Tweets for Tweets (5): My Favorite Bird Photos of H2 2021

Double-crested Cormorant, drying out

The second half of 2021 has been a blur. Are we in the fourth or fifth spike of COVID? Did I get my booster shot? Where have I (already) lost my (replacement) vaccination card? 

And did someone get married? 

As my cousin Matt Mitchell pointed out, there are ten letters between Delta and Omicron in the Greek alphabet. What haven't we been told?

Apart from the pandemic, the world seems to have become a very odd place. There's Billie Eilish, for example, who, hard as I try, I don't get. I'm sure that means I'm like the classical music fan in 1920 who didn't get jazz, or the jazz fan in 1950 who didn't get rock, but I cannot lie. I wish her well and am happy for her success, but I don't get her. At all.

I've also been following the rapid emergence of the metaverse, which is not only puzzling but exhausting. In the first week of December, someone spent $450,000 for a plot of virtual land next door to Snoop Dogg's mansion in the "Snoopverse" section of a metaverse world called The Sandbox. For the week, metaverse virtual land sales topped $100 million.

That is not Monopoly money.

Then there's the article that made the full-throated case that if Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse doesn't allow its avatars to have sex, it will fail. I learned many, many (many) new things from this article, most of which I will not print here. But, it turns out, Second Life residents were making genitalia for their avatars before the game got out of beta. So, the theory goes, Facebook must allow the same kind of creativity if it wants to succeed in this brave, new virtual world. 

If we've learned anything about Mark Zuckerberg's priorities in the last twenty years, then you can count on his metaverse hosting a booming teen market for genitalia, all while he's testifying before Congress promising that he'll do better next time. 

I am imagining the day when I have the opportunity to pay hard-earned cryptocurrency to purchase a non-fungible token that allows my avatar to attend a concert of Billie Eilish's avatar in a Mark Zuckerberg-metaverse amphitheater. I can promise you that such an opportunity will make my avatar's teeth hurt.

For sanctuary, there are always birds, right? I turned to the woods and Mother Nature when he-who-shall-not-be-named ruined social media. Cedar Waxwing and Harlequin Duck were one way to escape Twitter, to trade "tweets for tweets." Except, you many know, there is a Birds Aren't Real movement. It's intended to mock fake news and conspiracy theories, the idea that birds are drones full of surveillance equipment wired to the Deep State. But, of course, some of the people caught up in the movement don't realize it's a mockery. 

The last five years have taught us that something like 30% of Americans will. believe. anything.

Fortunately for us, birds are real. They're suffering under climate change and loss of habitat, but they're hanging in and getting support from great organizations like Mass Audubon.

And, of course, they're beautiful.

Here's my recap of some of the birds I spotted in the second half of 2021.

My two birding excursions in H2 2021 were with Mass Audubon. One was to Monhegan Island and the other found us birding in and around Machias, Maine, with a cruise to the Petit Manan wildlife refuge. This little Savanannah Sparrow was dining not far from where I was dining at a Dunkin Donuts in Machias. I stumbled by, coffee in one hand and camera in the other. The early bird not only gets the worm, it gets almost anything else it wants to eat.

We were fortunate to find Puffins on our cruise to the Petit Manan island refuge, not far from the Canadian border. My recent issue of Bird Observer discusses two observations of Puffins using sticks to scratch their feathers. There's plenty of pushback and counter-theories, but you may be looking at one smart species. Certainly a striking one.

For you conspiracy theorists, this is another Puffin that's wandered a little closer to land. Undoubtedly, it's full of surveillance electronics planted by the Deep State to one day force American drivers to wear seatbelts. In fact, it seems inevitable that our government will one day require patients to get prescriptions and hunters to wear orange in the woods. This Puffin is proof that birds aren't real and that we are living a national nightmare. But I like him, anyway.

For you 30%, I was being facetious a minute ago. Really.
This is a lovely Cedar Waxwing standing guard over his preferred food supply. It's nice when you're provided a built-in mask.

This Greater Yellowlegs was dining on Plum Island, one of the great birding locations in America. This is the rare species whose name is actually helpful in identifying it.

