Belle Isle Bird List   September 16, 2007

2007.09.16

Belle Isle Marsh

8:00 - 10:50 am dst

Bruce DeGraaf, William Friedburg, Dexter Hunneman, Soheil Zendeh

High tide: 2:00 pm dst

Sky: partly cloudy -- clear

Temperature: 56°+ F (13° + C)

Wind: nw 5 - 15 mph (8 - 24 kph) early; at 10 am e 5 mph (8 kph)

Visibility: excellent

Tide: low to mid

Belle Isle notes:

Clear and cold morning after a cold front. The thickets around Rosie's Pond

were utterly quiet, so I knew the migrants had just moved through and not

stopped here. Dexter then appeared and confirmed my impression, though he

reported seeing an empid which he thought was a Least, and some Bobolinks.

He said a Peregrine had been hanging around the shorebird pools. Maybe it

ate yesterday's Avocet! There has been a Peregrine around the shorebird

pools for the past 3 - 4 weeks, every time I've been there.

One Osprey was sitting on the nesting platform. I saw it in flight and it

was a young one. How long do the young of the year hang out near the home

platform? Later I saw 2 Ospreys way overhead, migrating.

This was the first Belle Isle hawk watch of the new season. 2 American

Kestrels, a Sharp-shinned, an unid falcon (which flew away like a Merlin,

but I never got anything on it) and an unid hawk cruised through also.

Later, 2 crows were chasing an accipiter which looked big enough to be a

Cooper's, but I couldn't convince myself, specially once it perched. It goes

as an unid accipiter.

The goldenrod blossoms are beginning to attract the usual collection of

migrating Monarchs. Minimum 30 Monarchs today.

Belle Isle birds. Number of bird species: 34

American Black Duck 5

Mallard 3

Green-winged Teal 1

Double-crested Cormorant 120

Great Blue Heron 1

Great Egret 6

Snowy Egret 5

Osprey 3

Sharp-shinned Hawk 1

Accipiter sp. 1

American Kestrel 3

Greater Yellowlegs 8

Lesser Yellowlegs 1

Solitary Sandpiper 1

Semipalmated Sandpiper 1

Least Sandpiper 3

Short-billed Dowitcher 1

Ring-billed Gull 4

Herring Gull 10

Great Black-backed Gull 1

Rock Pigeon 15

Mourning Dove 6

Belted Kingfisher 1

Least Flycatcher 1

Blue Jay 1

American Crow 2

Gray Catbird 2

European Starling 60

Cedar Waxwing 2

Yellow-rumped Warbler 1

Savannah Sparrow 1

Bobolink 2

American Goldfinch 1

House Sparrow 2

Notes from elsewhere:

Bruce deGraaf and I joined another birder, from Watertown, in looking at

shorebirds on Winthrop Beach and at the 5 Sisters. The pebble bars off the

beach were getting covered as we got there. Eventually, at close to high

tide (1:30 pm) all the shorebirds had to move off the pebble bars (where

they were exquisitely camouflaged and hard to see) and perched on the 2nd

Sister from the south. Later, in October, the 5 Sisters attract more and

more roosting shorebirds at high tide. Counts of many hundreds of BBPLovers,

Dunlin and Sanderling (the easy ones to pick out) are regular, with other

birds mixed in as well. Today I tried, unsuccessfully, to find an American

Golden-Plover among the BBPL. This is certainly a place to look for them as

the fall advances.

Double-crested Cormorant 150

American Oystercatcher 4 (3 ad, 1 juv with nasty deformed bill)

Black-bellied Plover approx. 100

Semipalmated Plover 25

Ruddy Turnstone 4

Red Knot 6

Sanderling 6

Semipalmated Sandpiper 5

Bruce and I then proceeded to the Oasis in East Boston. The water there is

very high and therefore not conducive to roosting shorebirds:

American Black Duck 2

Blue-winged Teal 2

Green-winged Teal 20

Snowy Egret 15

Cedar Waxwing 1

Painted turtle 2

Soheil Zendeh

42 Baker Ave

Lexington, MA 02421

home phone 781-863-2392

cell phone 617-763-5637

office phone 617-528-4013