1-May-99 Horn Pond

. .
.
After going to the post office and to a couple of useless yard sales, we headed out to Horn Pond for a walk and birding expedition. Horn Pond is in Woburn, four towns from here (count 'em: Newton is zero, Waltham, Lexington, Burlington, Woburn. Oh, that's pronounced woo-burn. You couldn't have known) There's one big pond, one smallish pond, and three or four much smaller ones in one conservation area, with lots of trails and woods, fields, and marsh as well as the pond edge. We used to catch sunfish there, but we haven't done any fishing around here in years. We hadn't gone to Horn Pond for several years, but last fall we were out there twice and we remembered that it's got more variety than any other place so close.

Yesterday turned out to be the annual cleanup day there, and there were people working, empty paint cans, a chipper tearing up brush, and vehicles moving wood chips all around the trails near the entrance. As we got away from the noise we started seeing more and more birds. There was a pair of blue-winged teals in the water and a great blue heron that caught three fish while we watched. Beavers have clogged up the brook under a little bridge above the second largest pond of the bunch, but haven't completely dammed it. There was a small bird in a close by tree -- eye ring, slate blue, white on the tail -- yes! a blue-gray gnatcatcher. That's something we don't see every year. We saw two small flycatchers, a little yellowish-green below the wings, not wagging their tails; one or another species in the hard-to-distinguish empidonax genus. There was also a yellow warbler, which was a surprise. They stay around all summer, so I don't expect to see them this early in the spring.

We stopped at the Stop and Shop on route 9 on the way home and got some hot dogs and an eggplant, and I grilled hamburgs and hot dogs and eggplant for supper. Sue came over for supper; Kathy was otherwise occupied, and Richard and April were in Atlanta where April was being presented with her computer science undergrad research award. While Arlene and Sue talked after supper, I did some online shopping and ordered fabric from Batiks Etc. for a shirt.