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| Top 10 Map |
 Least sandpiper © Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART |
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Birds you might see
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Top 10 Birding Spots
Newburyport, Massachusetts
If they erect a birding hall of fame, this coastal Massachusetts town, astride the Merrimack River, gets my vote. Famed for the 1975 appearance of Ross’ Gull — a rare and mostly Siberian species that Roger Tory Peterson called “The Bird of the Century” — no place offers better or easier access to winter birds.
The secret is the river. It falls deep within winter’s reach but it is big enough and swift enough to shrug off winter ice. Hardy diving ducks gather here — rakish oldsquaw, comical bufflehead, improbably plumaged mergansers. Both the common and the uncommon goldeneye (otherwise known as the Barrow’s) are annual winter residents.
The epicenter for birding is the sea wall, where (from December through March) birders scan for waterfowl and gulls — ice-winged glaucous and Iceland gulls; delicate Bonapartes, whose flocks proffer the tantalizing promise of a little or black-headed gull in their midst.
Nearby, Plum Island National Wildlife Refuge is home to hosts of winter raptors, including snowy owls — which sit like soot-flecked snowmen on the open marsh — and northern shrike (an honorary raptor). After the northern harriers have gone to roost, after the short-eared owls have taken the field, birders can head for town, to work up their checklists and enjoy a warming bowl of New England clam chowder — another Newburyport specialty.
Top 10 Birding Spots was compiled by Pete Dunne who is the director of the New Jersey Audubon Society's Cape May Bird Observatory and author of "Tales of a Low Rent Birder," "Feather Quest" and "Before the Echo."
