Birds of Great Neck in Ipswich, Salem and Boston

On the 15th June 2018 I attended a lovely reunion of my cousins in Kelsey's Bar in Baltimore, and it was a lovely way to end my visit to Baltimore, where at least three sisters and one brother and a niece of my great grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the mid-1800s. 

That night I took an Amtrak train from Baltimore to Boston in Massachusetts, and I splurged on a taxi to Ipswich as I had to get to another family reunion of a different set of cousins related to my great grandmother in Ipswich the next day. So I didn't get any chance to do any birdwatching on 15th and 16th June 2018, but I got to meet lots of my cousins and family and they were all lovely and really nice and I got such a welcome in both Baltimore and Ipswich. Because so many Irish people emigrated to the USA in the 1800s, I probably have more cousins in the USA than even Ireland and the UK put together.

I was staying with my Ipswich cousins in Great Neck in Ipswich, and the next morning on 17th June 2018 I had great views of the back garden of the house I was staying in and the Ipswich river estuary and the Crane Estate, and this is some of the best birdwatching habitat in the USA with over 300 possible species of birds visiting this area. 

The first bird I saw in the garden in Ipswich hopping around the lawn was a female American Robin and these birds move and behave like the European Blackbird.  The first new bird I saw was a Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) sitting on a flagpole in the garden, and during my stay in Ipswich I saw a lot of these little sparrows from trees and bushes and they are great little singers.  

They have a speckled breast often with a big blob in the middle of the chest and they are a rich brown colour and they are just joyful.

The next bird that appeared was a Common Grackle that also hopped around the lawn like the ones back in the town park in Dundalk, Baltimore and they are a lovely iridescent bird with blue shining off their shiny black feathers on their heads and necks, and pale eyes. 

And then a rabbit appeared feeding on the grass and clover in the garden, a furry lawnmower, and who needs robot lawnmowers when they have these inhabitants?  It was an Eastern Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus floridanus) and although these rabbits are a New World rabbit, they are not native to the New England region, which includes Massachusetts, and they are an introduced species and they now compete with the much rarer and native New England Cottontail Rabbit (Sylvilagus transitionalis).

And then another new bird species for me appeared and four Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) flew in to look for food on the lawn like a small flock of Starlings would.  Brown-headed Cowbirds are chunky birds, about the size of a European Starling with a heavier build.  And they have dark brown, almost black bodies with shiny, iridescent brown heads and thick, finch-like bills and they are quite curious birds and one flew up to the chimney above me to inspect me and my spotting scope set up on the balcony, and here are three of them on the bare branches of a bush.

Since they hung around the garden in a group, feeding like European Starlings and appearing quite sociable, I was surprised to find out that like cuckoos, they are a brood parasite and lay their eggs in other birds' nests to be raised by other birds.  A hen can lay up to 40 eggs in a season so they can be quite detrimental to other birds.  Suburban gardens and agriculture suit them and they were once a restricted species but have spread to become widespread around the US.

A male House Finch appeared in a tree and this one was so red, I almost thought it was a male Northern Cardinal when I spotted it with my eye, before getting my binoculars on it.

There was a female House Finch sitting on a nest in a terracotta flower pot on the house terrace below, and she was present throughout the family reunion party the day before. I wondered if the male House Finch could be her partner.

Here is a photo of a hen House Finch on a tree and the most likely confusion species is Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus) and female House and Purple finches look very similar, but the male Purple Finch does not have brown streaks on its belly, unlike the House Finch. Sadly I did not see any Purple Finches on this trip to the USA.

The next bird to appear was a male European House Sparrow and I had also seen these in New York and Baltimore, so these are definitely widespread on the Eastern side of the USA.  They seem to be doing better in the USA than where I live in Dublin, Ireland and I will be lucky to see any during the winter BWI Garden Bird Survey that I do in Dublin from December to February. 

I then turned my scope to the more distant Ipswich River Estuary and the Crane estate, and I could see a gull which looked most like to be a Herring Gull or Ringed-bill Gull and there was a Great Egret (Ardea alba egretta) and I could see the yellow bill in my scope.

And I could also see a flock of seven adult Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) on the other side of the estuary near the Crane estate.  

Back in the garden a flock of colourful American Goldfinches flew from bush to bush, and then I spotted another small bird briefly on a bare leafed branch and it was an Eastern Phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) and this is a type of flycatcher, and they pump or wag their tail which is long with a double-rounded end.

Later on in the day, I went for a walk with my cousins down to Pavilion Beach and on the way I saw Northern Mockingbird and Northern Cardinal sitting on wires.  Out at sea at Pavilion Beach I could see a Herring Gull swimming and then we started to walk towards Clarke Pond where there were more Canada Geese, and there were adults and juveniles swimming in the pond.

On the way back to the house, I saw a Mourning Dove on a wire and more Song Sparrows singing.  Back at my cousin's house when I looked out on the back garden again I saw a Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) and this is about the same size as a Common Grackle and it is pale grey with a black cap and a dark eye, and it appeared to be a shy, nervous bird staying close to the hedge and cover and not venturing to hop around the open lawn like a grackle.

The next day 18th June 2018, my Ipswich cousins took me on a day trip to see Salem, the famous town where witches were burnt at the stake.  We first took the Salem ferry to Boston where we went for lunch in a lovely restaurant called the Barking Crab where they serve very nice lobster, crab and clams and fresh seafood washed down with great beer.  Around two hundred years ago, lobster used to be prison food and the food of the poor, and was the staple food of prisoners in island prisons, in Boston and elsewhere around the US coast. 

On the ferry ride between Salem and Boston and back, we passed by Double-crested Cormorants, Great Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls flying, swimming at sea and sitting on large, rock islands.  

Back at Salem I saw Common Eider ducks (Somoteria mollissima) with chicks swimming around floating pallets in the water and they are always a nice bird to see. 

We then walked around Salem, taking in the history of the town and its old timber framed houses, and it is a lovely picturesque town steeped in history about trade as well as its dark history about its treatment of women accused of witchcraft.

More Birds - Fort McHenry and Lake Roland Park, Towson, Baltimore, Maryland

 

On Wednesday, 14th June 2018 I went with my cousin on a ferry tour to Fort McHenry in Baltimore, where the United States' national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner" was composed in 1812 after the Battle of Baltimore, where the people of Baltimore defended Baltimore from a naval attack by the British.  Our departure point was from a jetty in the Inner Harbour beside the luxurious Sagamore Pendry Hotel which many would recognise from the police TV series called "The Wire" set in Baltimore and fans would recognise the building as the police precinct in that series. 

It was a lovely sunny day and birds seen on the boat ride to Fort McHenry included Herring Gulls and a lot of Double-Crested Cormorants.  Fort McHenry was very interesting with a flag ceremony and a museum and video about the incredible story of this important place in United States history and I would highly recommend it and it is a lovely boat ride. 

At the Fort McHenry jetty, there were a few Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustico) flying around but there was also another brown hirundine on its own, and when it landed on a wire, I managed to get a few photos of it, albeit mainly of its back, and it was a Northern Rough-winged Swallow (Stelgidopteryx serripennis) which gets its name from little barbed hooks on its primary wing feathers, and the edge of its wings had a feathery dishevelled look, and this was another new bird for me. 

The main difference in appearance of the Northern Rough-winged Swallow from the most likely confusion species, the Bank Swallow (known as Sand Martin in Europe), is that it does not have a brown breast band like the Bank Swallow, and the Northern Rough-winged Swallow's chin and chest are a dirty white with mottled brown fading to a bright white belly, unlike the bright white colour on the chin and lower chest of the Bank Swallow.    

And Northern Rough-winged Swallows are not as sociable as other species of swallow like Bank Swallows or Barn Swallows, and tend to feed on their own and they do not nest in large colonies like Bank Swallows. They nest in holes like Bank Swallows, but they often nest in holes made by others, including man-made holes like pipes, and this may help them adapt and live alongside humans in man-made environments.  Bank Swallows are in trouble in the United States with diminishing ranges, but the Northern Rough-winged Swallows appear to be stable.

