Shoreline Chic

The reliable spectacle of Harlequin Ducks makes Halibut Point a destination for sightseers with binoculars. We're the southernmost accessible point to admire their ornamentation and endurance. Birdwatchers come from near and far to see Harlequins.

The Harlequin's cork-like buoyancy counters the strenuous elements of the winter shoreline. They come here for refuge when frozen out of the fast-moving rivers of the boreal forests where they breed and raise their young.

The coastal life mixes tranquil and stormy days. The water is often turbulent in the shallow depths the Harlequins prefer. Somehow they withstand the tumult of the surf.

They ride dizzily over the crests of waves or dive just before the breaking force. 


Two females, one 'snorkeling', and a diving male

The Harlequins forage on the rocky bottom for shellfish. They are able to pry off limpets with a small hooked portion of their beaks. 


As specially adapted as they are to the water Harlequin Ducks still manage to fly. 


A Long-tailed Duck hen and two Harlequin drakes

Where their presence thins out away from the rocks the equally spectacular Long-tailed Ducks take up winter residence.


A female and two males in winter plumage



To the unaided eye from shore they stand out as bright-white, slightly mottled floating objects. A closer look during breeding plumage suggests a pheasant-like bird on the ocean. Males develop a white patch around the eye, a black breast and a plume-like tail.


In March, one male with white eye patch, one with grey cheeks

 Plumage sequences in Long-tailed Ducks are complex and variable. Unlike most ducks, which molt twice per year, they undergo three phases annually in a series of overlapping partial molts.



In the air the all-dark wings and white stripes evident in all sexes and plumages call to mind a skunk motif.  They seem to fly more easily than the frantic wingbeats of the Harlequins.

Many Long-tailed Ducks winter far out at sea. They are reputed to dive as deep as 200 feet in search of mollusks, crustaceans, and small fish.
 

They congregate in small flocks on the skirts of Halibut Point.
 

As spring approaches they put their adornments to advantage in courting rituals and contests.

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell to Winter

This week we officially transited into Spring. It snowed again this morning. The temperature has averaged below freezing in recent days, but I want to muster a bit of affection in a farewell salute to winter. Nature did provide some beautiful moments.

Creamy Ice



Drills and Fractures



Lichen Composition



Favored Ledges



Sunny Corner



Super Blue Moon, Eclipse Beginning



Swell Finish

Boisterous Air

Flourish in Blue



Northeasterly Rainbow



Singing for Spring

Safety Officers at the head of our street

Feeling cabin-bound but with our Lane blocked by fallen trees and wires Kay and I walked to Halibut Point during the most recent northeaster. There were also pragmatic reasons to make the trek now.


The Babson Farm Quarry in falling snow

We expected the sticky snow and blustery wind would put a short-lived glaze on the quarry walls. The dreary light might render details with subtlety that sunshine would later discriminate into brights and shadows. 


Shrubbery beside the quarry

Every surface was receiving the confectioner's touch as a compensation of the vexatious weather. 


Mallards rising

Overall, however, the storm was disrupting the seasonal progress toward spring. Quarry ice had gone. Ducks were paired affectionately. It's mid-March when shamrock green should tune the landscape. 


Red-winged Blackbird on frosted cattails

The next morning, the Lane still blocked, we walked again toward Halibut Point. The roar of wind and surf had moderated. We could hear Red-winged Blackbirds in the marsh across Granite Street sweetly summoning good order back into the season. 


Great Cormorant on a quarry ledge

At the quarry the unusual sight of a Great Cormorant awaited us, perhaps a consequence of the storm. That species appears on the winter shoreline but rarely ventures to fresh water, unlike orange-cheeked Double-crested Cormorants common at other times of the year. 


Female Red-breasted Merganser on the quarry

Then we had another first-time sighting on quarry waters, a Red-breasted Merganser which also frequents the ocean perimeter of Halibut Point but not the interior. 


She enjoyed a fresh water bath and perhaps a few minnows before departing.

