Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

I was recently poking around the Mass Audubon Bird Conservation staff page located here and was reading over Matt Kamm's blurb when I read the final sentence and had a thought. The sentence goes as follows. "He has been an enthusiastic birder since the age of eight, and his nemesis bird is the Short-tailed Hawk." The first part of that sentence isn't important. The concept of a "nemesis bird" hadn't really caught my imagination since I already had a list of likely species I hadn't yet seen and was using that as a benchmark in my quest to reach the 300. However, this new concept has intrigued me and made me wonder what species have seemed to elude me. However, the answer to that has changed so many times that it hardly seems worth it to determine what it is. For most of the summer my main target was the Black-bellied Whistling Duck ( Dendrocygna autumnalis ) spotted at Great Meadows NWR in Concord, MA. When I did finally sight it (with pictures a...

There is nothing quite as exciting (for a birder at least) as getting a rare bird alert. For the most part, the "rare" birds that appear on my eBird page are generally birds that are an unusual siting for that particular area. Just today, I have alerts for a Snowy Egret ( Egretta thula ) at Great Meadows, Yellow-crowned Night Heron ( Nyctanassa violacea ) near Duxbury Bay, and a Northern Shoveler ( Anas clypeata )at Coachlace Pond in Clinton. While I've seen all of these birds before, their presence in these areas is deemed to be unusual or strange for that particular area. However, none of these sightings could compare the joy I felt when (finally!) after a month of visiting I was rewarded with the sight of a Black-bellied Whistling Duck ( Dendrocygna autumnalis ) that had been present at Great Meadows for much of the summer. The two pictures to the side are the best ones I took and illustrate the unique look that the bird possesses. While most of the pictures...