BirdingGirl

I continue to get great tips from my friend Chris Walsh. He said he spotted 8 common Eiders at the Spit in Mashpee a few weeks ago (in addition to the Short Eared Owl he and his wife Chelsea's dog Jackson flushed out), and he also shared a story of a hawk sighting near the bird feeder in his yard. Here is his story unedited: I woke up last week to the sound of a vocal bird outside my window. Most of the time, even while half-asleep, I'm continually monitoring the common bird sounds I hear, but this call got me out of bed because it was a loud scream and because I had no idea what it could be. This immature Cooper's Hawk sat outside long enough for me to snap a few pictures through the bathroom window. I think this one turned out the best. I was thankful to get the opportunity to take a long and studied look at the bird. It's a resident of the neighborhood that I've glimpsed several times over the past couple of months. It flew through the yard again today, presumabl...

My friend Chelsea from the Cape was visiting Tuesday night and told me about her dog Jackson, who is apparently a bird dog. He flushed out a pheasant at Crane Wildlife Management Area in Falmouth, MA. Then he flushed out a Short Eared Owl at the Spit in Mashpee, MA. She was walking him at the wildlife reserve when he ran off into a field and began tracking the bird, following its scent on a random path through the field. Then all of a sudden she saw there was great commotion as he flushed the bird out and it flew up out of the tall grass. Jackson stopped in his tracks and pointed, then followed the bird, leaping all the way across the field. Her husband Chris said the same thing happened when he was walking Jackson at the Spit, which is a beach in Popponesset in Mashpee. She said he was walking him and then he ran off into the tall grass and out flew the owl. She was really excited to share this story with me about her "mutt" from Hawaii. She said a few weeks prior she had c...

I was on the Cape this past weekend for Thanksgiving and although my mother's birdfeeders were empty there were still plenty of birds around. I saw numerous chickadees in the backyard flitting around among the oak trees and in the front yard I saw a male cardinal, junco and a red-breasted nuthatch. It's rare to me to see a single junco since they usully come in flocks and always when it snows. It got pretty cold this weekend though- we had consecutive days of below-freezing temperatures for the first time, so the junco wasn't a complete surprise. But again, I'm not used to seeing them alone. The red-breasted nuthatches have to be my new favorite bird to watch while I'm home. I've seen them in my parents' yard during my past few visits. What usually alerts me to their presence is their unique squeaking chatter. It's obviously much like that of the white-breasted nuthatch but since I know theirs so well I can tell when it's the other bird. My friend C...

I've made a few trips to Blue Hills lately but unfortunately I don't have any bird pictures to share! I have some great ones of a garter snake, a deer, and some pretty foliage but no birds :( I may post those in the next few days once work dies down a bit.

I used the website Spiderzrule.com to research the spider I saw at Gifford Pinchot State Park. It was great because it featured user-submitted photos which allows for multiple views of different spiders and aids in identification. I decided to submit my photos since I thought they would be helpful/interesting for the website's visitors to see. Here's a link to the live pictures: http://www.spiderzrule.com/orbweaver11.htm

I was also able to get some great pictures of a Walking Stick and a large spider (turns out it's a Marbled Orb Weaver spider) while camping at Gifford Pinchot. The Walking Stick was especially exciting because neither my boyfriend nor I had ever seen one in real life. This one was missing a leg, but apparently they can grow them back after several successive molts. I also learned that they remain hanging motionless during the day waiting until it gets dark so they can go out and feed. That makes a lot of sense because he barely moved from the small bush where we left him. We can back from our hike and he was still in the same spot. I also learned that the females can lay a batch of female-only eggs in the event that there are no males around to breed with. We initially encountered him trapped underneath the rainfly of our tent. I pulled back the rainfly (after grabbing my camera of course) and he was free to move around. I picked him up from here to move him: Next I moved him onto...

I snapped this picture of a bird at the Museum of Natural History in New York. I just tried doing a little research on my own to see what it is but didn't have any luck. I should have just stopped to read the label on the exhibit but we were moving really quickly through it at that point and it just didn't occur to me. Let me know if you can identify it, or if you have any ideas about how to research it. The long feather coming out of the crown is the most unique aspect of it but I've had trouble describing it.