Susan B. Whiting
Hear ye, hear ye! Do not forget that the Vineyard’s Christmas Bird Count will take place on Monday, Jan. 2, from dawn to dusk, rain or shine. Vineyard birders will join tens of thousands of volunteers who are taking part in the oldest and largest demonstration of crowd science in the world. This count is in its 112th year so the data that has been gathered over the years has shown the world the changes in the environment and bird populations.
The occasion was the 25th annual St. Catherines Island Foundation Christmas Bird Count. Flip Harrington and I have participated in 10 of the 25. We were to fly from Boston to Brunswick, Ga. spend the night with a friend and drive north to Half-Moon Marina. The marina is where visitors to St. Catherines are to congregate and board motorboats that whisk them to the island.
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.