Undaunted by the quirks and hardships of meteorology songbirds were keeping pace with their relational advertisements in the treetops. Cardinals, titmice, chickadees, sparrows contributed familiar nuptial calls. Even crows and bluejays seemed to warm the edges of their croaks and screeches. On the walk home a series of old tunes came unbidden to my mind. How can I keep from singing?

Three Scoters and a Scaup

During fall and spring migrations waves of dark-colored ducks fly past Halibut Point that to the distant or casual eye may appear to be identical. Most likely they are scoters, three different types in which the males' distinctive markings help keep the species organized amongst themselves. For us observers the contrast of those blazes deepens the birds' essential blackness, their intrigue and their charm.

A mixed flock of all three species of scoters

Scoters commute between wet tundra breeding grounds in summer and open coastal waters for the winter. Most fly past us in the fall for an easier life further south on the Atlantic seaboard. During March and April their numbers will resurge, northbound.

Male and female Surf Scoters

Surf Scoters earn their name from an ability to dive through turbulent waters in search of food on the ocean floor. They pry shellfish from rocky crevices with strong outsized beaks.

Those beaks display a candy-corn motif. How and why such a pattern developed on nature's canvas stimulates conjecture on the origin of design. Evolutionists collide with Creationists. Strategic minds jostle with whimsy. The Surf Scoter peers back through dotted off-center eyes inadequate, from a painterly point of view, to anchor the vivid features to the rich black body, giving the effect of an abbreviated work of Surrealism. Yet the species thrives.

Black (formerly American) Scoters are the least adorned of their clan. The male's neon orange bill stirs affection in its female counterpart as well as in birdwatchers along the bleak winter shoreline.

Male and female Black Scoters

The Blacks are the most common scoters now on the rim of Halibut Point. They ply the breaking waves along with Eiders and Harlequin Ducks.

Female White-winged Scoter eating mussels

White-winged Scoters forage for mussels right against the ledges. Their wing bars may be obscured in swimming birds. Females in all three species have a duskier hue than the males, charcoal as compared to coal. 


White-winged Scoter pair in flight

In addition to being blacker than the female the White-winged Scoter drake sports an arabesque eye liner and an orange-red tip to its bill.

Migration medley

Last November as I followed this group of ducks with my camera it became apparent that the white in their plumage increased markedly from left to right. The White-winged Scoter pair had joined with something unfamiliar to me. It was my first sighting of Greater Scaup, which prefers fresh water or protected salt water bays such as Gloucester Harbor when ponds freeze.

Greater Scaup,
drake in the lead, female next, then sub-adult or eclipse drake
(as identified by Chris Leahy)

These Scaup must have been passers-by at Halibut Point. The novelty put a live spark in my day.

Greater Scaup drake

Lo and behold in February a solitary Greater Scaup drake swam along the shoreline within portrait range. I admit to deserting the scoters for the finery of its plumage, curves, and proportions. But mainly, I suppose, it was a seduction of newness. If my bailiwick had been a marshy realm replete with scaup and a scoter chanced by, no doubt the scoter's exotic blackness would have enthralled me on first appearance.

A Gull's View of Seals

An airborne gull looks opportunistically at seals diving for fish in the waters around Halibut Point. 


Harbor seal

On shore seals appear lumpy, unsuited to the submarine chase.

Immersion transforms them for sleek sprints in the business of fishing.

In their foreparts seals are well endowed for the underwater hunt. All their sensors have been realigned proportionally, positionally, purposefully for success.

Seals face an awkward moment when they capture a fish too big to swallow whole.

A canny gull will jab not just at the fish but at the seal's head and eyes to get it to relinquish the meal.

An interwoven chain of predation is under way. Each link pursues its survival in the constant adaptations to available energy and intelligence that at any moment portray the biosphere.

Biologists apply the term 'kleptoparasitism' (stealing + freeloader) to the gull's behavior toward the victimized seal. But unlike the fish the seal gets another chance. And parasitism unfairly suggests a creepy, invasive siphoning of assimilated life juices. 


Seal pup and gull

No, the gull has no part in considerations of what might have been. It consumes with a level gaze on the twists and turns of an organic parade. 


Seal pup with herd

The seals meanwhile concentrate on the welfare and occupations of their own province.