Marc and I headed for Moose Bog before dawn Monday in a surprising snowstorm. Fortunately the storm was local and the roads were mostly fine.
The entrance at South American Pond Road was not plowed, but we were able to park off the road, but not too far off to give us trouble later. We headed into the Vermont’s Wenlock Wildlife Management Area.
Almost immediately some Red-breasted Nuthatches followed us and surprisingly flew directly at us a number of times. Maybe they are accustomed to being fed? So I pulled some sunflower seeds out of my pocket and held out my hand. A nuthatch landed on it almost before I could get it outstretched. I took this photo with my iPhone.
Black-capped Chickadees were also present in good numbers.
A beautiful Boreal Chickadee paid us a brief visit. They are definitely not as bold as their black-capped cousins.
A pair of Gray Jays flew in and stayed for less than a minute. Such a beautiful bird even if it is just gray and white.
But the real stars of the show were the Spruce Grouse. We saw five, three males and two females. One of the males did a lot of strutting and displaying even though we could see no females around. Later when he did this near the two females they showed a decided lack of interest.
But for quite a while we only saw one male. At one point he flew up to a branch, turned around, and flew back to the ground.
Here are some more photos I got of this beautiful bird.
A second male appeared and flew up to a branch that had a lot of distracting stuff in the way. So I used this opportunity to make some head-and-shoulder portraits.
The first male led us downhill to two females. We followed and got some photos of the females.
We checked out Moose Bog but we saw no birds along the shore of the frozen bog. Heading back we found another male Spruce Grouse. We believe he was a fifth grouse rather than a repeat of one we saw earlier since he appeared to be somewhat smaller than the other two males. Here he is standing tall and proud.
It was not yet 9:30 AM, and we already had a full and fantastic day. We missed a Black-backed Woodpecker, so we missed the “Boreal Grand Slam”, but 3 out of 4 isn’t bad. Perhaps we should have risked a hike across that wetland to see who was drumming. I did that once before when I photographed one and also got a very wet foot and boot when I broke through the thin surface. You can see the missing Black-backed Woodpecker if you CLICK HERE.