It’s always exciting to see the first bird of the year of a given species. This time of year that’s apt to happen more than once a day if you go out birding. Today we had our first-of-year northern oriole (for Massachusetts; there was one in our yard in Casco last Tuesday), catbird, and rose …
Tag Archives: Out-of-neighborhood walks
Good Palm Warbler Day
We went out to Nahanton Park pretty late (around 11!) this morning. The bluebirds were nowhere to be seen, but we did hear and see a house wren, first of year, behind the lower garden plots. In the brush just off the path along the soccer field there was a towhee, which should not be …
Bluebirds at Nahanton Park
We got up at 6 AM, had coffee, and were at Nahanton Park by 6:35 to look for birds. We expect to keep that kind of hours frequently for the next five or six weeks, until spring migration is over. Arlene has seen reports of palm warblers in Maine, so she thought there could be …
Duolingo Strategy
Some time between the time Arlene & I went to Costa Rica (on a Caravan tour, in 2010) and to Guatemala (another Caravan tour, in 2015) I started studying Spanish on a website called Duolingo. Actually, Duolingo kept track of me; it says I started in September, 2014. I got surprisingly far by the Guatemala …
Quick Notes Apr 4
We went walking in Rock Meadow, a conservation area in Belmont, with Charley, Maija, and Ari. Part of the idea was to give Patsy some time alone when she could concentrate on her thesis. Arlene and I used to go birding in Rock Meadow often, but we’ve only been there twice in quite some time. …
TJs second time in a year
This is definitely an “emerging from the pandemic” post; the big event of the day was that I ventured to Trader Joe’s to do some serious grocery shopping. Arlene and I had been there once before since the start of the pandemic; it was during special early morning hours (and we had got up early …
Back to Cold Spring
A couple of weeks ago we set out to walk around Cold Spring Park. It’s just two miles from here, and probably less than a mile around, and sometimes has good birds. We gave up on that walk because there was an icy spot at a hilly part of the trail. It’s been warm enough …
Emerging from the Pandemic Year
Yesterday, March 15, 2021, was two weeks after my second dose of COVID-19 vaccine (the Pfizer one, so it was three weeks after the first one, which was February 8). That means I had two weeks after the second one for my immune system to do as much as it was going to (or at …