Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

This was one of the best weekends I've had all year. Not only did I get to spend some quality time with my girlfriend, Alison, I also saw five life birds and went on a whale watch for the first time in nearly a decade. Despite the fact that I carried what I can only estimate as being a 20+ lb. backpack all day and was exhausted by the end of the day, it was still an amazing experience! We did the whale watch with the same company Alison had done so with her work colleagues the previous week. The company, called Dolphin Fleet, offered 3-4 hour cruises to the waters off of Race Point in Provincetown and to the southwestern section of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary outside of Cape Cod Bay. We boarded at 10:00am and after a fifteen minute wait, we were backing out of the docks and into the harbor and beyond. As we past the breakwater, our naturalist pointed out the large flock of resting Double-crested Cormorants ( Phalacrocorax auritus ). She explained how their heavier b...

In my struggle to get to 300 species before the end of the year, the start of the fall migration should be a point of joy for me. Instead, I'm feeling anxious that I won't meet my goal, despite having 277 species on my life list with the recent additions of Northern Fulmar ( Fulmarus glacialis ), American Pipit ( Anthus rubescens ), Steller's Jay ( Cyanocitta stelleri ), and Purple Gallinule ( Porphyrio martinica ) and the quickly closing gap that would mean I only need 23 more species in order to reach my goal. (For clarifications sake, I didn't go on a whirlwind tour to see those birds, but instead happened to remember seeing them in the past and put them on my own list. This benefits me more than simply using eBird as I mentioned in On the Wing post #7, due to the flexibility I have with the entries in that I know I saw them within a given time period without having a particular date or time of seeing them.) My reaction to meeting this daunting challenge has been...