Skip to main content

Song Sparrow Preening

I have quite the backlog of pictures for Burrage Pong on Memorial Day, here are a few more.

I love taking pictures of Song Sparrows, especially when they're perched atop a post or branch like this against the blue sky. It reminds me of some similar pictures I have of a song sparrow from the BwBTC trip to Plum Island last summer.


During this trip to Burrage Pond we also saw an Eastern Kingbird:


Can you find the Great Blue Heron in this picture? This is a very distance shot, but I wanted to use it because you can see the haze across the bog. People in New England will recall how this Memorial Day smoke from the Quebec wildfires rolled in and created quite the haze.


Burrage Pond is a Wildlife Management Area (or WMA)- a parcel of undeveloped land managed by the Massachusetts Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. (Click here for a map of WMAs in Massachusetts) Naturally, since it's such a great piece of conservation land, there are several research projects going on there. One of which is the bog turtle (note: link opens a PDF). There's a note on the sign when you first enter Burrage Pond to be on the lookout for bog turtles. Well, 2 of the 4 times I've been there I've seen turtles but they weren't bog turtles. I'll keep looking!

Here's a cute little painted turtle I saw on Memorial Day, with quite the dirty shell (kind of looks like rust). How'd that happen? Just to be sure I took photographs of it so I could confirm later what kind of turtle it was. As with birds, I'm always secretly hoping it's something incredibly rare! But that's never the case...

Comments

Hilke Breder said…
Sure looks like a painted turtle. I see so many crossing the road right now and usually stop my car to carry the across. A big one was so frightened that she sprang a big leak (urine). Love the view of the bog with the GBH! Must be incredibly buggy though!
Cathleen Voss said…
@Hilke: That's a great story. I love hearing about people helping turtles cross the road. The bog is beautiful, and if you go during the day it's really not too bad in terms of bugs.

Popular posts from this blog

Difference Between Grackles and Starlings

I saw a sad sight today during my lunchtime jog—a dead grackle. Or was it a starling? I'll get to that in a minute. I was making my way down to the trail along the Charles River when I saw what I thought was an injured bird in the middle of the road. It was just sitting there and I figured it was just stunned or maybe had an injured wing. The bird probably didn't have much of a chance, but the least I could move it out of the road. As I got closer to the bird I saw it had its mouth open and then I realized the gruesome truth—it was dead and was frozen in that position. I just got shivers thinking about it. The poor thing. Anyway, so it got me to thinking 'What is the difference between grackles and starlings?' I use the two interchangeably and haven't really made an effort to sort it out. Until now. I like to use All About Birds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as an online resource. The site is comprehensive and easy to use. (I also really like the 'Cool ...

Using Birds to Control Tomato Hornworms

Here's a lovely macro shot of a tomato hornworm caterpillar taking a little break from gorging himself on my tomatoes. Ever seen one before? They're huge and pretty startling to come across when you're pruning your tomato plants. They blend right in, until you accidentally touch one- hopefully not with the horned end! This picture was taken near the end of the season so I wasn't SO upset, but I definitely want to prevent hornworms for next season. I started doing some research on how to get rid of tomato hornworms and the good news is you don't need to use insecticides or crazy home remedies- birds will do the work for you! This great website I found- the Yardener has a whole section about insect pests in the vegetable garden. According to the site, feeding birds year-round will help you control the tomato hornworm problem in your garden. For bird lovers, this shouldn't be a chore at all. Just keep your feeders full with desirable seed like black-oil sunflower s...

Large-billed Crow pictures from Japan

These large-billed crow pictures come courtesy of my work colleague Phil who lives in Japan. He told me he had some great Japanese crow pictures, and the first thing I noticed about the bird was the large bill. I started doing some research to come up with the correct crow name. First I thought it was a carrion crow since those are a common type of Japanese crow, but the bill wasn't big enough. Then I found pictures of the large-billed crow and those were a match! Duh- "large bill"- it couldn't have been any simpler. These crows are also called jungle crows, but most of the birding sites call them large-billed crows. Phil said they can get really big, which I believe since American crows are huge sometimes. I have vivid memories of standing my in my parents Cape Cod kitchen doing dishes and getting spooked by something huge in my periphery on the deck. All it ever was was a giant crow, but really they can be scary when they get so big! Here are some interesting thing...