A longtime friend of mine loves to say, “It’s all about the food.” He says this about life in general or about just about anything else. This time of year and these icy conditions make this literally true for virtually all of the avian population. It’s true the rest of the year as well, but in other seasons finding food competes with singing, displaying, attracting and competing for a mate, mating, nest building, territory defense, child rearing, evading predators, molting feathers and migrating. Right now, in mid winter, it is really all about the food.

The most obvious places to see this are at people’s bird feeders. With substantial snow cover, the bird traffic at feeders picks up in volume, intensity and variety. Often, when it’s cold enough for the snow to build up on the ground and deny many land birds access to food, there is also ice covering much of the water surfaces of estuaries, coves, tidal ponds and protected harbors. This results in congregations of waterfowl, which are concentrated by the shrinking of available open water in their customary habitats or by the complete freeze-over of freshwater resources. While the snow and ice make it tougher on the birds, they also make for fun birding and at times produce species that we are unaccustomed to seeing.

There are plenty of atypical species to be on the alert for during these darker, grayer, colder months, whether it’s an oriole, which we think of as a summertime visitor, that is coming to a feeder in February, or a hard-to-find duck species that shows up on the ocean’s edge, when we know it always prefers fresh water.

Water gets more scarce for mute swans this time of year. — Lanny McDowell

Birders are fond of emphasizing that knowing your common local birds will help you find the uncommon ones. This is often true. While you can’t easily practice observing the unusual species, you can familiarize yourself with the more probable vagrants by spending time with your nose in a bird book or online.

To up your birding game during the winter doldrums, consider these possibilities for unusual winter species, most of which have been seen on the Vineyard at one time or another. Like many northern owl species, finches are often irruptive in winter. This is especially true of finches that depend on the variable crops of northern deciduous and coniferous trees. This group includes redpolls, pine siskins and the two crossbill species. Are you in the habit of carefully looking over the birds coming to your feeder, just in case one of these occasional finch visitors has shown up? Well, you probably are. Would you notice the visiting swamp sparrow or the fox sparrow on the ground below your feeder after a fresh snowfall? It is likely you would. But can you pick a Bohemian waxwing out of a flock of cedar waxwings? Would you check a wintering mockingbird to be sure it’s not a northern shrike? The colors, patterns, size and habitat are quite similar. You might have five species of woodpecker around your neighborhood this time of year, including northern flicker. Can you easily distinguish between a downy and a hairy; and can you tell their calls apart? How likely would it be for you to recognize a goshawk, when you are used to seeing Cooper’s hawks? Is that northern Harrier way down the beach, flying sort of like a butterfly, definitely not a short-eared owl? Is the familiar red-tailed hawk, hovering over a field, actually a rough-legged hawk? What about alcids?

Don’t we pretty much assume that any we see buzzing along over the ocean are razorbills, when it could be either of the murres? Do you check for Iceland and glaucous when there is a group of gulls hunkered down, waiting out a storm, or for a black-headed gull among the Bonaparte’s? Can you pick out a black-legged kittiwake on the wing? What about ducks? The scaup species are tough, but what about ring-necked ducks and tufted ducks too? Do you know the difference between female common and red-breasted mergansers? Would you notice a Barrow’s goldeneye in with the common goldeneyes? Have you ever looked through rafts of common eiders, searching for that elusive king eider? Would you miss a female pintail in with the other dabbling ducks? What about telling an eared grebe from a horned grebe this time of year? How about a Pacific loon? I’ve seen only one here, but it was from the ferry, just beyond the outer harbor of Vineyard Haven. I admit, that was on a tip from a friend, so I was looking intently at every loon in sight. But you get the drift. You have to work a little harder at winter birding, but there are plenty of rewards to be earned.

Bird Sightings

There were two outstanding sightings this last week. One was a Lapland longspur that was mixed in with a flock of 14 horned larks on one of the snow-free farm fields of Katama. The second and more exceptional find was a red-shouldered hawk, which is quite rare for the Island at any time of the year. While this species is not uncommon in mainland New England during the breeding season, it is considered more of a southern hawk and comes as a surprise find this time of year, especially over here. Ken Magnuson found and photographed an adult (it should know better!) at Katama on Feb. 10.

The most prevalent species reported was eastern towhee, as many observers had them coming to their feeders after the big snowfall. Cathy Minkiewicz, Sally and Peter Cook, Joanie Ames, and Nelson Smith all had a male or a female or both, as did Matt Pelikan at The Nature Conservancy office; Penny Uhlendorf had a couple; Beth Mayhew had three; and Allan Keith had five. In Chilmark the Cooks had a bunch of feeder birds, including two Carolina wrens and a single white-throated sparrow. Rob Culbert writes that he had fish crows flying over his home in Vineyard Haven on Feb. 5, making quite a racket.

Gus Ben David reported that he has a recent pine warbler arrival at his feeders and that he has counted up to 45 bluebirds at his home, with a regular crew of 12 to 15 birds which have adapted to be fond of suet. As Gus was reporting his sightings on the phone, he was watching a male adult peregrine falcon pluck one of his white racing pigeons. He commented that the other pigeons, under the circumstances, would certainly stay aloft the entire day, maintaining altitude until just before dark. If you are a pigeon, you really do not want to let a peregrine get above you.

Posted to the Martha’s Vineyard Bird Alert group at Facebook were the following sightings of interest: Sharon Pearson noticed that mixed in with the big flock of starlings at the Katama airport were some meadowlarks, great birds to see against the snow; Sharon also posted a photo of both a red-bellied woodpecker and a yellow-bellied sapsucker (in one frame) at her suet holder. Both Gretchen Regan and Helen Mickelson mentioned large flocks of robins, up to 50. Sue Hruby was surprised by a hen mallard that dropped in to inspect her feeder. Jaqueline Cromwell and William Waterway posted photos of northern cardinals. Ali Mead found an eastern bluebird to photograph on the sixth up in Chilmark.

The most diverse group of land bird photos came from Charlie Kernick’s backyard. He had nice shots on February third of a determined sharp-shinned hawk, plus a ruby-crowned kinglet, a sapsucker and a brown creeper.

As might be expected there were many shots of duck species, in part because of the convenient concentrations resulting from freeze-overs. In Vineyard Haven harbor there were scoters, surf and black, feeding and snoozing in close to shore. The Lagoon south of the drawbridge had a pair of horned grebes and 300 to 400 scaup ducks by rough count. Oak Bluffs harbor and the jetties had quite a variety of diving ducks. Jeff Bernier got close greater scaup and common eider shots, along with a series of hooded merganser photos, one of a drake holding a small crab in its bill. Ken Magnuson also had some very active hoody shots from Menemsha Pond. He found a Merlin at Katama around sunrise on the seventh; and Christy Edwards photographed one sitting on a steel post on the fourth. Christy continues to find cooperative snowy owls to photograph, again out at Katama. Red-breasted mergansers were well represented in the photo collection, with submissions from Natalie Woodruff and Sharon Simonin, who took a whole series of a drake red-breasted merg in Oak Bluffs harbor, working hard to swallow a good-sized eel.

Lanny McDowell paints pictures, some of birds, and takes many, many photographs of birds. Have a look at LannyMcDowellArt.com. He also administers the Martha’s Vineyard Bird Alert and Vineyard Rare Bird Alert groups on Facebook.