Annisquam is a beautiful town in North Eastern Massachusetts. It is located on a peninsula known as Cape Ann. The birding is excellent, a point driven home by the nearby famous Plum Island, an internationally known birding hot spot. Not surprisingly we had a huge list of birds by the end of our three day stay.
We were staying at my Aunt Liz's house above the restaurant that she cooked for. The house had a great view of the bay from the balcony on which I could be found scoping on at any hour of the day. Common Eiders were easily viewable through a scope or pair of binoculars. Double-Crested Cormorants who's dark forms littered the water sometimes turning the water black with their numbers. Their fishing tactic was a sight to be seen; hundreds of Cormorants gathered together in large flocks all diving frantically then they would take wing, fly a little way and then repeat the procedure again (it wasn't just the cormorants that went into a frenzy, me and my brother would grab our cameras and then rush out the door, we would be deleting photos off our cameras for hours after).
On the opposite side there were some tidal flats where at low tide large plovers foraged, they were light brown with mottled brown backs (seeing that we have two plover species that look like this in late Summer and Autumn we were unable to identify them positively but seeing the the Black-Bellied Plover is the far more common of the two it was more likely that).
Gulls were ever present, flying gracefully on their white and gray wings and perching on the boats moored in the harbor (we saw four species here Herring, Ring-Billed, Great Black-Backed and Bonaparte's). Once we saw a seal surface by the restaurant dock. Kingfishers and Great Blue-Herons were also fairly common. Mallards were often seen floating in the bay trying in vain to look like bobbing boats (for no apparent reason).
On occasions a Red-Tailed Hawk, a Turkey Vulture or an Accipiter would sore overhead, Crows and Rock Pigeons also commonly traversed the sky around the house along with an occasional flock of Brant or White-Winged Scoter.
On dry land birds were every where: Golden and Ruby-Crowned Kinglets flitted through the thickly wooded neighborhood mixed in with Chickadees, Titmice, Song Sparrows, House Sparrows, Starlings, Northern Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, House Finches, Goldfinches, American Robins, Dark-Eyed Juncos, White-Breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Mourning Doves and Blue Jays. All these could be easily seen any day.
It was truly a Beautiful place to spend a vacation. Highlights of the trip included; Bonaparte's Gulls, Peregrine Falcon, White-Winged Scoters, Merlin, Black-Crowned Night Heron, Green-Winged Teals, Pied-Billed Grebe and a Brown Creeper. In all we saw 212 bird species (just joking we only saw 48!) Sadly though we were unable to get our mother to take us to Plum Island, a situation made worse by the fact that there was a rare Curlew Sandpiper taking up residence there for the time being.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment