Eager and alert observers hurried to the shores of our lakes and ponds.
Last Sunday was a special day for birders in our region, one that I was quite sorry to have missed. Warming south winds during the week discouraged ducks from migrating south, but Saturday night a cold front moved through, bringing strong northerly winds in its wake. Eager and alert observers hurried to the shores of our lakes and ponds.
One such observer was Larry Therrien, who makes a morning visit to Quabbin Park every day, always finding a few ducks on the waters above Winsor Dam. He braved this cold and windy day as well, reaping a rich reward.
Black scoters were swarming over the whitecaps, and they landed in restless, swirling flocks that eventually came to a quieter rest, nearly 600 by careful count. With them were smaller numbers of 18 other species, including 76 long-tailed ducks, an impressive count, perhaps unprecedented.
The Hampshire Bird Club trip to the six central Berkshire County Lakes that day was led by the venerable Tom Gagnon. His group found rafts of black scoters on every lake they visited, with counts of 15 to 80 birds in each. There were flocks of buffleheads everywhere, and one raft of 40 long-tailed ducks.
At Ashley Ponds in Holyoke, there were another 90 black scoters, and no one knows how many more were on lakes not visited. I would have looked for ducks on Congamond Lakes in Southwick, but I was away for the weekend in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.
The valley is a special place. At the end of the last ice age, it was filled with glacial melt, forming a sea that was connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The glaciers retreated and the land rose, closing the inlet to the sea and shrinking the sea to form Lake Champlain.
Champlain is still a vast body of water, 120-miles long, up to 12-miles wide and as much as 400-feet deep. It has 70 islands, almost 600 miles of shoreline, and more than 400 square miles of surface water. The Adirondack Mountains loom mightily on its western shore, and a broad expanse of fertile soil and farmland lies on its eastern shore.
Those who visit this lake and valley to find birds are rarely disappointed. After a long drive on a dreary, rainy Saturday, our trip there started on a high note at Sandbar State Park in Milton. There the Lamoille River approaches the lake slowly in meandering coves, where ducks find safe haven and food.
The road to the big Champlain islands cuts through this marshy isthmus and allows us access to the lives of these ducks. The low water level made the north cove muddy and shallow, providing food for a small duck known as the green-winged teal.
More than 150 of these teal were dabbling their bills in the fertile mud holes, many lifting up to fly in small groups from one spot to another. Beyond them, black ducks and wood ducks were either busy feeding, or lazily floating in the deeper water.
In the south cove, an even more amazing assemblage of ring-necked ducks awaited. They were packed in tightly, almost wing to wing, and they filled the cove from end to end. It was impossible to know how many hundreds of them were there. They fed and rested and preened, unaware of our breathless astonishment.
From our next vantage point on South Hero Island, we scanned the distant waters farther south. Our eyes suddenly set upon an enormous blanket of black on the surface of the lake. It appeared to be a raft of scoters, an idea confirmed when clouds of dark ducks flew up into the sky, only to circle and come back to rest.
They were waiting impatiently for north winds to speed their way south. Those winds began to blow Saturday night, and some of the birds in this great flock might have been the birds seen Sunday on our local lakes. Meanwhile, there was more for us to find in the Champlain Valley.
Seth Kellogg can be contacted at skhawk@comcast.net
The Allen Bird Club website can be found at massbird.org/allen