Bird News
It all started with a déjà vu birding experience by Whit Manter. He was returning from a trip off-Island on Sunday, October 4. As he drove out to his house on Tisbury Great Pond, he spotted a bird which he recognized as a rare visitor. The reason Whit was able to identify the bird quickly is that he spotted the same spe cies, a Say’s phoebe, six years before in almost the exact location!
Several of the women in my aerobics class queried me about their loss of hummingbirds. Yes, unfortunately it is the time that the tiniest of our avian buddies move on. It always amazes me that a minuscule creature, a little short of four inches in size and weighing less than one-eighth of an ounce, can migrate from the Vineyard all the way to Mexico and points south.
Bird identification puzzles, as with all mysteries, are great fun to work on and, best of all, to solve. Tuesday Pete Gilmore, Lanny McDowell and I were birding around the flower gardens at the Farm Institute in Katama. We watched several Savannah sparrows perched on the fences surrounding the garden, when suddenly another larger “sparrow” landed.
I was asked recently just how many birds have been seen on the Vineyard. This is a question that, depending on the birder, will result in different answers. Barbara Pesch and I list 386 species in our book Vineyard Birds II. Allan Keith and Stephen Spongberg in their book Island Life on the other hand report 405. Why is there such a gap in the two lists one might ask?
It was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds. Trudy Taylor called and Bob Shriber e-mailed me to describe the scene that occurred on Saturday, Sept. 5. Hundreds of laughing gulls were flying overhead along the Lobsterville Beach. They were acting like swallows, swooping down and up, combing the air for insects. It turns out that the gulls were catching flying ants that had hatched from the beach and dunes.
The magic of migration is happening. The honking of Canada geese pierces the silence and peace and quiet of dawn. Our birdbath has new visitors that we haven’t spotted since last fall, and avid Vineyard birders are waking before sunup to migrate to Aquinnah or Gay Head.