Saturday is the 60th annual Martha’s Vineyard Christmas Bird Count, a tradition that became an annual event in 1960. If you are reading this on Friday or Saturday, please fill your bird feeders now. And submit a feeder count by going to Biodiversity Works and follow the link for feeder count participant instructions. It’s easy to do. Our goal is to count all the birds that we can find, so your participation is important. Just about every year feeder counts add a species that the field observers could not find.

Veteran feeder counters, please note that the new phone number to call is 1-800- 690-0993 extension 0 to report your data (not Felix Neck this year). Or email your data sheet to mvbirdcount@gmail.com by 4 p.m. so your data can be entered and included in the tally results.

Bird Sightings

It is gratifying to get responses from a previous week’s column. Last week I pointed out the relative scarcity of waterbirds reported. Joyce and Hugh McCormick emailed to report finding black bellied plover, black duck, brant, bufflehead, common eider, common loon, common goldeneye, dunlin, hooded merganser, and sanderling as they toured Norton Point and Cape Pogue on Dec. 21-22.

Waterbirds tend to be among the last to arrive as they may stay north until they are forced southward by freezing water. This week is mostly news of waterbirds.

Sheriff’s Meadow Sanctuary is one of the go-to places to find unusual ducks mixed in with the mallard. On Dec. 28 Jeff Bernier found a female common merganser mixed in with a few of the much more common red-breasted mergansers. The females of the two species are very similar and hard to distinguish; the sharp dividing line between the reddish-brown head and the white neck is best field mark for the common merganser.

Also that day, Lanny McDowell found the first-of-the season razorbills from the Steamship Authority; they were halfway from Vineyard Haven to Woods Hole. He also spotted a flock of long-tailed ducks just outside Woods Hole harbor.

And that day Sharon Simonin spotted a small flock of hooded mergansers that were chasing each other and otherwise strutting their stuff. She also spotted a surf scoter in the Oak Bluffs harbor on Christmas Day.

Sarah Mayhew visited the pond at Tiasquam Valley Reservation South on Dec. 27 and found a drake northern pintail and a gadwall along with the mallard. She also reports two cedar waxwings in her yard on Dec. 24.

Lisa Maxfield spotted a lone greater scaup on Brush Pond on Dec. 26, undoubtedly part of the larger flock that usually spends the winter on Lagoon Pond.

Also arriving this past week were common goldeneye. Lanny McDowell found three of them off East Chop on Dec. 22.

Ruddy turnstones are a shorebird that is common on their southward migration in the late summer and the fall; they also can linger into the early winter. Manoli Strecker found one of these late individuals at Little Beach on Dec. 23,

Bald eagles are still in the news. Martha Moore notes that one was still hanging out at Long Point on Dec. 26-27. Martha Cottle saw an adult bald eagle fly by on lower Chilmark Pond at noon on Dec. 25, making a nice Christmas gift as she had never seen a wild one before. To top it off, it was carrying a fish in its talons.

This week there is a smattering of songbird sightings to report. Sarah Mayhew and Kath MayWaite both report field sparrows, the former at the Chilmark overlook on Dec. 27, and the latter at the Oak Bluffs pumping station. Also at the pumping station were American wigeon, and nine black-crowned night-herons.

Last but not least, a flock of dark-eyed juncos and three northern flickers showed up at my feeders on Dec. 24, although neither species has showed up since then.

Happy New Year!

Please report your sightings to birds@mvgazette.com.

Robert Culbert is an ecological consultant with Nature Watch LLC living in Vineyard Haven.