Sunday Birding

Every two weeks a guy named Jay leads a bird walk from the Norman Bird Sanctuary in Middletown, RI. We don't just concentrate our attention on the sanctuary, but travel to different prime birding places in the area. This week we went down to Third Beach (most of which now belongs to the bird sanctuary) then over to the parking lot at Sachuest Beach because someone had seen a flock of Snow Buntings there, and then over to the Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge. It was a dark, overcast morning, and I was having lighting issues (like a dummy I didn't bring my tripod!), but I did manage to get two keepers.

This White-winged Scoter was sitting in a puddle in an auxilliary parking lot across Third Beach Rd. from the actual Beach. A little later we saw more Scoters - usually birds you find in large rafts a quarter mile or so offshore - in more inland waters. We speculated that the storm that blew through Friday night and yesterday (the remains of Tropical Storm Ida) forced some of the offshore birds inland for shelter. We think this one may have been injured; it never moved the whole time we were there snapping away, and it was sitting in, not floating on, that water.

We spotted this Dunlin, a member of the Sandpiper family, feeding on Third Beach. He was quite a busy little guy!

We also saw the Snow Buntings in the Sachuest Beach parking lot, as well as both Common and Red-throated Loons in Winter plumage, Harlequin and Common Eider ducks, and a Northern Gannet in (or over, in the case of the Gannet) the waters off Sachuest Point. All of those were outside camera range for me, but from a birding standpoint it was a very successful morning!

Afterward, after coming back to town (Newport), I headed straight for my usual Sunday stomping grounds - Ballard Park and Gooseneck Cove. I didn't get anything usable in the park, but I did manage to get two good shots on Gooseneck Cove.

There was a small flock of Hooded Mergansers on the east end of the Cove, but they quickly moved out of camera range. These little ducks are very people-shy. Luckily, I managed to get a decent shot of this male fleeing my presence.

This Lesser Yellowlegs, another member of the Sandpiper family, was hanging out in the salt marsh in the main section of Gooseneck Cove. He was hard to get a shot of because he kept bobbing his head; I'd get a great shot of the rest of the bird but the head would be blurred. I finally managed to get a shot between bobs, as it were.

And that's my Sunday bird walk. I hope you enjoyed it.

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger