After a good day of birding on Plum Island, I stop by Joppa Flats around 5 pm. The tide is low, and many birds are scattered across the flats of Newburyport Harbor. I admire a group of bonaparte’s gulls, some of which have fully developed black hoods for the breeding season! Also on the flats are common terns, black-bellied plovers, short-billed dowitchers, assorted peeps and quite a few brant.
Sketchbook page, 9″ x 12″
I’m intrigued by the shapes of the brant as they waddle across the flats and peck at morsels here and there. Being birds of the coast, I don’t see them nearly as often as Canada Geese, and only a few times before have I had good opportunities to observe them out of water.
Sketchbook page, 9″ x 12″
These studies would be fun to work with in a larger composition – maybe a project for this winter in the studio!
This is from a series of posts by MABA resident artist Barry Van Dusen
Eagle Lake Wildlife Sanctuary, Holden, MA on May 11, 2015
It’s a warm, humid morning at Eagle Lake Wildlife Sanctuary in Holden. From the trailhead (as I’m applying bug repellent and sunscreen), I can hear black-throated blue, black-throated green and pine warblers, ovenbirds, a scarlet tanager and a red-eyed vireo.
Black-throated Blue in Birch, in Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook, 9″ x 12″
As I hike in along the Appleton Loop Trail, it becomes obvious that black-throated blues are the most abundant warblers at this site. Every quarter mile or so, I encounter another BTB singing from the sweet birches that arch above the mountain laurel thickets.
Black-throated Blue in Song, watercolor on Arches Fidelis (en tout cas), 9″ x 8.5″
Pausing along the trail, a female Black-throated Blue circles and scolds me – I must be near a nest, so I move on…
sketchbook study, 3″ x 5″
Crossing over Asnebumskit brook on the pipeline right-of-way, I notice that the streambed is looking quite dry for early May. It’s been an exceptionally dry spring so far.
The Asnebumskit Loop Trail skirts down along the stream, and as I near the area where the brook flows into Eagle Lake, I hear the distinctive notes of a blue-gray gnatcatcher (Peterson used the word “peevish” – the perfect adjective to describe their voice!)
field sketchbook page, 9″ x 12″
The small plot of forest here has the feeling of a wet bottomland – just the right habitat for these birds. Sure enough, the pair is building a nest high in a red maple branch directly over the water! I watch as one member of the pair gathers the sticky webbing from a caterpillar nest and takes it to the nest site.
Gnatcatcher in red Maple, in Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook, 9″ x 12″
On my way out of the Sanctuary, I park my car and stroll out onto the causeway between Stump Pond and Eagle Lake. It’s a pleasant spot, and I admire the soft colors of the early spring foliage across the water. Looking down, I see sunfish guarding nests in the shallow water along the shoreline. The red spot on their gill covers identifies them as pumpkinseeds. The males are in bright, breeding colors – their fin margins (which they wave like fan dancers) are a striking aqua blue!
This is from a series of posts by MABA resident artist Barry Van Dusen
Lake Wampanoag Wildlife Sanctuary, Gardner, MA on May 4th, 2015
Yellow-rumped Warbler and Red Maple Flowers, watercolor on Arches 140 lb cold-press paper, 10.25″ x 14″
If I had to pick out two iconic species to represent early spring in Central Massachusetts, I’d be hard pressed to do better than yellow-rumped warbler and red maple. Today the “butterbutts” were murmuring all along the trails at Lake Wampanoag Wildlife Sanctuary in Gardner. The red maple was in full bloom, adding gauzy golden and carmine washes to the landscape. I’m told that the smaller deep red flowers are male, and the larger orangey or yellowish blossoms are females, with both sexes often occurring on the same tree.
Myrtle Warbler Study, watercolor and pencil in Stillman & Birn Delta sketchbook, 9″ x 12″
The woods along theMoosewood Trail at Wampanoag have a distinctly Northern feel, with patches of balsam fir and spruce mixed in with the red maples and hemlocks. It’s an unusual forest community for Central Massachusetts. I paused along the trail to draw a red spruce trunk heavily worked over by a pileated woodpecker.
The square-sided excavations were recently made, with fresh wood chips littering the forest floor beneath the tree. Black-throated Green warblers buzzed overhead, and the staccato song of a Northern Waterthrush drifted up from the pond shore.
“The heron stands in water where the swamp
Has deepened to the blackness of a pool,
Or balances with one leg on a hump
Or marsh grass heaped above a muskrat hole.”
Theodore Roethke, “The Heron”
Great blue herons are the largest and most widely distributed heron in Massachusetts and Eastern US. Great blue herons are wading birds in the order Pelicaniformes and in the family Ardeidae, which consists of bitterns, herons, and egrets in the United States.
Nesting: Herons nest in rookeries, specifically in the tops of tall dead trees located in swampy habitat, which Barry captured in his watercolors. In Massachusetts, many rookeries are the result beaver dams that have flooded areas, creating swamps or small ponds, killing trees. Nests are made out of sticks that form platforms and are lined with leaves, moss, pine needles, and other leaf material. Check out the video below to learn more.
Feeding: Herons are one of the top predators in many aquatic ecosystems and play an extremely important role in the aquatic food web. Their diet consists primarily of fish, using their spear-like beak to pierce their prey and swallow it whole. In addition, herons will also hunt for frogs, salamanders, snakes, rodents, other small mammals, crustaceans like crabs, small birds, and other small animals.
Population declines in the 19th and 20th century: Their status as a top predator also made them extremely susceptible to widespread pollution and played a large role in their dramatic population declines in the early and mid 20th century. Because herons eat other aquatic predators, which eat plants rich with toxins, including by-products of now banned DDT and PCBS, herons would ingest large quantities of pollutants which had dramatic negative effects on their reproduction. This process is called bio-accumulation.
Are herons aquatic gardeners? Yes…but indirectly.
Herons can change the types of plants and animals present in a sea grass ecosystem. Herons eat lots of fish, especially in the spring and early summer. When herons eat lots of fish, there are less fish present to eat other aquatic invertebrates, which eat the sea grass, these little critters are called amphipods. More herons, less fish, more amphipods, less sea grass. When herons were excluded from the aquatic system, more fish are present and they eat lots of aquatic invertebrates, specifically really important invertebrates call amphipods, and the entire system changes to a shrimp dominated system and the plant community changes. Learn more about this study by Huang et al. (2015).
A few delightful comments on the great blue heron from the late 19th century:
How do great blue herons do in a Massachusetts winter:
“In such an event they (great blue heron) might survive the following winter if it should prove to be a mild one, while the stoutest heart among them would probably succumb to the rigors of a genuine ‘old-fashioned’ New England winter.” Walter Faxon, MCZ, Cambridge, Massachusetts
“The Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) is a bird that rarely favors us with his presence in the winter months. It may be worth while, then, to chronicle the capture of one in the Arnold Arboretum, West Roxbury, Mass., either December 31, 1889, or January 1, 1890. A tub of water stocked with minnows served to keep him alive for five or six days, when he suddenly died either from cold or the enervating effects of imprisonment.” Walter Faxon, MCZ, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Source: The Long-Billed Marsh Wren, Maryland Yellow-Throat, Nashville Warbler and Great Blue Heron in Eastern Massachusetts in Winter Author(s): Walter Faxon, The Auk, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Oct., 1890), pp. 408-410