This Northern Cardinal was sitting in my backyard in Boxford. Think of Cardinals as the mercury in a thermometer, moving northward with global warming. I am told by experienced birders that Cardinals were an uncommon visitor in Massachusetts 25 years ago. Now, they are everywhere.

This Great Egret was hanging with the Greater Yellowlegs on Plum Island.

This is a Least Sandpiper, a name that would give any lesser species a complex. (I once met a Lester Small, introduced to me as "Hi, I"m Les Small." I wanted to immediately reassure him that everything would be ok, anyway.)

This is an American Robin from an angle that shows off his white eye ring and his lunch selection.

I met this Red-tailed Hawk at Lowell Cemetery, one of my favorite birding locations. Garden cemeteries like Lowell and Mount Auburn are interesting venues even when the birds are quiet. Lowell is the home, for example, of Dr. Augustin Thompson, inventor of Moxie.

This Yellow-rumped Warbler stuck around into the fall, just to remind us what real yellow looks like. 

Canada Geese. At our last home, we had two beagles and a pond in the backyard. In the years that Canada Geese chose our pond to raise their young, Brandy and Shiloh would spend the summers rolling in geese poop. I have a special place in my heart for Canada Geese. And beagles.

This is the resident Red-tail Hawk at Audubon's Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, surveying his domain. Hard to find a nicer place on earth, and he knows it.

This Northern Flicker lives, with his mate, at our local Christmas tree farm.

As does this House Finch.

As does this Eastern Bluebird. There's nothing I hate more than the week after Thanksgiving when the local Christmas tree farm is decimated and the birds are evicted. They'll be back, but it can't be much fun to have your world uprooted every year.

I almost walked into this Turkey Vulture, which was on the ground but flew into a nearby tree. Either I smelled especially ripe that day, or I had interrupted his feeding on some vile carcass. He wasn't budging.

This Northern Harrier was sunning at Salisbury State Beach Reservation, a great place to bird--until the hunters drive you out. 

I took this shot seconds later and a hundred yards away. Except for maybe the Cowbird, few species are despised more than the European Starling--who wouldn't even be in America if we hadn't introduced them. This little gang blended in with their food.

These Snow Bunting have some kind of internal timer that has them feed for a while in a particular spot, suddenly fly around in big circles, and then, like little boomerangs, return to the same spot. It makes taking their pictures possible, so long as you are patient.

This little Carolina Wren and mate will live just outside my study window all winter. I think they nest under the porch. I put a little hot suet in the tree--stuff the squirrels and raccoon won't abscond with--and the Wren share it with the Bluejays and Juncos.  And they sing at the tops of their voices. It makes me laugh out loud. Sometimes I see a little beak poking over my windowpane, one of the Wrens saying hello and making sure I'm working.

Yes, the male of the species. How could you tell?

Another European Starling. I took this picture on our pre-dinner Thanksgiving walk in Middletown, CT. But, you can find Starling everywhere.

No, not birds. Just my buddies at Salisbury State Beach, posing in repose.

I am pretty sure that the world will not run out of Grey Catbirds anytime soon.

Harlequin Duck are masters of the waves. She's outnumbered 3-to-1, but she's got the lead. I took this picture at Halibut Point State Park in Rockport, home to the former Babson Farm Quarry. Granite from this location is in warehouses and memorials all over America and even paves the streets of Havanna.

A shot of the quarry with the Atlantic behind.

I will not even hint at which male celebrity this Bobolink most resembles.

This is an Upland Sandpiper, taken on one of my Maine excursions. It's a species listed as somewhat infrequent and in decline in the East. I felt lucky to get this picture.

Our Audubon group spotted this Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in Maine. It's a good view of how the species feeds. 

Finally, an American Eagle, spotted in New Hampshire, just a bit beyond the range of my camera. A blurry eagle is a fitting way to end a blurry year. Some days I worry about climate change, some days about the death of American democracy. Some days I worry that 30% of Americas think that birds might be Deep State drones bearing surveillance equipment. Worrying about the American Eagle conveniently combines all of my worries in one place.

Onward to 2022.