Last February the talk was of the lack of red-breasted mergansers. You remember don’t you, sitting at the kitchen table in a dull funk, recalling how hundreds of them used to make Sengekontacket Pond their home. This year only a handful were spotted.
The plight of the mighty mergansers wore on you until you remembered the thick-billed murre found on the Vineyard last January. It was wandering by the side of the Edgartown-West Tisbury Road, most likely blown of course by a big storm. The murre is a great swimmer but not much of a flier. To get airborne at all it must first run across the surface of the water to build up momentum. The murre makes landfall only to raise a family, usually in a high cliff where takeoffs amount to simply stepping off a ledge.
Although it possessed no thumbs, the murre was definitely hitching a ride to a high cliff or body of water big enough for takeoff. Julie Verost and Scott Hershowitz found the bird, called Felix Neck about what to do and gave it a ride to Deep Bottom Pond, a nearby body of water big enough for a runway.
The thick-billed murre success story brought back a smile, just as later in the year the white winged dove sightings would have you smiling and singing the entire Stevie Nicks catalogue in front of a heavy duty fan, the better to blow back your long blond hair and multiple scarves.
The year in birds always has such a startling effect on your plumage. Recall how on Halloween you dressed up as a male black-throated gray warbler to celebrate its sighting on Oct. 8. The warbler was spotted near Squibnocket Pond, only the sixth time the species had been observed on the Vineyard. The only thing that surprised you more was that no other trick-or-treater joined you in this celebration. What could be more fun, you thought, than stepping into the gray, black and white wings of a short distance migrant that usually never strays east of the Rockies? You did see a few friends in dickcissel and tufted titmouse costumes, but found them rather common.
During an October storm you spotted a Wilson’s storm-petrel at State Beach, and in May you sat quite still while watching two glossy ibis and an immature little blue heron. A bald eagle flying low at sunrise tugged at your heart, as this bird always does. The silence of the bobwhite hurts too, its habitat shrunken and skunked. But missing the downward call of the eastern screech owl is of your own doing, as early bedtimes are not conducive to certain calls of the wild. Owls and barflies make better bedfellows.
But cheer up early riser because Friday is your day. The annual Christmas Bird Count is here again, where for one day the skies and marshes, tall grasses and tidal pools are scanned and scoured all over the Island. Teams will fan out everywhere and then meet up at the end of the day to compare notes and make charts, a tradition on the Vineyard since 1960. The results of the count, along with more than 2,000 other counts, will be sent to the National Audubon Society.
In an average year 120 species are recorded, along with approximately 33,000 individuals. Perhaps a red-breasted merganser will be among them.
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