An Acre Saved Is An Acre Earned

After all that intense birding I was left with about as much energy as Superman after eating a box full of chocolate covered Kryptonite. The month of January was all about seeing as many species of birds that I could find. From now until the end of April I will focus on quality not quantity. I will be selective about where I go and spend more time observing birds in one place rather than jumping from one place to another.

One of the ways that I search for new birding places is to do a google search of an individual town. I will enter keywords like hiking trails or nature preserves along with the name of the town. It was in this way that I came across the Middletown Trail Guide. Most of the trails listed in this guide were familiar to me but I had never heard of Ravine Park. It was listed as only 8.8 acres with a trail only 1/10 of a mile long. This sounded like an easy way for me to start the month of February. If I can't walk a tenth of a mile then I might as well not leave the house. When I came upon the location of the park, I realized that it was nothing more than an insignificant little mud hole of a pond that I had passed by so many times over the years. I almost turned around and left the minute I saw it.

Almost, but not quite. Upon checking the trail, I was slightly encouraged to find that it led through a steep ravine. It wasn't long before I started to hearing and seeing lots of birds. There were Northern Cardinals singing semi-automatic drip-drip-drip-drip-drip notes. Dark-eyed Juncos were feeding underneath the tangles, while others bathed and drank water from the shallow stream. Hairy and Red-bellied Woodpeckers hammered away at trees while a Northern Flicker perched high on a branch and cried out a series of squeals. If this place was insignificant, someone forgot to tell the birds. Just a few minutes before I looked at this so-called park as nothing more than a patch of urban trash . Now I was seeing and hearing dozens of birds making full use of the food, shelter, and water that was provided here.

This stream is so shallow that I could probably walk through it barefoot and not get my feet wet but it was the perfect depth for songbirds. In the short time I was there I saw Juncos, American Robins, sparrows, and American Goldfinches drinking and bathing in this pipsqueak of a brook.

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Check out this video of a bathing goldfinch and notice all the bird chatter in the background.

On Sunday, I visited one of the Taylor/Palmer preserve-(entrance is across from St. Clements on route 66 in Portland)-, which was acquired by the Middlesex Land Trust in recent years. Lately, I've been noticing more and more parcels of land that have been marked as preserved by the Middlesex Land Trust. The members of that land trust should be commended for the great job they are doing! The preserved areas of land vary from quite large to just a couple of acres in size but you know what they say-"An acre saved is an acre earned". I'm glad that more and more landowners are considering donating land for preservation as an option.

I followed the well laid out trails marked in red through the Taylor/Palmer preserve. The skies were blue when I started so I was surprised when it started to rain. I took shelter in this old railroad culvert until the showers passed. It sort of looks like an entrance to the church of nature, doesn't it?

The highlight of this was was observing a dozen or so Eastern Bluebirds foraging through some leaves on the ground that had recently thawed. As I was jotting this down in my journal, one landed just inches from my foot. It's amazing what you can see when you slow down long enough to look.