JBWR 4/3--Bird #100

My 100th bird for the year turned out to be a Gray Catbird eating dessicated berries in a bush just before Bench 1 on the West Pond. It's been a real slog this year.

Some hints of spring there today, despite the chill wind and temperatures: Ospreys on the nest, American Oystercatchers chasing each other around, a Greater Yellowlegs fluffed out in the breeze, prancing around a puddle, lots of Tree Swallows.

Holdovers from winter: Still a couple of thousand Snow Geese on the pond and especially in the marshes. I find them hilarious, gabbling and honking incessantly, and then "deciding" that the marsh isn't where they want they want to be, it's the pond--so a thousand take flight, coming in like lines of bombers over our heads.

Photos by Shari Zirlin

After lunch we headed over to the East Pond. As we were turning into the parking I saw 2 birders waiting to cross the street to go over there too. Let me make a confession of how irrational I can be: Whenever I see other birders before me (lots of cars in a parking lot, groups of birders standing around a feeder or looking over a pond) I feel like their eyeballs are going to use up all the birds before I get to see them, so a sense of crazed urgency comes over me to get to where we're going so I can see the birds before they have been magically exhausted by the other guys. Which is one of the reasons I'm always in a hurry. (I said it was irrational.) So, when I saw those two waiting for the light to change I thought, "Oh no, they're going to ruin the East Pond." I don't know if they were the ones who did it, but there wasn't much on the East Pond to see that we hadn't seen already--a Bufflehead, a Great Black-back Gull.
West Pond
Number of species:    28
Snow Goose    2000
Brant    200
Canada Goose    100
Mute Swan    1
American Black Duck    50
Northern Shoveler    25
Green-winged Teal    6
Greater Scaup    100
Lesser Scaup    100
Ruddy Duck    50
Double-crested Cormorant    10
Great Egret    2
Osprey    2
American Oystercatcher    4
Greater Yellowlegs    1
Ring-billed Gull    1
Herring Gull    50
American Crow    1
Tree Swallow    40
American Robin    1
Gray Catbird    1
Northern Mockingbird    1
European Starling    10
Song Sparrow    3
Northern Cardinal    2
Red-winged Blackbird    75
Brown-headed Cowbird    1
American Goldfinch    10
East Pond
Number of species:    10
Canada Goose    4
Mute Swan    35
Northern Shoveler    50
Greater Scaup    10
Lesser Scaup    10
Bufflehead    1
Ruddy Duck    200
Double-crested Cormorant    10
Herring Gull    10
Great Black-backed Gull    1