[MASSBIRD] Eastern Screech Owl, Beaver, Photos, Great Meadows, Concord, 1/6/11,
Michael Kolodny
I was at Great Meadows in Concord on 1/6/11 and photographed the birds
listed below. The photos are at: http://o10cpcs.wordpress.com (The archive
index is in the right margin.)
Eastern Screech Owl
Great Blue Heron
Birds Seen but no photos posted:
Black capped chickadee
Hooded merganser (on the concord river)
Black ducks (flying)
Downy woodpecker
Rock doves (flying)
Canada Geese (on the concord river)
Swamp Sparrow (near the spillway between the two impoundments)
Song sparrow (several, along the dike trail)
Birds Heard Only:
Red-bellied Woodpecker (at the first parking lot)
Other Photographs:
Beaver - breaking the ice
Gray squirrel
Cattails
Landscapes
Sunrise
Updates:
The coyotes haven't been seen since Monday when one caught a muskrat. The
person who originally pointed them out to me is there every day and saw them
every day up to Monday. His opinion is that they are not likely to be back.
I plan to keep my eye out for them, but I don't think I'll get there extra
early to look for them like I did on the 6th,.
About the Photos:
The screech owl is very shy. It was standing a little ways back from the
opening of the hole in its tree and I only had time to take one photograph
before it disappeared back into it's hole. I didn't use an SLR so there was
no shutter noise to annoy it. I wonder if this is a different bird than was
there last spring. Last spring I could take all the photos I wanted to and
the bird just sat there with it's eyes closed as if it were asleep.
The photograph of the beaver was taken early in the morning. The beaver
seemed to be clearing the ice from an area of the upper impoundment near its
lodge. In the photograph you can see it floating in the water with thin
chunks of ice on top of it - as if it had risen up from underneath the ice.
Later in the day I went up the tower and photographed the beaver lodge and
the area near it that had been cleared of ice.
The photographs of the sunrise do not show the sun or the eastern sky. I
photographed the shadows receding and the light advancing along the dike
trail as the sun came up over the trees behind me. While I was waiting for
the beaver to come up from under the water (which he did every few minutes),
I noticed that boat ramp at the end of the trail was in the sunlight but the
rest of the trail was still in shadow. I thought it would be interesting to
take a photo every minute or two to show the progress of the light moving
along the trail towards where I was standing. I put the photos in a slide
show that shows the progress of the light moving down the trail. My tripod
held a camera pointed towards the area where the beaver was active, so the
photos of the sunrise, taken with a different camera, are not all from the
exact same perspective.
There were two great blue herons near where I photographed one spearing fish
on Monday - near the spillway that flows into the Concord River at the far
end of the lower impoundment. Shortly after I came around the turn in the
path and saw the foot bridge over the spillway, I saw a heron flying through
the woods towards the lower impoundment. It was hard to understand how a
bird as large as a great blue heron could fly through those woods because
there are so many branches and twigs and tree trunks. It had already cleared
the woods by the time I started photographing it. The heron landed on the
ice on the lower impoundment. I didn't notice it right away but there was a
second heron standing near the spillway in the lower impoundment. It can be
seen in the photographs of the first heron flying over the spillway. As I
continued walking along the path, I stopped short when I finally noticed the
second heron. I photographed it but the light was coming from the other side
of it so I thought I'd see if it would stay there while I walked along the
path to the other side. When I got near the heron I looked the other way
hoping that would put the heron at ease, but as I was crossing the foot
bridge I heard it taking off so I turned towards it and took some
photographs of it flying away. I've noticed that sometimes animals like
chipmunks, red squirrels, and garter snakes, freeze when you look at them.
I've used this behavior to give myself sufficient time to get photographs of
those types of animals, so maybe looking away from the heron was the wrong
thing to do.
I waited a few minutes to see if the herons would come back to the spillway,
but I got up to leave before they did. After I had walked along the path
into the woods near the timber trail, I turned around and saw the heron that
had been standing on the ice flying into the reeds closer to the spillway. I
walked back a little ways and photographed the two herons standing near each
other in the reeds.
Michael Kolodny
Framingham, MA
m_ko...@phreego.com
My other nature photography blog is at: http://o3cpcs.blogspot.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sightings_blog