squawk. They breed to the north; I assume many of these are post-breeding dispersal. A few juveniles were mixed in. While I wouldn’t expect them to allow me to float next to them as a fellow, I was treated as a beast with a short range of threat.
I thought of this birding spot as a fairly demanding and strange location for which you parked and walked down to here. It’s not accessible and it’s not picturesque. The conservation area is unusual, for sure — I pulled in next to someone who was just using the lot as a place to chill and listen to music, and it seems likely to attract people fishing as much as anything else — there’s no tables and there’s no bathroom. But for a place to dab a small boat in the water and enjoy a mighty river’s attraction for birds, I think it’s ideal.
Bird Books and Whistles
I listened to The Evolution of Beauty over about a month. It’s polemical and direct in its condemnation of sloppy thinking and lazy reasoning. I can’t speak to its scientific merit, but for a birder and an amateur naturalist wishing to rethink key aspects of evolutionary theory, it’s peerless. Much of my understanding of evolution has been guided by a reductive, single-axis presumption that “the fittest” is the only thing that matters in the short- and long-term. The author argues instead that there’s value in thinking of beauty as a relentless companion to survival — and his ambitious argument offers ways of understanding the human and the living condition that I found compelling and durable.
Its reflections on mannikins, bowerbirds and other avians are key to Richard Prum’s argument. He is an ornithologist by education and profession, but his insights are broad. I cannot recommend it strongly enough.