first Hooksett disk sighting of the season (delayed post)

April 27, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Sumatra Mandehling
Bird of the Day: piping plover
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: a Hooksett disk
Coast Guard Assets: 1 Jayhawk helicopter
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge: 34 pairs, 1 loner, 0 nests. Sandy Point: 7 pairs, 0 nests. Town Beach: 3 pairs, 0 nests. Number actually seen by me: 2.

Looking South

Horseshoe crab shells of all different sizes were everywhere: beach, dunes, boardwalk, parking lot ... just all over the place. I thought the big season for horseshoe crab molting was July and August so it seemed a bit strange. They come ashore to mate in the spring but I don't think there's molting associated with that. I guess I need to consult some horseshoe crab reference materials.

Huge Horseshoe Crab Shell

I found a Hooksett disk in the wrack line. It was the first one I've found this year. I can't believe I'm still finding them after 7 years!  The incident at the Hooksett waste water treatment plant was in 2011! I guess with 4 million of them, it's going to take decades to find them all. The Blue Ocean Society is still keeping track of where they're washing up.

Pieces of Horseshoe Crab Shells in the Wrack

The best part of today was that I finally saw piping plovers at the northern end of the beach. Two of them were hanging out together. I didn't see any mating behavior but they did seem to be scouting out scrape locations. Maybe there' will be a nest on this end of the beach this year after all.

Pine Cone

In other interesting wrack line news, there were a lot of pine cones in the wrack. It's amazing how much the wrack line reveals not just about what grows in the Great Marsh, but also what grows upriver along the Merrimack.

Had my first northern gannet sighting of the season and my first Coast Guard helicopter sighting of the season too.

not on duty but birding at the refuge anyway (delayed post)

April 20, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Ethiopian Harrar
Bird of the Day: peregrine falcon
Weird Wrack Item of the Week:  all the usual stuff, nothing particularly weird
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge: 26 pairs, 10 loners, 0 nests. Sandy Point: 6 pairs, 0 nests. Town Beach: 3 pairs, 0 nests. Number actually seen by me: 2 at Sandy Point.

View from the Lot 1 Boardwalk

I was not on the schedule for today so I took advantage of the free time to do some birding. Not having seen a piping plover yet this season was getting to me, so I headed down to Sandy Point where they're fairly visible. Sure enough, I heard the peep-lo call and saw two of them in flight. Ran into another plover warden (also not on duty today but in search of his first sight of them this year also) and we compared notes on how little appropriate nesting habitat was left on the northern end of the refuge after the winter.

Driftwood and Beach Grass at Sandy Point

I took my time birding along the road back to the entrance from Sandy Point. I saw a number of turkeys, some of them in the middle of the road, a lone northern flicker, a bunch of turkey vultures and several northern harriers, but the best sighting was peregrine falcon over the dunes.  Raptor migration is definitely underway. There was a group of hawk watchers at Lot. They told me they'd seen a lot of northern harriers including a "gray ghost" (the adult male northern harrier). I was disappointed to have missed that one because that's an impressive sight.

Rocks in the Dunes at Sandy Point

lots of semipalmated sandpipers (delayed post)

April 13, 2018
Coffee of the Day: Tanzania Peaberry
Bird of the Day: semipalmated sandpiper
Weird Wrack Item of the Week: semi-deflated basketball
Invisi-bird Status: Refuge: 22 pairs, 8 loners, 0 nests. Sandy Point: 25 individuals, 0 nests. Town Beach: zero. Number actually seen by me: zero.

Looking South from the Refuge Boundary

It was a pretty quiet shift -- not a lot of visitors. Didn't see any piping plovers. Big waves washed ashore lots and lots of wrack, more grasses than seaweed though. There had been a hatch of those little flies that live in the wrack line and the tree swallows were having a great time catching them. Things like that always remind me that the wrack line is a whole mini-ecosystem within the beach ecosystem. There's so much going on there.

Big Waves and Lots of Wrack

The weird wrack item of the week was a partially deflated basketball just south of the boundary of the closed area.

Weird Wrack Item of the Week

A flock of about 30 semipalmated sandpipers landed along the water line. They hung out there for awhile. They are the first ones I've seen this year, so they're definitely my bird of the day.

Clam Shells