Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia "Komito was stupefied. After all his wild-goose chases–the days in the sleet in Alaska, the hours in the summer stench of the Salton Sea, the nights among the border swimmers on the Rio Grande–his hunt for the pink-footed goose was over in thirty seconds. The only way he could describe his feelings was to use a word that, until this point, had been alien to his vocabulary. He felt guilty." It's amazing how fast a chase can be over when you're in the right place, at the right time. As Sandy Komito's 1998 Big Year experience illustrates in his search for the Pink-footed Goose ( Anser brachyrhynchos ), this happens every once in a while in the birding world. Now I have my own experience to draw on with regards to a nemesis bird that I've been chasing since the beginning of fall migration last year. As of this Tuesday, I've finally slayed the king of waterfowl (metaphorically of course). After several misadventures with altern...

 The Canvasback ( Aythya valisineria ) has been showing up in Massachusetts over the past few months. They have mainly shown up in traditional spots such as Fresh Pond and Jamaica Pond, but also in others like Plum Island, Acushnet, and Pope John Paul II Park. But even as I search those areas, I always seem to be coming up with nothing. It seems like they either aren't there or I miss them by a few days. The same seemed to be happening when I couldn't find Lincoln's Sparrow ( Melospiza lincolnii ) and Rusty Blackbird ( Euphagus carolinus ) but eventually I did come across them. In the mean time, I'm happy to report that I got to see the King Eider ( Someteria spectabilis ) up near Salt Island off of Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester. While it was a distant speck amongst the Common Eiders ( S. mollisima ) it was associating with. I could barely tell what it was, but the extra black on the back separated this adult male from the more piebald males. Had it been a female ...

Earlier in the week, I briefly discussed the concept of a "nemesis bird" and stated that I hadn't yet determined if I had one due to the bewildering and ever changing status of the birds I've been seeking over the past few months. For a while this summer, it was the Black-bellied Whistling Duck ( Dendrocygna autumnalis ) at GMNWR before it turned over to the last few weeks of September when I was absolutely obsessed with warblers. After getting six species: Northern Waterthrush ( Parkesia novaboracensis ), Tennessee ( Oreothlypis peregrina ), Nashville ( Oreothlypis ruficapilla ), Magnolia ( Setophaga magnolia ), Blackpoll ( Setophaga striata ), and Black-throated Blue Warbler ( Setophaga carulescens ), I started concentrating on the small, weedy fields and community gardens near me for Lincoln's Sparrow ( Melospiza lincolnii ). After getting a Lincoln's at Lincoln Meadows (ironic) in Sudbury, I looked at my remaining list. Where could I go that would get me m...

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...