Birds of the Pompeston

As I said last time, the birds that call the Pompeston home are worthy of a post of their own. Even after all these years, I am amazed by the variety of birds that can be seen.

We see great blue herons and snowy egrets on a regular basis. Back in May, my son saw 11 egrets in the marsh all at the same time. Two days ago, a heron was standing on the bank next to my dock. We have the usual mallards and Canada geese – love the mallards, hate the geese! Occasionally, we'll see a merganser or two. We also have a Muscovy duck who now lives on the bank across from our house. He was apparently someone's pet that escaped, and he followed me home last February. We call him “DuckDuck,” and you can see from the attached pix, he's quite fond of my son.

There are all kinds of sparrows, orioles, swifts, goldfinches, blue jays, mockingbirds, downy woodpeckers, grackles, starlings, crows, and after dark, several owls. My neighbors have all seen hummingbirds, though I haven't. I got to see and hear a cuckoo last summer, and they didn't, so I guess we're even. If you paddle upstream, and splash just a bit when you get to the phragmites, hundreds of redwing blackbirds fly out all at once. If you sit quietly by the bulkhead behind Hunter's Farm, you may get to see cormorants diving into the creek. I couldn't believe how long they could stay under water!

We've also seen red tail hawks and turkey vultures, and the occasional osprey. My favorite large bird of prey has to be the bald eagles. Friends of ours had watched them nesting further upstream, and thought they had left and not returned. They were wrong! I was sitting on my dock one afternoon, watching a muskrat swimming back and forth along the bank, when all at once, he took off downstream like a shot. I wasn't sure what had startled him so badly, until I heard the leaves rustle above my head. I looked up just in time to see an eagle swoop down toward the muskrat. There was a “whoosh,” and I could feel the movement of the air from his wings. He didn't catch the muskrat, but scared the little rodent out of at least a year's growth!

With limited public access to the creek, I try to let people know that they are welcome to launch canoes and kayaks from my dock. I'll be happy to give you the “what to watch for” rundown and a trashbag before you go, and you can borrow binoculars if you like. The best time to go is about an hour before the peak of high tide—check the tide table at www.pompestoncreek.org—and contact me through Patch if you would like to visit the creek from East Riverton.

Check out the birdwatcher's paradise that we call the Pompeston Creek!