On Saturday October 16th, 2021, South Shore Bird Club held a "75-a-thon", akin to a century run but with the goal of seeing 75 species of birds. What better a way to celebrate SSBC's anniversary but with an all-day trip hitting many of the South Shore's hotspots that the club has been visiting for decades!
The trip was advertised from 7 AM to 5 PM, a little play on numbers to sneak in another instance of "75", but immediately when the trip started began spurred an ethical dilemma on when to actually start counting birds.
The meetup time was 7AM at the Hawks Ave entrance of Burrage. 12 birders (two more met later) stood in the parking lot chit-chatting while waiting for the trip to start, when at 6:59 AM three Sandhill Cranes flew over bugling, flying away from Burrage over the treeline. Herein lies the dilemma. When to start counting birds? Sandhill Crane was a target here unlikely to be observed anywhere else... and there they went. After a bit of back and forth between everyone we hesitantly decided that we would probably count them, but never formed a concrete decision. Regardless, the clock stuck 7 so we did introductions and went on our way.
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| Sandhill Cranes. All photos by Lisa |
The morning had that nice fall chill in the air, with a breeze that was forecast to increase throughout the day. This proved to be a challenge, with songbirds being few and far between and when things were found they were often quite skulky. We thought that even if we'd skunked out here on songbirds we'd make up for it with ducks. We reach the northern reservoir and some ducks in the water. Decoys. Alas, today is the first day of duck season and we saw more decoys than ducks.
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| The crew working hard to spot new species (not!) |
While ducks were incredibly few and far between (with only some Wood Ducks and an unidentified dabbling duck) we did manage to see a Pied-billed Grebe, which would prove to be the only one for the day. While scoping a few blackbirds flew over, giving suspicious "kip" calls. We'd hoped for a better look, but the birds didn't seem to be going far. We decided to check the southern reservoir, and along the way we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of an immature White-Crowned Sparrow. The southern reservoir proved to be even more devoid of ducks so we decided to cut left toward triangle bog to see if we could catch up with some more passerines, and hopefully those blackbirds. This ended up paying off in a big way; on our trek over the Sandhill Cranes flew back over, concretely ending our ethical dilemma, and we heard Rusty Blackbirds singing at Stump Brook before flying over again. From here we worked our way back to the car, ending at Burrage around 10 AM with 37 species towards our goal. Lots of holes with common species but we did do well on raptors with 5 species, which tends to be the opposite on big days. A decent count but low enough to keep the nerves pumping about whether we'd reach 75 or not!
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| Bogs at Burrage |
Our next stop was Great Sandy Bottom Pond. This was a great stop for some of the hopefuls at this location, and we were able to see both species of scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, Ruddy Ducks, and we saw our first Mallards of the day (can you believe we missed them at Burrage?). While scanning we also were lucky to see an adult Bald Eagle, and shortly after an immature. We also picked up a big miss from Burrage, American Goldfinch!
Daniel Webster was next on our list and was scheduled to be our last hurrah for songbirds for the day, as it was almost noon when we arrived and winds were steady. At the parking lot another hole in our list was filled, Mourning Dove! We walked to the blind to the east of the panne first only to find a wall of phragmites. As we scanned we thought we heard a "pip" coming from the reeds, and lo and behold not one but two Sora were heard within them! The rest of the trip was quiet for birds but noisy with rustling phragmites, which has overtaken a bunch of the sanctuary. Fortunately though, we were able to fill in some of our missing species like Hairy Woodpecker, White-breasted Nuthatch, and House Finch.
Our next stop was Duxbury Bogs, a place that can be overridden with both dogs and ducks. Surprisingly for such a nice day there were very few people walking their dogs, but the pond did not disappoint with quite a few dabblers hanging around and some nice pickups like Gadwall and Green-winged Teal. A Chipping Sparrow on our way back to the cars was icing on the cake.
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| Though not a bird, we spent some time admiring this Northern Watersnake at Duxbury Bogs |
Now it was time to transition from inland to coastal in our search quest to 75 species. First stop: Plymouth Beach. As opposed to Duxbury Bogs, the amount of people here did correlate with the weather with many walking the beach and soaking up sun. Though it was low tide, we did manage to pick up a nice array of diving ducks with eiders, two scoter species, and a Common Loon. After Scanning from the beach we walked to the flats and were able to find a nice array of shorebirds, including an American Golden-Plover spotted by Lisa. We noticed a huge, distant feeding frenzy including some terns out by the breakwater, but everything was unfortunately too far to identify. As we walked back we had still been missing Sanderling, so Vin, Brian, and I climbed up on the rocks to see if we could spot one on the beach side. We weren't able to find a Sanderling, but did have an odd flyover flock of Lesser Yellowlegs that came off the ocean and flew inland. When we got back to the cars we spent a second tallying our results: 75 species, and only 3:45 PM! Not bad for a day with somewhat unfavorable conditions and not being crazy hardcore in our ventures.
Did we call it a day from there? Of course not, we're South Shore Bird Club!
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| American Golden-Plover (left) with Black-bellied Plover (right) |
The route as planned was to continue following the coast and to head to Manomet Point from here, but the feeding frenzy was just too tempting so we headed to Nelson Beach and the town wharf. This paid off bigtime; we found our Sanderlings accompanied by a couple Semipalmated Sandpipers, and a huge number of gulls roosting on the flats right in front of the breakwater that included no less than 30 Forster's Terns and two Bonaparte's Gulls. As if this wasn't sweet enough we were in awe of two massive clouds terns in the distance, each consisting of hundreds. Quite the sight for mid-October!
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| Forster's Terns with Laughing Gulls |
It was rough, but we finally managed to peel ourselves away from the town wharf to continue on our route and headed to Manomet Point. The combination of southerly winds and low tide made for some quiet waters, but we did manage to see Northern Gannets (one adult which was fairly close) and a Great Cormorant roosting with all of the DC's. It was at this stop that the time passed 5 PM, the advertised end time for the trip.
But did we call it a day from there? Of course not, we're South Shore Bird Club!
With what little daylight we had left we headed to Manomet (Bird Observatory), which shares a rich history intermingled with South Shore Bird Club. We checked the farm, then the dell, then the garden, then the bluff, then walked the road with no new species. The anxiety was building, would our last stop be the first where we didn't add a new species to our list? Fortunately not, as when we were walking back to our cars at deep dusk we were bid farewell by the tremolo of a screech-owl.
All said and done we ended our day with 85 species, beating our goal by 10. It was great to see and get out with everyone, and was definitely a fun little challenge to try to break 75 species. Our full species list in order of location below.
Best,
Nate
Thanks for summarizing what became a fun and satisfying day of reaching the goal of 75 species. We only wish we could have been with all of you to share it, but a family obligation hindered that wish. Maybe we’ll be there for a challenge of 76 species for the 76th year of the club!
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