Five hardy soles made the trek to Plum Island under somewhat poor conditions to participate in the January Plum Island trip. Temps were in the mid 30's with on and off COLD drizzle. Winds were on and off 5-20 mph. Seas were rough.
As a result, best viewing were of the limited puddle ducks in the various pannes along the refuge road. A couple scans of the ocean found very few birds either in flight or on the seas. Multiple scans of the marsh area failed to turned up any Snowy Owls.As noted in the numbers below, American Black Duck was the most common bird of the day. Many being force to take cover in the pannes as hunters across the river put them up several times with gun fire. Likely, one of the reasons for not seeing any Snowys. Despite not seeing a snowy owl, we did get to see a close to the road Barred Owl being mobbed by a click(?) of photographers. Several in the group got their share of photos. Best I could do was a rather poor but artistic cell phone shot.
Along the way, a couple of the participants manage to get their first far off sightings of Dunlin and Horne Grebe. A quick look up river failed to find any Bald Eagles, just missing one per photograhers at Deer Island in Amesbury. With that we called it a day. Below are the numbers for the day.
Mike
Total Records: 28NAME COUNT Canada Goose 110 Gadwall 10 Mallard 15 American Black Duck 300 Northern Pintail 20 Common Eider 6 White-winged Scoter 8 Long-tailed Duck 14 Bufflehead 6 Common Goldeneye 5 Common Merganser 2 Red-breasted Merganser 1 Horned Grebe 1 Rock Pigeon 25 Sanderling 20 Ring-billed Gull 10 Herring Gull 15 Great Black-backed Gull 3 Red-throated Loon 5 Common Loon 2 Cooper's Hawk 1 Barred Owl 1 American Crow 1 Black-capped Chickadee 1 Northern Mockingbird 1 American Robin 30 American Tree Sparrow 1 Song Sparrow 2
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