I had checked out of my hotel that morning as my cousin had invited me to stay in her place near Lake Roland in Towson, so we next headed north to Lake Roland.  On the way we stopped at a shop and while I was waiting in the car for my cousin, I pointed my binoculars up out of the open car window and I could see circling vultures very high overhead.  When I zoomed in on them with my zoom camera, I could see there was at least one Turkey Vulture and two Black Vultures (Coriagyps atratus) in the skies above me and the Black Vulture was another new bird for me.  

It was nice to see the Turkey Vulture again, and in flight this time and to be able to compare it alongside the Black Vultures and the Turkey Vulture has a wider wingspan than the Black Vulture with a distinct elbow and a longer tail.

We then arrived at Lake Roland Park which is 500 acres of woodland, wetlands and parkland around Lake Roland and it also contains a dog park called Paw Point Dog Park which I think is a great thing for dogs and their owners and it gives the dogs space away from the rest of nature in the park.  

We walked the boardwalk from the car park and the first animal we saw was a female White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus), also known as Virginia Deer which is native to the Americas and up until then the only wild mammals I had seen on my trip were grey squirrels in New York and Baltimore cities.

I then noticed a small bird moving in the trees and I was lucky to get one photo of it before it flitted off and disappeared from view, and it was a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (Polioptila caerulea) and that was another new bird tick for me.

Next I noticed a larger and more colourful bird on a tree and it was a Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) with a bright red nape and black and white patterned back and wings, and it really was a stunning looking bird.

At the end of the boardwalk we arrived at the Lake Roland Nature Center, and outside it was a sign giving a list of recently sighted birds in the park, and the two birds that I saw above were on it.

We walked on a little further until we crossed a little bridge over Jones Falls, a river that feeds into Lake Roland Dam on the lake and I could see some Mallard ducks on the river shore below and a couple of Barn Swallows in flight.  

We then turned back the way we came and we saw the doe alongside the boardwalk again and then another new bird for me, a rather punk rock looking Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) who was singing, and he was deep crimson red colour but his feathers looked worn.  Instead of an impressive crest, this bird looked like he had been scalped and left with a Mohican or Mowhawk hairstyle, and some of his Mohican/Mowhawk feathers looked purple or blue rather than red, adding to the punk rock effect.  It definitely looked like another bird had plucked his crest, whether that would have been another male in battle or he may have hen-pecked!

I must say that I really liked Lake Roland Park and it is the kind of place I could spend days exploring and birdwatching.

We left Lake Roland Park and headed to my cousin's home nearby, and one of her neighbours had a bird feeder up which was attracting some very nice birds, American Goldfinch (Carduelis tristis) and House Finch (Carpodacus mexicanus), which were two more ticks for me.    

I had a great day sight-seeing and enjoying nature and the great outdoors with my cousin and meeting her impossibly cute spaniel, and it was simply a wonderful day I will never forget.

Birds of Baltimore, Dundalk and Annapolis, Maryland, USA

I got up early on Monday, 11th June 2018 to check out of my hotel and catch a subway train from Long Island to Manhattan, and I cannot say thank you enough to all the kind and chivalrous gentlemen who helped me with my bag up and down the stairs in the subway stations, which did not have functioning elevators or escalators, you are simply the best.  

The Greyhound bus left the Port Authority Bus Station in Manhattan, New York at 9am and it arrived on time in Baltimore to the gleaming, new Haines Street bus station in Baltimore at 12.40pm and these bus stations were like airports for buses and very nice, and my one-way bus ticket only cost $13.50.  The journey was non-stop and very comfortable, and the bus was new with very comfortable, black leather seats, and it had wi-fi, but I didn't bother taking out my laptop, and I just enjoyed the fantastic scenery and countryside from New York to Baltimore.  A plane would have taken longer due to check-in times before flights and security, and the train trip was also longer due to stops at train stations along the way, and they were much more expensive. I got a taxi from the bus-station to my hotel in Downtown Baltimore near the Inner Harbour which only took a few minutes.

