A Day Stuck Indoors

Despite the fact that I'm now on my Christmas break from school and itching to go explore Assabet, Oxbow, and Great Meadows NWRs, I was stuck indoors today while the wintery siege of the region continued. Apparently as of last night thousands of people were still without power (it's been more than a week).

I did get to do a little window birding, though. Shuffling sleepily downstairs for some breakfast, I looked out the window and saw dozens of birds whizzing all over the backyard. After running back upstairs for the camera, I watched them for about half an hour. Tons of robins. Some starlings mixed in, too. There were a few squabbles between the two while they foraged, but nothing more than a chirping of "Watch it, you!" My next door neighbor's tree proved to be quite a favorite, I'm going to have to find out specifically what kind of tree it is. A male cardinal alighted in the branches, but it was a bit too crowded for his tastes and he took off. Saw a couple of flashes of the white secondaries of a mockingbird or two where our property meets the woods.

If only it had stopped snowing.....I would've had my dad's snowshoes strapped on to my new boots in a flash and been off to the neighborhood pond (not aluminum showshoes, I'm talking about snowshoes, the wooden variety you might see nailed up to a lodge wall in a decorative X).

It strikes me as a little strange to jump into my blog this way, but I can't really think of a better way to do it. I live in Middlesex County, MA and go to school in Monroe County, NY. So far I've been birding (in MA) at Parker River NWR, Halibut Point State Park (which I never would have visited if it weren't for reading another birder's blog!), some local parks, (in NY) Braddock Bay Bird Observatory, Hamlin Beach State Park, Mendon Ponds Park, Montezuma NWR, and Irondequoit Bay. I've got two big maps on the wall of my room in my apartment back in NY--one of Massachusetts and the other of the Finger Lakes Region. Both are riddled with color-coded push pins marking out where I've been and where I want to go birding in the future.