Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

For my last memory of 2016, I want to talk about nemesis birds. But, just what is a nemesis bird? Let's start with simple definition: Nemesis bird (Nem-i-sus burd) noun   A bird that time and time again successfully evades discovery or notice due to their cryptic nature and infrequent appearances to an area that drives a birder to near madness in order to discover it. I have had a few nemesis birds in the past including canvasback ( Aythya valisineria ), brown creeper ( Certhia americana ), and northern goshawk ( Accipiter gentilis ). They had all the hallmarks of hard to find birds that suddenly appear for a few to see and then disappear, leaving other observers in the lurch. While all three species featured prominently on my year list for 2016, two species stood out as perfect examples of nemesis birds. Owls make for great nemesis birds as their preference for nocturnal living and cryptic plumage allow them to hide away when most birders are tramping through both forest ...

This morning I had the great fortune of spotting not only a life bird, but also getting a fairly rare bird for Massachusetts. The bird I'm referring to is the Cackling Goose ( Branta hutchinsii ), but upon looking at the two photos below, you probably have noticed something unusual about the appearance of these birds. For all intents and purposes, a Cackling Goose appears to be a dead ringer for a munchkin-sized Canada Goose ( B. canadensis ) and to the uninitiated, it could be mistaken for a "baby" Canada Goose. However, we birders know that what a baby goose looks like with its fuzzy yellowish down, peeping voice, and angry, protective parents so to be seeing a "baby" goose at this time of year would be completely unexpected. The Cackling Goose was for a long time considered to be a high Arctic breeding race of Canada Goose in northwestern Canada and Alaska. They themselves can be split into three or four races as well and include the Taverner's, ...

In what would normally be another life bird for me, I felt not only the usual bubbling of excitement followed by the normalizing of the experience into the sure feeling that I knew what it was I was identifying. Last weekend when I saw my first Harlequin Ducks ( Histrionicus histrionicus ), Red Crossbills ( Loxia curvirostra ), and Horned Grebes ( Podiceps auritus ) I felt these very emotions, but they've faded slightly as I remember them now. Today was different though. As the title suggests I saw a bird that I've held in high esteem since I was a boy of ten. As I gleaned through a copy of "Duck Hunting" by Dick Sternberg and Jeff Simpson, I looked over the species accounts and absorbed much of the information I know today from them. One bird always stood out to me however because it looked like the most exquisite dandy of the whole lot. The Long-tailed Duck ( Clangula hyemalis ), or Oldsquaw, as it was formerly know, with the male's large white crown and nape, ...