There are always mallards at Jamaica Pond, sometimes supplemented in the spring and summer by a family or two of wood ducks (and one black Muscovy duck in love with a mallard), but the pond now is home, even if temporarily, to all sorts of other ducks. Read more.
Andromeda Yelton spotted this bald eagle today, perching on a light pole at Trum Field in Somerville.
Mary Ellen journeyed up to Ipswich to take a gander at the Northern Lapwing that is now plovering about in a field there. Audubon reports Northern Lapwings are normally found all over Europe and Asia, but are only rarely seen here, sometimes blown here by winter storms. The Mass. bird world is, of course, all atwitter, Mary Ellen says.
Mary Ellen spotted this MacGillivray's Warbler in McLaughlin Woods, part of Mission Hill's McLaughlin Playground. They're not usually seen east of Texas, so maybe it was blown here by one of the recent cross-country storms?
Samuel Maskell watched a flotilla of geese floating along in the Esplanade lagoon.
Mary Ellen caught a pair of red-tailed hawks doing some heart-shaped bonding in West Roxbury the other day.
Max spotted a hawk performing a balancing act on Dallin's Appeal to the Great Spirit in front of the MFA this morning.
Wandering the moors along the Charles River in West Roxbury, Mary Ellen spied a dickcissel, no doubt debating whether those seeds it's eying are worth risking getting swallowed by a hawk.
Which of course, raises the question of who the bird formerly known as the black-throated bunting so offended in the ornithological world that they renamed it with one of birddom's more ridiculous names. Read more.
Jim Gavaghan watched this young American kestrel launch itself off the top of a 65-foot pine tree in South Boston around 6 p.m. on Sunday:
I’ve been watching them off my third floor porch for about a month now, part of a family of three. They have been feeding on a lot of rodents, so I love them.
Some pigeons up a couple floors at the old boiler plant at the Shops at Riverwood on River Street in Hyde Park.
This egret had been standing in the marsh along the Dorchester side of the Neponset River, near the bridges, when either it realized there just wasn't anything to eat there or got tired of the small black birds that kept flying right over him, so it took off and didn't stop until it got all the way to the other side of the river.
The state is looking for some help spotting any recent outbreaks of avian influenza. So if you see any dead seabirds (terns, gulls, cormorants), or if you see five or more other types of birds just lying in a single spot on the ground, dead, fill out this form (note they have a separate form for dead poultry).
We walked across the temporary North Washington Street Bridge today and couldn't help but notice the large colony of terns dive bombing the water - as a flotilla of cormorants dived well under the surface. And then a guy with several fishing rods in a kayak powered by pedals arrived on scene. Read more.
The other day, a mother duck and her ducklings were at the northernmost end of Jamaica Pond, slowly paddling through the muck there, stopping from time to time for a bite to eat. Read more.
A family of wood ducks glided along the surface of Jamaica Pond yesterday.
Ladybugs Leaf spotted the Esplanade's latest visitor today.
Patrick Roath saw him in the Fens yesterday: Read more.
A communications tower off Rivermoor Street, near Millennium Park in West Roxbury, is a popular place for birds to perch and survey the nearby Charles River. The other day, though, a pair of crows decided to try to drive off a bald eagle sitting up there. And Mary Ellen was there to watch the dive bombing.
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