After checking in to my hotel, I walked down to the Inner Harbour and had lunch and went into Barnes & Noble to buy some American bird identification books and I opted for the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide To Birds of North America" by Edward S. Brinkley and National Geographic's "Backyard Guide to the Birds of North America" by Jonathan Alderer and Paul Hess, and the first book contained photos while the second one had drawings, and I reckoned between the two of them, I should be able to identify the birds I saw and photographed on my trip.

The first birds I saw in Baltimore were Old World feral pigeons, house sparrows, and mallard ducks on an artificial island in the Inner Harbour.  But when I looked out further to sea with my binoculars I got my first glimpses of a Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) in flight, another tick for me.  

The Double-crested Cormorant is the most widespread cormorant in North America and it is slightly smaller than the Great Cormorant, with an orange yellow gular skin which is rounded where it meets the throat plumage.

The next day, Tuesday 12th June 2018, I met one of my Baltimore cousins and we first drove to New Cathedral Cemetery in Baltimore where many of our relatives are buried. Like Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York it was a very nice haven for birds and one of the first birds I saw there was another Northern Mockingbird but it looked so different in bright sunlight to the bird I saw in cloudy conditions in Queens.

In the cemetery on the ground there was a Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura) and this was a very nice bird to see so close up, and every other one I saw on this trip was soaring in the distance overhead.  There was a very glossy American Crow also on the ground in the cemetery not too far from this vulture and it just looked so small compared to the Turkey Vulture.

After lunch in Baltimore, we then headed to Dundalk in Baltimore which was named after the town of Dundalk in Co. Louth, Ireland.  The centre of this Dundalk town was laid around a nice town park which had American Robins, Common Starlings sunning themselves on the grass, House Sparrows and a new bird for me, the Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscala), and they were hard to photograph as they were always on the move and they had lovely metallic blue black head plumage and I attach a photo of one I managed to photograph a few days later.

Back to American Robins, in Dundalk town park I saw a father feeding a chick under the bushes and I got a nice photo of them both. 

The next day on Wednesday 13th June 2018, my cousin and a friend and I drove to Annapolis to visit the Maryland State Public Records office there to look up some records, and to visit another cousin there.  Annapolis is beautiful and it is also on Chesapeake Bay, like Baltimore, and the US Naval Academy is there.  

After lunch with my Annapolis cousin, we all went for a walk around the Sycamore Point to Horn Point area of Annapolis, and it really was a lovely area beside Annapolis Harbour with lots of yacht marinas beside the sea.  A large bird of prey flew over, and a few minutes later when I looked out at the harbour there was an Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) perched at the end of an old boardwalk in the middle of the estuary.  I had seen Osprey before in Morocco, but they are always an impressive bird to see and I got lovely views of this one.

The next new bird for me was a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) which I saw seven minutes after the Osprey, sitting on a wire between houses and this was my eight new bird tick on this trip.

We said goodbye and thank you to my Annapolis cousin, and we headed back to Baltimore and I looked forward to the next day of seeing more of my cousins in Baltimore and seeing more new birds.

Birds of Long Island City, Queens in New York

In June 2018, I went on a little road trip holiday from Ireland to the USA, to meet new found cousins in Baltimore and Boston and go to a couple of family reunions, and to do some family history research and to retrace some of the steps that siblings and cousins of my ancestors had taken when they emigrated to the USA from Ireland.  

I brought my camera to record the places and people I was visiting on my holiday and I also took my binoculars and scope to do a little birdwatching along the way too.  I am going to limit this blog to the birdwatching side of my holiday, and create a little bird trip report to re-live that holiday in these pandemic times when international travel is not so easy, particularly for any birders who have never been to the USA.

