Bird News
Subspecies of birds are interesting. What is a subspecies, anyway? It is best to start with species, which is an individual that has common characteristics with others and can breed and produces offspring that are fertile and similar in looks. Now, a subspecies is an individual which has notably different features than its species, but can still breed and produce fertile offspring. However, subspecies characteristics are not sufficiently different to be classified as a unique species. The differences most commonly used to separate species and subspecies include size variations and plumage colorations.
The time is quickly approaching for the annual Christmas Bird Count. The Vineyard’s CBC, as it is abbreviated, is slated for Jan. 2, 2012, rain or shine. Rob Culbert is again the compiler for this event. I give him encouragement and help as the cocompiler.
Two special birds were found on and around the Vineyard on Nov. 29. Anne Lemenager was walking around Farm Pond and what should appear but a sandhill crane! She watched it for a bit and then it flew off. We should keep our eyes peeled and check all open fields as the crane may stay around with this beautiful and weird warm weather. The second bird was a first winter Iceland gull that I found in with a flock of northern gannets, razorbills, red-breasted mergansers and gulls (Bonaparte’s, herring, black-backed and ring-billed) off Cape Pogue the same day.
I suppose that I should be writing about turkeys, but you have had your holiday meal, so I will just remind all of you that the turkeys on Martha’s Vineyard are not wild. They are a cross of domestic turkeys. One flock started at Elisha Smith’s farm in Edgartown and the other at Craig Kingsbury’s farm in Vineyard Haven. No doubt individuals from each have interbred. A true wild turkey is very wily and wouldn’t be caught on someone’s back porch.
There are times when I receive a bird sighting from individuals that I morph into a person resembling a detective. I proceed to grill the bird-watcher in a similar fashion to an investigator questioning a perpetrator of a suspected crime. So how do you think I felt when I heard that Tim Rich, the past chief of police of Chilmark, had reported an immature red-headed woodpecker at his Chilmark feeder?
Belted kingfishers are found throughout North America; as a matter of fact they are considered one of the most widespread land birds in same. They are not considered year-round residents on the Island, but if the winter is mild and there is open water, belted kingfishers can be seen on the Vineyard all year long. Small numbers of belted kingfishers breed on the Vineyard. We are pretty sure that these breeding birds do not remain year-round, but migrate south to areas in Central and northern South America. However those kingfishers that breed north of the Vineyard come to spend the winters on-Island.