A lot happened in 2024, but there was one big standout!
This column appeared in the Recorder and the Gazette on Jan 01 and the Eagle on Jan 04.
Happy New Year everybody! I was delighted to have a snowy celebration for this iconic winter holiday and I hope that you are sitting happily with your feet up and a warm beverage in your hand. I am just finishing an hour of birdwatching at my kitchen window and when I am done writing this column I get to start completely brand new journals and bird lists. But before I indulge in this exiting activity, I get to do another one of my favorite things: look back at the previous year and recall the highlights.
January was a rather typical winter month. We had some snow, we had some ice and there were a couple days off from school. The birds at my feeders were not particularly unusual, but what did mark the month as noteworthy was my installation of the very first “Birch Perch.” This was a very large branch from the tip of a gray birch that had fallen to the ground earlier in the year. All I did was place it near my feeders so I had some natural perches for photography. I also tied the record for January with 31 species at my feeders.
February was another typical representative of winter. More cold, more snow and the arrival of Red-winged Blackbirds and Purple Finches to the feeders. Then, on February 25, things got very interesting when I noticed a Brown Creeper exploring the trunk of one of the cottonwood trees that grow next to my driveway. The gods smiled upon me and I was able to get my camera and get some photos before the bird disappeared. Once again I tied the record for February with 35 species.
March saw the arrival of the year’s first Common Grackles, but even more amazing was the fact that dandelions were already blooming in my yard by March 5. The temperature rose to the 40s and 50s for two weeks and by March 13 the mercury hit 67 degrees Fahrenheit! By the end of the month I had taken 5,000 photographs and set a new record of 38 bird species in the month of March.
The tables turned briefly in April and a day of school was canceled because of heavy snow. In the middle of the month I traveled to Bermuda and spent 3 magical days pursuing the birds of this beautiful island nation. The stars of the show were the White-tailed Tropicbird and the Great Kiskadee, both of which were featured in my columns. Meanwhile, spring peepers and American toads emerged from hibernation. Everything was going to plan.
May and June were their typical gorgeous selves. The Thinking Chair was my regular destination on any morning that I didn’t have to go to work, and on June 18 it became my destination on every morning that it didn’t rain. Migrants arrived, the meadow sprang to life with birds eager to establish territories and raise their young. In July I went to Cape Cod for a week, and enjoyed a change of scenery by visiting First Encounter Beach, in Eastham. All three months were splendid.
August was another spectacular month and the big event was my trip to Plum Island on the North Shore of Massachusetts. There I encountered many beautiful birds, including an immature Eastern Kingbird that posed for a portrait while I was exploring the dunes. September marked the beginning of a new school year and I celebrated this event with another bout of covid. Stuck home for a solid week, I exercised social distancing down in my Thinking Chair and by September 20 I had already set a new species record and, almost without realizing it, I had reached 23,000 photos for the year!
October was a very warm month and as the migration started to wind down the winter visitors started to arrive. Dark-eyed Juncos and Purple Finches had arrived by Columbus Day and the continued warm weather allowed an extended Thinking Chair season. On Halloween the temperature reached 83 degrees Fahrenheit at my house and that just seemed wrong. However, the warm conditions did allow a lot of time for photography and by the end of the month I had reached 25,000 photos; just one thousand shy of the record.
November was also ridiculously warm, with temperatures regularly in the 40s and 50s. By Veteran’s Day I had tied my record for the number of photos taken in a single year and then the door was slammed shut with the arrival of rain on November 21 and then snow on November 22. No Thinking Chair in the snow! However, the extra time afforded outside did result in a new record for bird species seen in November (38 species) and the sighting of a Rusty Blackbird. That bird continues to haunt me.
Finally, we come to December. At the time I wrote this column I was one species short of the record for bird species observed in my yard in the month of December. One of the more unusual species to make an appearance was a Northern Mockingbird on December 8. Then, without warning, Winter decided to exert herself and the weather changed from mild to an attention-getting cold that reminded me of the winters of my youth. Great Horned Owls perch on my rooftop and sing almost every night, on December 27 I recorded 61 Mourning Doves on my deck at one time, and the feeders need to be filled several times a day. Everything is just as it should be.
I hope that 2025 brings even more adventures for me to share with you. I have a couple ideas in mind, but I’ll refrain from explaining them so I don’t jinx myself. I’ll speak to you again next week, but in the meantime I have a LOT of photos to sort and catalog. The backlog reaches back to August! Sigh.