Spring is coming!!!

So I went birdwatching last weekend and, you guys, spring is coming!! I've been seeing so many new birds!!! On Saturday I walked around the Point (the very mushy, melted snow saturated point) and ruined a pair of jeans in the process. (It's ok, I was going to give them away anyway, now they're going in the trash). Most of the winter I walk through the hedge area to get to the beach and it's just dead silent. Now it's very, very loud with very talkative birds :) Yay!!! I saw a Hairy Woodpecker, who was just not shy at all (saw him on Sunday too). I was probably within 3 or 4 feet of him freely moving around and he could've cared less. Previously in the day I tried walking along the harbor wall, but it was too muddy, but that's where the Mallard picture came from. They were all walking along the ice, but the ice was melting and was very very slick, so they kept slipping. It's very funny to watch Ducks slip and slide on ice. I'm not sure why. It's not like Ducks are particularly dignified creatures in the first place, it's just funny. I have video that I might post later, although it's not very good. But I took a picture of the male Mallard and posted it just to show you how ridiculously bright orange his legs are. Spring is so fun - all the colors on all the birds are just so bright! The cardinals are ridiculously red, and the red breast on the Robins is beautiful! Then I went down the pier and walked all the way to the end (which bends around to look like hook - hence the name Fishhook Pier) and I heard this weird sound. On the inner edge of the pier is a juvenile cormorant just hanging out. He was trying to dry his wings, I guess. I picked my favorite picture - blow up the picture and you can see his turquoise eye! Also his gape (the skin around his beak) is very yellow. Shorebirds like that (the egrets, herons, pelicans, cormorants, etc.) all get different colored skin around their mouths in the spring when they are breeding (some go red or green as well as yellow). So the yellow gape and turquoise eye are because it's spring. I was worried that he was sick because it seemed like he was coughing or sneezing, and it seemed odd that he was so close to us, although out of reach, and not reacting to us at all (us being me and the other people on the pier). But I went back the next day to check on him and he was gone, so he may have just been taking a pit stop. While I was checking him out, another couple came up and I got to expound on Cormorants and the other ducks (Goldeneyes, Scaups, and Mergansers) that were at the end of the pier. I thoroughly enjoyed that :) Just so happens that me and Nikki were trying to identify some Cormorants (Shags, actually) that she had photographed in Trieste, so I had spent a lot of time on wikipedia the day before researching them. So I sounded super smart :) They were terribly nice and I let them use my binoculars to look at the cormorant and goldeneyes. So at the end of the pier, I'm pretty sure I saw a pair of Redheaded Ducks fly out. I'll check out North Pond this weekend and see if I can get some pictures of some of them that are supposed to be there. Then on Sunday I went back to the Hedge and it was just alive with bird calls. There were Grackles (which had the most beautiful purple head), Starlings, Red-Winged Blackbirds (loud, loud birds), Cardinals, Robins, the Hairy Woodpecker again, and I also saw a Sandhill Crane fly overhead and a Killdeer came swooping in. Killdeer are loud. I chased him down and flushed him out twice to get a positive ID. In order to identify them, you want to make sure that there are 2 rings around their neck (not one) and as they are flying away they have kind of a light-orange tail which is, I think, diagnostic. They also have white lenth-wise stripes on the tops of their wings which are very easy to see in flight, but that's not diagnostic because lots of shorebirds have that for some reason.


Here's my cormorant (Juvenile, Double-Crested)

Mr. Clumsy Duck

And a picture (that I didn't take) of a Killdeer flying away so you can see the orange tail. And also the white stripes that run lengthwise down the wing that you can see when they're flying.

And here you can see the two black stripes on their neck.

Next week: I got my new camera this week and I'm going to take it for a test run this weekend sometime - hopefully it'll be sunny!