Birding this week

Least Sandpiper, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Aug 19, 2014

Least Sandpiper, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Aug 19, 2014

Lesser Yellowlegs, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Aug 19, 2014

Horned Lark, Honeypot, Hadley, MA, Aug 19, 2014

Winsor Dam, Aug 21, 2014

A few stops this morning and yesterday morning found the river levels too high to attract any shorebirds so I didn’t have any luck in finding any there..(no luck at Winsor Dam either). With additional showers today the level will likely stay a bit too high for awhile longer.  I also got a second hand report of a Little Blue Heron in and near Paradise Pond at Smith College today but I had no luck finding it.

On Tuesday I hit a few spots before work including the Connecticut River in Hadley and the Honeypot.  The river had dropped a bit and some mudflats were exposed so I had a few shorebirds around including a couple Lesser Yellowlegs, a couple Spotted Sandpipers and a half dozen Least Sandpipers.  The Honeypot had no shorebirds but I did find a single Horned Lark crouched down in one of the fields. 

The slow hurricane season in the Atlantic finally has some more activity to report but it is far from major activity at this point.  There is a tropical wave east of the Lesser Antilles that is likely to slowly evolve into a tropical system over the next few days.  As the potential storm is still days away from forming the long range guidance of the storm is far from certain.  The trend of the forecast is to push the storm north and then east and then out to sea with no impact on the US.  However as there are more questions than answers with this yet to form system any forecast tracks must be taken with a grain of salt.  The area will be fighting dry air and wind shear so any formation will be slow to occur, if it even occurs at all.  I will update if any changes occur or it seems like an impact is possible in the eastern US.