Good morning, Bucketeers. This is an update about Halibut Point State Park (which I wrote about in a Bucket in June) in the town of Rockport, on Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
Halibut Point is usually magical in autumn, and this year has been no exception. However, there has been a disconcerting lack of birds there this fall, especially of sea ducks (Scoters, Eiders, Buffleheads...) and hawks that I thought would be arriving there by now. And the drought which was extreme here for months has still been noticeable. I’ve never seen the vegetation there look (or sound) so dry, although the Cherry and Hickory leaves and native Greenbrier (which seems to me even more abundant than other years) have still been beautiful.
This is a 5 minute 36 second video (not mine) of Cape Ann—including Halibut Point—and greater Ipswich Bay, Massachusetts. I imagine that the gulls at Halibut are some of the happiest birds in the world...as you can see at 1:23 in the video, they have the freshwater quarry lake (Babson Farm Quarry) to bathe in, and the ocean just a short distance away. Whenever I visit there, I see Great Black-backed and Herring Gulls having a joyful-looking party in the lake, as well as gulls on the ocean. Many of my favorite places are in this video (Granite Pier and Gloucester waterfront which I’ve posted lots of Eider pics from, Good Harbor Beach, Magnolia, Rockport in general...)
A photo from early September, to show how many leaves had already fallen then, probably because of the drought:
These are some photos I took at Halibut in early and mid October. The biggest change I noticed in that time is that the vegetation finally started looking less dry, and there was more color. I didn’t see many birds on either day, aside from Blue Jays, White-throated Sparrows and Cardinals (the latter two I heard more than saw). The Green Heron that I often see there left at the end of summer. I’ve seen one Red-tailed Hawk there since summer, and the only sea ducks I’ve seen so far have been small flocks of White-winged Scoters. The Common Eiders that stayed for summer seem to have left, and others have not yet arrived. I did see gulls, as usual, and there were still some Double-crested Cormorants.
Early October, 2022
Later in October:
Another day, in late October…
Some of the few birds I saw in that area the past month or so, not at Halibut Point but at a cemetery close to it…
It’s 55° F and sunny here on the North Shore of Massachusetts this morning. It’s been getting colder but we still haven’t had our first frost, which we would usually have by early October. I went to Halibut Point yesterday...some sea ducks have arrived! I saw a flock of Common Eiders, a possible Long-tailed Duck, and at least half a dozen Harlequins.
YOUR TURN: WHAT’S HAPPENING IN NATURE IN YOUR AREA?