A long weekend in New England, Friday 11 May

Another company event, this time in May instead of February, saw us in the USA together.  As the event was in Boston we decided to use that as our base for a long weekend of birding in the the area.  On the Friday morning we headed to a favourite destination, the Ipswich River Valley Audubon Sanctuary, which really is a lovely place to visit.  It being May even though we arrived very early a lot of other birders were there already, undertaking a bird-a-thon.

We mostly managed to keep ourselves to ourselves and enjoy the variety of birds in the Sanctuary, including Black-capped Chickadee: 

Chipping Sparrow:

Eastern Phoebe:

Together with our first ever sighting of Beavers:

They swam around together for a while:

Until one of them saw me move, which made it slap it's tail on the water surface and they promptly both disappeared...

Another Eastern Phoebe:

Yellow Warbler:

Great Blue Heron:

I like the interplay between the light and water here:

Spring was definitely springing:

Red-eyed Vireo, a much better view than that at Cape May 20 months previously:

Of course the ubiquitous Red-winged Blackbird:

While there we saw a lot of Spring activity including breeding related behaviours.  This White-breasted Nuthatch was cleaning out a future nest:

We enjoyed our morning at Ipswich River then headed back into Boston to our hotel and then to the meeting, presentation, drinks and dinner.