Great Places to Bird: Parker River Wildlife Refuge

crossposted to Birding New England

Located on Plum Island, MA, Parker River Wildlife Refuge is, by far, one of my favorite places to bird.  It's not just that there's a huge variety of birds, but that it's very uncommon to find nothing of interest during a visit and so many of the regulars who bird there are willing to share their information readily with other birders.

Take, for example, this american woodcock on her nest:



After the fold I'll be presenting a photojournal of various birds I've seen at Parker River, along with some of my favorite experiences there.

Please note: almost every photograph here is a clickable link to larger versions of the same photo, with details that often include type of camera, type of lens, settings, etc.

Note: There is no possible way I would have found this nest without help from a fellow birder (Nancy Landry, who has some very nice shots of all sorts of birds on the Island), who, a couple days after my photo was taken, got a photo of the mother woodcock with the hatched young right next to her.

Plum Island layout

I'm going to make some references to various locations during this diary.  In doing so, I will be occasionally referencing this map of Parker River.

Fist, the refuge is located primarily on Plum Island itself.  There is a modest fee at the gate, but once in, you have access to most of the refuge (an exception is made during plover nesting season when parts of the beach are closed).

There is a single road that goes from one end of the refuge to the other.  Most of the birding I've done on that refuge has been from the road itself, though there are some short walking areas in the refuge as well that take you deeper into the woods.

Parking lots 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7 all have beach access.  The looks you can get from these boardwalks usually (though not always) require a scope, though I've seen birds on the dunes themselves often enough (usually sparrows).  Generally, though, this is not close-up territory.  Lot 5 has a viewing boardwalk; it won't get you to the beach, but in the winter you can sometimes spot short-eared owls there in the winter.

Between lots 1 & 2 are the salt pannes, which can provide great looks at waterfowl, pipers and plovers.  Waterfowl are more visible at high tide, but pipers and plovers will come in to feed at low tide, and can sometimes be seen from very close.  There is a pull over spot and you could spend a whole day just sitting there looking at birds when they're plentiful.  All the photos of wading birds below, save for the first one, are from the salt pannes.

The first wading bird photo is from the North Pool Overlook.  It's a rare Northeastern sighting of a Cattle Egret which literally jumped off the ground and landed on the fence right next to my car:

Lot 4 is the parking lot for the Hellcat Wildlife Observation area.  Most of my warbler photos from the refuge are from Hellcat.  It includes a boardwalk.  If you're into birding, take the path that leads to the old observation blind.  The blind is gone, but the path to the spot where it used to be can sometimes be loaded with warblers, and I know people who have managed to find a sora in the area at the end.  That boardwalk is also where I found the woodcock shown above.

Warblers and other small perching birds

Warblers, are by far, among the hardest birds to photograph in the wild.  They range from small to teensy, and like to hang out in bushes and trees, which are often leafed out so as to render them virtually invisible.  And yet, still, sometimes I get fortunate.  Take for example, these two birds, both taken from the boardwalk connected to the Hellcat access area: a black-throated green warbler and a black-throated blue:





The first of these birds was easy.  There was a flock of them hanging out in the trees overhead and I just kept taking photos and kept the best of the bunch.  The second was an immense amount of work.  There were several warblers on the boardwalk trail (near Goodno woods) bouncing all over the place.  I was excited to see a black-throated blue, as I'd never gotten a good photo of a male before, but it kept itself behind branches, twigs, never allowing a clean shot of it.  But, eventually, persistence paid off and it presented itself with a clean clear view.

Other small perching birds I've seen at the refuge include manypalm warblers, Ruby Crowned Kinglets, a blue-gray gnatcatcher and a savannah sparrow:

Duck-like birds

You get a wide variety of duck-like birds at the refuge.   One of the best photos I ever got there was of these
brants, which are small, dark geese, fighting over a piece of seaweed:



Another favorite, however, was this very close sighting of a
Wilson's Phalarope:




Northern Pintails are, during migration season, plentiful on the refuge:




But perhaps high on this list is this pied-billed grebe, which took me a few days of dedicated searching to find this close to shore (visible in North Pool, from Hellcat access area):

Wading birds, big and small

Being on a migration path, the refuge can yield some really nice shorebirds of various sorts.  Clicking on the photos will give you larger versions with info about the specific birds in the photos:








And finally, this whimbrel, on the dike off of the Forward Pool:

And to conclude, a mimic

This Brown Thrasher was making all sorts of noise in some bushes near the Forward Pool, but it took me some time to track it down.  I finally set the camera on auto-focus and managed to get it properly set up, but it took real work:

Related Links

• My Parker River Gallery;
• Tom Wetmore's recent sightings list;
• Nancy Landry's plum photos;
• Friends of Parker River;
• Daily Kos Environmentalists;