Victory Gardens and Back Bay Fens, Boston, August 2014

The delightful Victory Gardens at Bostons Back Bay brought most of the birds from the list below. A sudden hotspot made up most of the balance with just the ducks, kingbird and the vireo not accounted for between them.

My beautiful colleague, LK, accompanied me on a mid-morning walk that was notable for being very quiet. There was very little bird noise and remarkably few people on a Saturday morning. I am guessing that most of the park visitors would usually be students and summer break probably accounted for the empty lawns and sports pitches.

Even the Blue Jays were subdued and hardly called at all. This was LK’s first overseas birding outing and she was thrilled to see some common and easy birds on a feeder in the gardens at Google Earth ref; American Robins, American Goldfinches and Northern Cardinals become rather samey to us hardened birders so it was a real pleasure to see them through a first-timer’s eyes again.

We meandered down through the formal part of the park past the Vietnam Memorial and the Rose Garden noting Red-shouldered Blackbird and American Robins whilst trying to avoid the Canada Goose droppings that littered any grassed area.

The path along the waterside below the sports field brought Warbling Vireo and Eastern Kingbird before we headed back up and crossed the bridge by the Rose Garden.

Just here we were stopped by a small party of feeding birds that included Downy Woodpecker and Yellow Warbler with a stringy Blackburnian Warbler.

I haven’t included it in the list below as we were sharing binoculars and I passed them over quickly without taking a real good look. Only as I came to make the submission to eBird did I realise that this would be a bird of interest, but I cannot claim it as I didn’t take a close enough look to confirm such a significant bird.

Bird list for Boston Back Bay Fens; 21

Canada Goose 80, Mallard 8, Herring Gull 4, Mourning Dove 4, Chimney Swift 8, Downy Woodpecker 6, Eastern Kingbird 1, Warbling Vireo 2, Blue Jay 4, Black-capped Chickadee 1, American Robin 45, Gray Catbird 12, Northern Mockingbird 3, European Starling 35, Yellow Warbler 4, Song Sparrow 1, Northern Cardinal 2, Red-winged Blackbird 4, Common Grackle 6, American Goldfinch 1, House Sparrow 150.

Previous visits to Back Bay Fens (some even have photos), can be seen at the links below;
http://redgannet.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/boston-back-bay-fens-and-mount-auburn.html
http://redgannet.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/back-bay-fens-in-boston-april-2011.html
http://redgannet.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/bye-bye-boston.html
http://www.redgannet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/back-bay-fens-boston-october-2013.html

Visit the dedicated USA and Canadapage for more posts from Boston, including Mount Auburn, Whale watching and Belle Isle Marsh.

Birding, Birdwatching, Boston, Massachusetts.