Birding Western Mass: Winter, Ducks, Hawks, Owls

Thoughts on Birding from the Quabbin to the Berkshires

Study Up

I’ve been wrestling with ways to find ducks when it ices over. Mallards are everywhere. Canada geese are almost everywhere. But where are the duck-friendly locations when things get grim?

I used mergansers as a way to proxy this. (What I mean is, if someone reports seeing a common merganser, that means that there’s enough water for the merganser to be happily at rest. They need a little distance, but not much, to take off. I have never seen one in a really small thawed spot. They’re likely where the thaw is big enough to give them some room.)

The only places anyone has listed a common or hooded merg in the last few days — since the weather got really cold — have been

• the rivers, especially the Connecticut near the Honey Pot (where lots of people bird), downstream of the Holyoke Dam (that’s me), and Turners Falls,

• In the Berkshire lakes,

  • Laurel Lake,

  • the Stockbridge Bowl,

  • Cheshire Reservoir,

• toward the east,

  • Easthampton in the ponds,

  • the Swift River just south of the Quabbin,

  • and the Quabbin itself, specifically

    • gates 35

    • gate 37

    • Winsor Dam.

I’m short for time this week, so I won’t create a fresh Google map location set for this, but I think it’s helpful. When it’s as cold as it was for a few days, the places to see ducks knit up with ice. This is definitely NOT a comprehensive list. I am sure there are places with sea ducks that are not listed, because people haven’t birded them recently or because even though they did, the ducks were on lunch break, or whatever.

But this is a helpful set of criteria — moving water, big water. And it’s a helpful set of places to consider if you want to maximize your chance either of an unusual sea duck or just the beautiful weird duck season ducks.

Overflight

Three hours at Southwick Wildlife Management Area yesterday went like water down a steep creek.

I went looking for short-eared owls. I know there’s one at the Honey Pot. (I couldn’t figure out why it was called that until I looked at the map and asked myself what a honey pot used to be, and then I understood. If you need to know, lemme Google that for ya.) But I have the good luck to be a walker, so I wanted to try somewhere else. (If you go to the Honey Pot, getting out of your car can actually flush some birds, so it’s more courteous to stay in the seat in some cases.)

Where you see northern harriers hunting, the habitat is suitable for short-eareds. But the two species don’t occupy the same locations reliably. So where you see a harrier, you might not see a short-eared at dusk (although the chances you’ll see a short-eared where you wouldn’t see the harrier are less, if I am making sense).

I had three harriers at Southwick — visible separately at the same time, including in one case both a male and female visible flying together (aw!). No owls, but worth the try, I am confident.

I also had about 45 minutes on a high point where I could see the full distance around me. The Area was previously tobacco farms. The land is now sandy, rolling and — at this time of year — tawny with tall dead grasses. I’ve been there where there were recent burns.

Being on the high point was similar to being on Goat Peak when I was hawkwatching. It’s a moment of stillness where everything usually invisible is visible and much is audible. I heard a northern harrier in the grass; I have never heard that before in all my life. I heard the sparrows around me working the base of the grass. Hunters (wear your orange; I forgot mine, which was unwise) had dogs with bells and dogs with the poor manner to bark for no good reason, both of which are beautiful noises.

When you stand still for a moment even the soil is beautiful. The dirt is gritty and doesn’t often hold water for long. The field abuts taller hills that might be glacial or stony; I don’t know which (but I think glacial). The stones in the roads are small and tumble-turned. I imagine that a glacier rolled them, but I could be wrong, because I am no geologist.

The harriers shifted this way and that, scudding low over the grass. As a species, they have a way of hunting, not a thing they hunt. You see them seek out frogs or birds or mice; they move low, the facial disks that their eyes sit in serving to gather and focus sound. A red-tail sat in a tree and waited for things to move, then left when they didn’t. A raven, out of sight, talked to another. The sun set. No owls is still owls.

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Focus

Using the presence of hawks as a means to protect owls is a trick I learned in the splendid how-to work, How to Spot an Owl, which has delivered me a long-eared and a great horned at least. Red-tailed hawks hunt in the daytime where Great Horned Owls may hunt at night. Harriers hunt where short-eared may hunt at night. Red-shouldered hawks hunt where barred owls may hunt at night.

I wonder if snowy owls hunt where rough-leggeds do. Probably less reliable — I haven’t read it. And screech owls might align to Cooper’s and sharpies? (Especially sharpies.) I would need to spend more time on that thought.

There are fewer owls than there are hawks in all cases, so in general, just because a hawk hunts a place is not predictive of the owl. But it’s an interesting question to ask oneself.

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Birdscape

I haven’t talked through the Holyoke Dam yet. There’s been an Iceland gull there this year and it reliably turns up good gulls and other interesting creatures. (The Iceland gull has not been relocated recently.)

There’s two sides.

The South Hadley Public Library parking lot and benches offer a view from the Hampshire County side (hello, y’all who keep lists by county). On that side, in winter, you can park with a sloppy view of the dam through trees. In summer, you can walk down a switchbacked gravel path past some benches and see more closely and in an unobstructed way. That path is seriously fenced off in winter; you could defeat the fencing but probably shouldn’t.

The Hampden county side is basically the pulloff for the fish ladder in Holyoke. If you cross the bridge I featured as a way of seeing spring warblers at eye level then you can pull to the right immediately and park along the little driveway to the dam facility. Then you can walk down to the river in an unlovely space where people can fish or you can walk the bridge, which is a fair distance from the dam. I’ve never felt uncomfortable at the Holyoke side but I can imagine that people might. I live in Holyoke and I love my city.

I do get good ducks just downstream of the dam this time of year; the water’s moving fast.

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