I arrived in JFK Airport in New York on Saturday the 9th June 2018 and decided to stay in a hotel in Long Island City in Queens for a day so that I could check out Calvary Cemetery in Queens, where I knew a number of my grandparents cousins, who are sadly long-deceased, were buried. 

The next morning, on Sunday the 10th June 2018, I went for a walk near my hotel in the Queensbridge area in Long Island City, and the first birds I saw were ones that had been introduced to New York from the Old World,  including feral pigeons, house sparrows and starlings.  

While walking past the Queensbridge North Houses, which are six storey high brick apartment buildings that were built in the 1930s, with laid out green areas with mature trees, another pedestrian told me to keep an eye out for falcons and that he had often seen them.  It was an ideal place for Peregrine Falcons with the high rise apartment buildings and the large number of feral pigeons and starlings, and it is always great to meet another birdwatcher.  

Sadly I did not see any peregrines there but I did get my first views of a Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cederum) in amongst the trees growing in the grounds of the Queensbridge North Houses, which was a nice surprise in the middle of such a big city like New York and Queens.  I did not get a photo of that bird, but it was great to see it for the first time and it was a big tick for me.  I got photos and better views of Cedar Waxwings later on in my holiday when I was in Ipswich in Massachusetts and I attach a photo of one of those waxwings here:

On my way back to my hotel, I also got my first views of an American Crow on the roof of a building but it was too far away to get a good photo of it.  The day was now cloudy, and it started to rain so I headed back to the hotel and went for lunch nearby.

In the afternoon when the rain stopped, I headed on a walk to Calvary Cemetery on Queens Boulevard, but it was now a very dark and grey day for New York in the summer, and it was more like a day in Ireland.  When I reached Calvary Cemetery at around 3.30 pm, the sheer size of the cemetery suddenly hit me and I realised that I would not have enough time to fully explore it and find any of the graves of my relatives.  It covers 365 acres with over 3 million interments, and it is almost three times the size of Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin and is nearly half the size of Central Park in New York. 

There was a sign on the gate of the Queens Boulevard entrance that said it closed at 4.15 pm and the only other humans I could see were a couple of lads to the left of me drinking a few cans of beer, but the cemetery looked well maintained with green, mown grass and mature trees.  Like many cemeteries around the world it is an oasis of green space in the middle of the big city.  It was now about 3.45 pm and it was now cloudy and the light was poor, even though it was the middle of June.

Just inside the main entrance I could see there were starlings ahead of me on the ground and then I saw another bird, a woodpecker on the ground feeding and it was a female Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) which was another new bird for me.

I then saw my first American Robin (Turdus migratorius) hopping around the gravestones, a nice male and this bird would be the one I would see most frequently on this road trip holiday. It is a similar size and shape to the European Blackbird (Turdus merula) and this American Robin was behaving exactly like a Blackbird would in Ireland with similar movements and stance and they are closely related.

At that moment, a security man in a patrol car, who was patrolling the cemetery, then drove up and advised me that the cemetery was closing soon.  So I left and started to walk west and turned left into 50th Street and then turned right into 47th Avenue along the boundary of the cemetery, where I heard a bird calling quite loudly and vocally and it was my first views of a Northern Mockingbird (Mimus polyglottis) sitting and calling from a barb wire perch on the fence around the cemetery.

The light was very poor even though it was only just around 4.30 pm in the middle of June because of the heavy cloud, so the mockingbird looked like a dark grey bird with a prominent white wing bar, but I would see better views of this bird species in better light during my holiday.  This bird was the most vocal of the all the ones I saw on the trip and it was great to see it in the Big Apple on the edge of this cemetery oasis of nature.

I headed back to my hotel to get an early night's rest because the next day I was checking out and taking a Greyhound Bus from the Port Authority in Manhattan, New York to Baltimore.  I had opted for the bus as it was much cheaper and quicker than the other two options of train and plane, and the security protocols at airports have made planes a much slower option for relatively short journeys, and I could look out the windows at the scenery and possible passing birds on the bus.  My holiday was only beginning......