Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

After a long month of snow, blustery weather, icicles freezing onto the house, and winter in general, yesterday I decided to treat myself to some birding up in Essex County. With the winter having taken a toll on my sanity to a certain degree, I thought that it would be nice to get out and try to find some year birds. Little did I know, how good of a day it was going to be. I awoke at 7:00am and got out by 7:45am to meet the rush hour along Route 95 to Gloucester. My plan was to visit 6 different locations to secure year birds I wanted on my list,most of which I wouldn't get to see again until late next fall or winter (provided I'm still on the East Coast as well). The locations included Bass Rocks and Jodrey Fish Pier in Gloucester, Parker River in Newburyport, Salisbury Beach in Salisbury, Deer Island near Winthrop, and Horn Pond in Woburn. After braving the throngs of cars leading to Gloucester, I arrived at the looming snowed in walls of Jodrey. While the walls of sn...

After dealing with the piles of snow that have graced New England the past fortnight, my girlfriend Alison and I went to check out two Mass Audubon sanctuaries south of Boston. We first toured the Sharon Beals exhibit at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, where the exhibit featured the photographers portraits of birds nests from all over the world. We looked at each of the nests lining the walls of the art gallery as they portrayed the many ways birds build nests ranging from the neat weavings of sparrows and thrushes, to the simple depressions of shorebirds, and then to the macabre stick and bone nest of the House Wren ( Troglodytes aedon ). This sometimes horrid, little songbird has the nasty habit of taking over the nests of other songbirds and will even pierce the eggs and kill the chicks inside to secure the nest site for themselves. The nest in the photograph, set on black to show the subtle details that had gone into each nest, was lined with the dessicated remains of th...