Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

As I left the house at a little after three today to go look for a Northern Shrike ( Lanius excubitor ) that had been reported at Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Concord, I had mixed feelings over whether I would find it or not. Instead I came across a complete surprise. A sign of spring for some perhaps, but when seen in the middle of February, an Eastern Phoebe ( Sayornis phoebe ) is not the first thing that springs to mind. It is an especially strange sight to see after a snowstorm as well, but nonetheless, the photos do not lie. As I travel to Newton and Assabet River NWR tomorrow in search of more year list birds, I will think about this phoebe and how early it is. Could it possibly mean an early spring for us? Only time will tell.

Ludlow Griscom (1890-1959) while not as famous as Concord's Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Nathaniel Hawthorne, his presence is still appreciated by ornithologists and birders who have graced a local library and perhaps found a curious volume called "Birds of Concord". The book itself isn't a field guide, but instead a reference for any bird lover that wished at the time to better understand the mechanisms behind bird abundance and rarity as well as why migration occurred and what birds were considered common in this small, but rigorously surveyed portion of Massachusetts. Griscom himself was one of the first ornithologists to shift away from "shotgun ornithology" and instead use the field marks present on a bird body to determine its identity. Around the time of Griscom, it was common for those studying birds to have to shoot them in order to tender an identification of the bird in hand. This was certainly true for smaller, harder to see songbirds like sp...

Musketaquid. The name sounds as ancient as the North American continent, brimming with the history and knowledge of another time when much of the continent was still wild and largely unkempt. What it actually refers to were the extensive grass meadows that were commonplace in the Sudbury River Valley where many species of birds both great and small existed for thousands of years. Recently after work, I took a detour down Water Row, a road in Sudbury that cuts through a portion of National Wildlife Refuge land allowing one to view the marsh from either side of this asphalt division. It was there that I saw the shape of a familiar, long-legged marsh bird. Two Great Blue Herons ( Ardea herodias ) were stalking the dry marsh floor for any wayward frogs and other morsels might have escaped the radiating heat of the sun, perched in the sky, far above our planet. The marshes associated with the Sudbury, Concord, and Assabet Rivers are a haven for wildlife of all forms and features. However,...