Bird News
A reminder: The Great Backyard Bird Count starts today, Feb. 12, and continues through Monday, Feb.15. For details on the count, visit birdcount.org,
Thirteen years ago, in 1997, we first heard about the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival in Titusville, Fla. The venue for this festival is the Brevard Community College North Campus. Strategically located next to Cape Canaveral, the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and many other birding hot spots, this festival is in a prime location for bird watching.
Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary invites the public to join them at Felix Neck for a Full Moon Walk between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30 and then gather inside to meet the wildlife photographers who contributed to the 2010 Felix Neck Wildlife Calendar.
The question all the people that are sharing the Baltimore orioles on Lambert’s Cove Road, and now one in Oak Bluffs, are asking is, why are they still on Island? There are two answers, and they both have to do with genetics. Unlike many of the waterfowl that learn how to migrate from their parents, passerines or dickie birds are programmed by the genes of their parents. Therefore orioles, which are passerines, can innately navigate to their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America. However sometimes there is a glitch in these inherited programs and either the young birds remain in their summer digs or, more commonly, a youngster makes a 180-degree turn and reverse migrates. So the Baltimore orioles here on the Vineyard were either born here and didn’t leave this fall, or came from points south. Unfortunately most of these birds will not survive the winter — although some do. The crew on Lambert’s Cove seems bent on keeping the young male alive with oranges and jelly! Good luck.
Our Southern Ocean trip is still fresh in our minds. We have visited Chatham Island with you but we still had many miles of ocean to go. The islands we visited included: Mangere, Pitt, Bounty, Antipodes, Campbell, Enderby, The Snares, Ulva and Stewart. There were special sightings and views whenever we stopped, and to tell it all would require a tome!
The weather on the proposed date (Jan. 3) for the Christmas Bird Count wasn’t fit for man nor beast. Rob Culbert made an excellent decision and moved the count to Tuesday, Jan. 5. The only problem with this change was that some participants were unable to join us as they were working. We were very shorthanded. However, the Vineyarders who participated should be proud, because even with a much reduced crew at the end of the day the unofficial total number of species seen was 115. Now that is a lower tally than CBCs of milder winters but was the same as Cape Cod. Cape Cod usually has the highest number of bird species seen on CBCs statewide. Rumor has it that Nantucket had the highest count in the state this year with a total of 118. So we were only three down from the “top dog.” The Vineyard had the best weather of any of the state CBCs, and with a few more participants we probably would have bested Nantucket!