Happy New Year MassBirders!

Mark Burns and I led our 28^th Annual New Year’s Day Birding Trip for the Brookline Bird Club (BBC)! At 9:00AM, 18BBCers met at Cashman Park in Newburyport where we toasted in the New Year with sparkling apple cider, introduced ourselves, and reported on where we traveled from and what our first bird of the New Year was.  We had rain and drizzle for most of the day, temps that hovered around 44df, and little to no wind. We birded the Merrimack River, Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, and Salisbury Beach State Reservation and called it a day at 4:15PM.  We tallied 64 species for the Club list. Following is a complete list of the birds we saw:

Red-throated Loon –  3 

Common Loon –  1 

Horned Grebe –  7 

Red-necked Grebe –  1 

Great Cormorant – 1 

Great Blue Heron –  1 

Canada Goose –  64 

Mute Swan –  5 

Gadwall –  9 

American Black Duck –  125 

Mallard –  89 

Northern Pintail – 40 

Green-winged Teal –  2 

Ring-necked Duck – 10 

Greater Scaup – 2 

Lesser Scaup – 2 

Northern Gannet – 4 

Common Eider –  313 

Surf Scoter – 252 

White-winged Scoter –  313 

Black Scoter –  401 

Long-tailed Duck –  13 

Bufflehead –  5 

Common Goldeneye –  87 

Hooded Merganser – 11 

Common Merganser –  15 

Red-breasted Merganser –  82 

Northern Harrier –  7 

Red-tailed Hawk –  1 

Merlin –  2 

Killdeer – 1 

Sanderling –  2 

Purple Sandpiper – 3 

Dunlin – 25 

Herring Gull –  108 

Ring-billed Gull – 86   

Great Black-backed Gull –  5 

Black-legged Kittiwake –  1 

Rock Pigeon –  3 

Mourning Dove –  3 

Barred Owl – 1 

Short-eared Owl – 1 

Red-bellied Woodpecker –  1 

Downy Woodpecker –  1 

Blue Jay – 2 

American Crow – 8 

Comon Raven –  1 

Black-capped Chickadee –  4 

Tufted Titmouse – 1 

White-breasted Nuthatch –  1 

Horned Lark – 12 

Carolina Wren – 2 

American Robin –  3 

Northern Mockingbird – 2 

Hermit Thrush – 1 

European Starling –  3 

American Tree Sparrow – 2 

Song Sparrow – 4 

White-throated Sparrow –  2 

Dark-eyed Junco – 5 

Northern Cardinal – 2 

House Finch – 2 

American Goldfinch – 3 

House Sparrow –  20 

Wishing you all a very Happy, Healthy, and Birdy 2025!

Laura H. de la Flor