Snow Geese in Hadley this morning and another snow storm tonight through tomorrow

 

Snow Geese, Connecticut River at the Honey Pot, Hadley, MA, Jan 26, 2015

Snow Geese, Connecticut River at the Honey Pot, Hadley, MA, Jan 26, 2015

Snow Geese, Connecticut River at the Honey Pot, Hadley, MA, Jan 26, 2015

Snow Geese, Connecticut River at the Honey Pot, Hadley, MA, Jan 26, 2015

After missing the Snow Geese yesterday I decided to try my luck finding them on my way to work this morning. I stopped by the Coolidge Bridge but only found the usual species there (Canada Geese, Mallards, a couple Black Ducks and a few Common Mergansers). Without a lot of other areas of open water around I thought I would give the river near the Honey Pot a try and sure enough I found two adult Snow Geese roosting on the ice along with Canada Geese. I watched them for a short time and snapped a few pictures before taking off to work. Glad to see they are still around as they are quite uncommon in winter here. The Snow Geese became species #86 for Hampshire County this year, besting my previous best January back in 2013. This may be the last new species I get this month as we are forecast to get a large snowstorm.

Now for more information on the upcoming snow storm that will begin tonight and last through the entire day tomorrow into Wednesday. The hype machine is in full operation at this point with each news outlet trying to top the other with the how bad they can make the storm sound. Just a sampling of the descriptions for the storm include ‘historic’, ‘unprecedented ‘, ‘crippling’, ‘life threatening’ and ‘deadly’. It is tough to take the descriptions seriously as they roll out the same terms several times over the course of a typical winter and the storms seldom live up to the hype. We shall see what happens with this one but the potential certainly is there given the weather set up that appears to be playing out at this point. If the forecasts holds true then blizzard conditions with 2-3’ of snow could occur with high snowfall rates (2-3” per hour) overnight into tomorrow morning.

I’m sure the birds will hunker down during the worst of it and the feeders will get a lot of action tomorrow. It will be interesting to see if the strong northeast winds push any unusual birds close to shore tomorrow along the coast. Very unlikely anything will get moved all the way into western Massachusetts but always a remote possibility.  There is always an exceedingly slim chance of an alcid (Dovekie, Thick billed Murre) or some other pelagic bird (perhaps a Northern Gannet?) getting blown all the way inland to this area.  Much more likely will be a vagrant being forced by the weather to seek food at a feeder...time will tell.