Southfield - Weymouth 7/19/2015

   Five of us managed to get up early (6AM) to catch the morning bird activity and beat the mid-summer heat at the former South Weymouth Naval Air Base. Conditions were warm and muggy even at this hour, and by the time we finished (9AM) the temps were already into the eighties.

   This grassland habitat is rare for the metropolitan Boston area. We walked the old runways and saw grassland birds like Savannah Sparrow and Eastern Meadowlark. Swallows are beginning to flock up now that their nesting season is ending and it was evident here as there were close to one hundred Tree and Barn Swallows roosting on one of the runways early on. Their numbers will continue to build especially in coastal areas into the thousands in the next month.

Juvenile Killdeer

   Numbers of birds can be high at this time of season. We encountered several juvenile birds of several species throughout our walk.

Juvenile Brown Thrashers

   Also of note were four Monarch Butterflies, which have been nearly absent the past few years.

41 species

Wild Turkey 15 Several juveniles
Cooper's Hawk 1
Red-tailed Hawk 1
Killdeer 4 Adult with 3 small young ones.
Herring Gull (American) 4
Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) 17
Mourning Dove 40 Estimate
Chimney Swift 7
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 2
Downy Woodpecker 3
Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) 2
Eastern Phoebe 1
Eastern Kingbird 4
Blue Jay 7
American Crow 4
Fish Crow 1
Tree Swallow 75
Barn Swallow 15
House Wren 1
Wood Thrush 1
American Robin 25
Gray Catbird 12
Brown Thrasher 2 Juveniles
Northern Mockingbird 4
European Starling 13
Cedar Waxwing 5
Common Yellowthroat 4
Yellow Warbler 3
Prairie Warbler 1
Eastern Towhee 12
Field Sparrow 6
Savannah Sparrow 20
Song Sparrow 8
Red-winged Blackbird 28
Eastern Meadowlark 10
Common Grackle 6
Brown-headed Cowbird 2
Orchard Oriole 2
Baltimore Oriole 4
American Goldfinch 3
House Sparrow 2

This report was generated automatically by eBird v3 (http://ebird.org)

Vin Zollo