At least, that's what these guys must've thought when they saw us coming!
Yesterday, I led a co-sponsored Brookline Bird Club/Menotomy Bird Club trip north to New Hampshire, to bird the Caps Ridge Trail and Trudeau Road. This is an area I used to bird a few times a year when I lived in NH, but only get up once or twice a year now as it is almost a three hour drive. The Caps Ridge Trail has the highest trailhead in the state at 3006' so it's a great starting point to look for birds that prefer the higher elevations. It also hosts some some boreal species at the southern edge of their breeding range. The big target here is Bicknell's Thrush, which we unfortunately did not find this year. I would suggest that anybody looking specifically for this bird take the tram up Canon Mountain near Franconia Notch as they have been reported there pretty regularly. (And, in fact, my friend Mark had a few there yesterday!)
We did manage to get most of our other target birds there though, including several Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, a single Boreal Chickadee (which was odd to me as I've typically had small scolding groups of them along the trail), many Blackpoll Warblers and these Grey Jays which enjoyed a free lunch handout fro a few members of my group. These guys are known to come in and take food from hikers that stop to eat at "pothole rock" which has a beautiful scenic view of the valley and the distant Mt. Washington House and Bretton Woods.
Another target for me on this trip was Black-backed Woodpecker. I usually get them either on the access road to Caps Ridge or near pothole rock, but didn't have them at either place this time. We did find a Hairy WP bringing food to a nest cavity that was filled with very vocal nestlings. I wasn't too worried as there had been two reported regularly from the trails off Trudeau Road in Bethlehem, NH which is where I found my life Black-backed some years back. So after a lunch break and a quick pit-stop we headed there, where we heard and saw a few very cooperative Blackburnian Warblers. Photos aren't great as they came out for good looks, but they were very backlit. That was ok, because I was really bringing the camera in hopes of getting some new photos of the Black-backed Woodpeckers.
Unfortunately, during our time exploring the trails, we never turned any up. That's just the way it goes sometimes. At one point we looked up to see a Red-shouldered Hawk soaring very high in the sky, and in almost the same view a pair of Broad-winged Hawks.
So instead of having a new Black-backed photo to post here, you will just have to be satisfied with a grainy one I took a few years ago of a pair about to change places at a nest cavity...
