Starting the Year Off with the BBC

On January 1 Laura de la Flor and Mark Burns led their our 29th (maybe 30th) Brookline Bird Club New Year’s Day birding trip! I’ll let Laura take it from here…

We started leading this trip on the cusp of the ‘technological boom’ so some of our earliest records are either in notebooks or an old AOL account (remember dial-up modems!). Nonetheless, one of our oldest and dearest birding friends came up to me and said: “You do know this is your 30th year!”… I’m checking our records. 

It was a perfect winter day with snow squalls in the morning, temps that hovered around 23°F, and winds that gusted throughout the PM. We birded Cashman Park, the Merrimack River, Salisbury Beach State Park, and Parker River NWR, and tallied 59 species for the club list. 

Highlights include: 3 Barrow’s Goldeneye and 4 Bald Eagles seen along the river during a snow squall, a Long-eared Owl roosting in cedars, 2 Snowy Owls hunkered down in the marsh among ice and snow chunks, and both a Northern Harrier and Short-eared Owl hunting the marsh beneath a near full moon.

eBird trip report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/457805

As always, I loved spending time with old friends and new. Here’s to a very Happy New Year!