Surner Birding: Newport & Moose Bog- Vermont

We ended up the spring 2014 Hitchcock Center spring Birding class on a high note with a visit to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. This is the second year we have ventured north towards the Canadian border in search of the elusive Boreal Grand slam ……Boreal Chickadee, Black-backed Woodpecker, Gray Jay and the really elusive Spruce Grouse!

As mentioned this is the second year in a row we have birded the Northeast Kingdom, last year’s trip was met with marginal weather and only distant views of a family of Gray Jays.

This year’s trip was the complete opposite, unbelievably great weather and three out of the four Grand Slam Boreal Birds!

This year we birded a new area just north of Newport – “Eagle Point Wildlife Management Area”. This area consists of open fields and marshes. We didn’t get there until around 10:30am, but we still had a nice assortment of species…Great Blue Heron, Ring-necked Pheasant, Osprey, Eastern Wood-Pewee, Least Flycatcher, Great-crested Flycatcher, Belted Kingfisher, Warbling Vireo, Veery, an assortment of Warblers, Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlark and Savannah Sparrow.

The next day we spent the entire morning at Moose Bog. Moose Bog is located east of Island Pond on Rte 105, this Bog is one of the most consistent areas for encountering Spruce Grouse, Black-backed Woodpecker, Boreal Chickadee and Gray Jays. This area as well as others in the region can also produce a large number of biting insects like Mosquitos, black flies and Deer Flies. As it turned out this year, the insects were not that bad! Why, I have no idea, but it wasn't that bad. As I indicated before, we had a fair amount of success with the Boreal birds this day…we first heard the Boreal Chickadee along the Moose bog trail, then encountered two very cooperative Gray Jays and then really lucked out with an extended sighting of a male Black-backed Woodpecker working on a Spruce tree just ten feet off the trail. However, the elusive Spruce Grouse did not make an appearance this day, but we will try again. We ended our trip with seventy-seven species and a few mammals....but no Moose.