This year, though, one visitor from the north in particular has been present in abnormally high numbers – the majestic Snowy Owl.
While it is common for large numbers of juvenile Snowy Owls to wander south of the Canadian border in search of food, giving us a glimpse into the wonders of the Arctic, this year has been record-setting with the most sightings along the East Coast in decades. These beautiful white owls with their bright, piercing, lemon yellow eyes seem to be everywhere; from Napatree Point in Westerly to Beavertail State Park in Jamestown, from Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown to downtown Providence.
Although Snowy Owls are undoubtedly the stars of the avifaunal show this winter, numerous other interesting birds who breed as far north as the Arctic tundra are worthy of notice. To these birds Rhode Island is their Boca Raton.
A great diversity of sea ducks can be found in Rhode Island in the winter; Common Eiders and Scoters (Surf, Black, and White-winged) dive below the surface to pry shellfish off the rocks with their wedge-shaped bills; ornate Harlequin Ducks forage in the turbulent surf perhaps to remind themselves of the fast flowing rivers of Labrador where they will breed; further out, in rolling waves, Red-breasted Mergansers, Common Loon, Red-throated Loon, and Horned Grebe hunt for fish.
Several species of shorebirds who breed in the Arctic also spend the winter in Rhode Island. The bird which travels the furthest, from hundreds of miles past the Arctic Circle, is the Purple Sandpiper; a stout shorebird with only the subtlest hints of purple in its plumage. Another sandpiper of similar size and shape distinguished by a more drab appearance and a slightly larger, more drooping bill is the Dunlin. Both of these birds are commonly observed probing for invertebrates among the exposed seaweed at low tide on Rhode Island’s rocky shores, jetties, and breachways. Sanderlings, the most familiar of our winter shorebirds, are also found along rocky shores as well as on sandy beaches, scurrying in the advancing and retreating surf.
Rhode Island also provides the winter home for several species of songbirds that will be singing and breeding in the tundra and boreal forests of Canada in the spring. Open snow covered fields are the winter retreat of Tree Sparrows and flocks of Snow Buntings, while the dense foliage of conifer trees harbor Red and White-winged Crossbills and Common Redpolls.
So the next time you are out enjoying the single digit fresh air of the most recent Polar Vortex in pursuit of the charismatic Snowy Owl, remember to keep a safe distance to avoid stressing the birds, and don’t forget to keep an eye out for some of Rhode Island’s other winter visitors.
]]>Every autumn our coastal woodlands become flooded with small songbirds migrating south from their breeding habitat throughout New England and Canada. A large percentage of these birds are warblers from the Family Parulidae. Most of them look much different in their non-breeding plumages of the fall than they do in their breeding plumage. This identification challenge prompted the famous ornithologist Roger Tory Petersen to name the section devoted to these birds in his seminal A Field Guide to the Birds – “The Confusing Fall Warblers.”
This may be why it is not uncommon to see birders wandering around in a haze this time of year as if they just hitched a ride with a Bob Marley cover band on their way to the Ocean Mist. However, with a just little bit of insight the fog can be lifted. One of the keys is to focus on body shape and bill shape, which although subtle are different between genera. While plumages change from season to season, these characteristics do not.
Another trick is that 75% of these birds are Yellow-rumped Warblers. Overall these birds are somewhat drab in non-breeding plumage with splashes of yellow on their sides as well as on their rumps. Uniquely adapted to survive on dry wax myrtle and bay berries, Yellow-rumps stay in RI throughout the fall and winter while most other warblers need to migrate to central and South America in search of food as insects disappear from the north. I have seen Yellow-rumped Warblers along the dunes at Moonstone Beach in the middle of February.
If you’ve eliminated Yellow-rumped Warbler the next most likely bird flitting about the falling leaves is the Blackpoll Warbler . These birds stage in large numbers along the coast storing up energy in the form of fat reserves with a goal of doubling their body weight. One study of a Black-throated Blue Warbler preparing for spring migration found these birds eat the human equivalent of 20 cheeseburgers a day for a month. A similar massive eating effort enables Blackpoll Warblers to fly back to the rain forests of South America in one non-stop journey that can take up to 90 hours and reach flying altitudes of up to 20,000 feet. Remember this is a bird that weighs 13 grams or a half an ounce. This would be like a 165 pound man flying 18,480,000 miles or back and forth to the moon 36 times. There is no way I could do that, even if I ate 20 cheeseburgers a day for a month. Maybe you could, but not me.
The real fun begins when we see birds that are not one of these two common species. One of the tricks to finding these less common species is to keep an eye on the weather. Migratory birds generally will time their flights so that they are aided by the prevailing winds. So larger number of fall migrants can often be found on days when a high pressure cold front with winds from the north passes through. This is when we are more likely to see birds such as the Palm Warbler, Northern Parula, American Redstart, Common Yellowthroat, Magnolia Warbler, Nashville Warbler, Wilson’s Warbler, Black-and-white Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler or Black-throated Green Warbler.
]]>It’s more than a mile and a half from anything other than salt water, in any direction, and there are no roads you can take to get there and there aren’t even any footpaths once you get here. The only way to get here other than a boat is to swim.
This beautifully lonely beach on the back side of this protected cove on tiny uninhabited island Hope Island in the middle of Narragansett Bay.
Hope Island is smaller than a football field and equally as far from Quonset Point as it is from Prudence Island. There’s nothing on it, other than some coastal vegetation and birds. Lots of birds. It’s as thik with gulls and egrets and ibises and heron as anywhere else in the state is with people.
Preferring the company of the former on weekends, I took my kayak over from a public beach in the Quonset/Davisville neighborhood Sunday morning, having always wondered about that all-too-inviting swimming hole on its southern side.
Legend has it there’s an old abandoned farm site on the northern side of the island that no one knows too much about and, like almost every rock that stays dry at high tide in Narragansett Bay, there was once a military presence on it.
These days it’s not only uninhabited, people aren’t even allowed there from April through mid-August. I found this out from the North Kingstown harbormaster who paid me a visit after I had breakfast and a swim at this beach.
Along with Dyer, Patience and parts of Prudence, Hope Island is a part of the federally protected, and monitored, Narragansett Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Hope Island is the only island in the Reserve to be seasonally restricted to people, maybe the only publicly-owned island in Narragansett Bay. With good reason. It may be small, but it’s one of the most important nesting grounds for wading birds in the state.
Just listen to all the birds in this video from the eastern side of the island.
In the winter, it’s a really popular spot for the seals. Rocky, deep water and no humans; what more could a seal want. And you wouldn’t know it from these two pictures, but it’s known as hot spot for stripers in the summer. I think this is around where they say some of the last lobsters in the Bay are left.
In both pictures, that’s Jamestown straight ahead, and you can see the bridges on either side of the land mass.
And this is the beach where I returned to the mainland…