Wednesday, May 15, 2013

New birds at the end of the day at home

I went out for a little time before work on a very frosty morning with temperatures right at freezing.  I started at the rail trail and then briefly over to UMASS.  Nothing too unusual but I'm sure after a little warm up it would have gotten more active but I didn't have the time to spend waiting this morning.  The cool weather continued throughout the day and the mid to late afternoon brought some rain as a warm front moved in.  I also made a brief stop at Winsor Dam on the way home to see if I could find anything brought down by the rain (no luck there).  As sunset approached the skies cleared somewhat and the temperatures actually started to climb into the 60's.  As I was standing outside on the deck I heard an odd warbler call that sounded like a Prothonotary Warbler down along Jabish Brook.  I quickly made my way down there and tried to get a view of the bird but had no luck.  I got some video with the call distant in the background but I'm not 100% sure of the identification.  It certainly had me wondering and I would have loved to get a look at the bird.  It could have been a number of different birds giving an unusual call but who knows.  As I tried to locate that bird I did manage to find a Canada Warbler which became species #196.  As the mystery warbler stopped calling for the evening I started to have a couple of Virginia Rails call back and forth with various calls.  While listening to them I had the bird of the day when a Sora sounded off!  The Sora became not only species #197 for the county this year but yard bird #151.  Very glad I went out on the deck after dinner!  Two new birds for the county this year (and possibly a third) plus a new species for the yard.  No photos but I will try to get the video up later.

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