With little wind, and temperature rapidly rising to the mid-20’s, it was a beautiful morning to be out. I chose to spend it in Scarborough Marsh.

I began on the Eastern Road Trail, with 9 Hooded Mergansers in a small patch of open water in the river. Another pair of Hoodies were under the trail’s bridge (and two more birds were slightly farther downriver at Seavey’s Landing).

Hoodies have certainly been around in unusual numbers this winter. It seems that of late, every little patch of open river has at least a pair. My guess is that the mild first half of the winter allowed more Hoodies to linger than usual. Now, with ice finally starting to fill in, they have concentrated along the coast, wherever they can find some open habitat. My hypothesis (and admittedly, I have no data whatsoever to support this!) is that now that the birds are running out of open water, it is already late enough in the winter that their hormones (triggered by the rapidly lengthening days) are kicking in, minimizing their interest (to oversimplify and anthropomorphasize) to head farther south. In only a few weeks, many ducks will begin (if ice conditions allow) to move north, so these Hoodies may simply be trying to wait out this cold snap (like most of us!). We can see that those hormones are certainly kicking in, as many males – of most species of duck, actually – have been displaying actively for some time now.

Anyway, back to my outing in the marsh . . . from the bridge, I spotted one very distant Rough-legged Hawk, a light-morph bird. 6 Horned Larks passed overhead. The surprise, however, was a out-of-season Northern Flicker foraging along the trail.

A walk around the neighborhood and beach at Pine Point, and a short time scanning the narrows produces only the usual cast of characters. Unusual, however, was I soon found myself back at the car SHEDDING layers!