Morning birding

Hooded Merganser, Swift River, Ware, MA, Mar 2, 2014

Black Ducks, Beaver Brook, Ware, MA, Mar 2, 2014

Common Mergansers, Beaver Brook, Ware, MA, Mar 2, 2014

Winsor Dam, Mar 2, 2014

With some other stuff to get done today I stayed close to home instead of venturing further away. Luckily the predicted snow never materialized beyond a few snow flurries...always nice when the forecast is wrong and it doesn't snow.  I started off predawn checking a few areas for any early woodcocks displaying or perhaps an owl calling. No luck with any woodcocks (or owls) today but given the amount of snow cover I was not too surprised. The strangest sighting of the morning occurred when I was near the Cold Spring Orchard scanning the fields and noticed a few Mallards and Black Ducks take off from the field, then more and then even more. I ended up seeing 21 Black Ducks and 27 Mallards come out of a very small pool of water along a drainage ditch. Amazing where birds will end up to roost when their options are limited. I then headed down to the Swift River near the end of River Road and had a couple Black Ducks, 26 Mallards, 24 Hooded Mergansers and a couple Common Mergansers. A trip over to the marsh below Beaver Lake in Ware produced 7 Black Ducks, 17 Mallards, 8 Hooded Mergansers and 7 Common Mergansers plus a kingfisher hunting successfully and loads of robins and bluebirds picking insects off the ice. The lake itself is still frozen solid. A few stops at the similarly frozen solid Quabbin Reservoir produced little of note.