Thursday, March 26, 2015

Stops along the river this week


Greater Scaup, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Greater Scaup, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Greater Scaup, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Greater Scaup, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Glaucous Gull, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Glaucous Gull, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 25, 2015
Canada Goose with ice on bill, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 24, 2015
Mallards, Connecticut River, Hadley, MA, Mar 26, 2015
I stopped most mornings this week to check out the ice free portion of the river below the Coolidge Bridge and managed to find some decent birds but still nothing extremely unusual or unexpected.  On Monday the species below the bridge included 778 Canada Geese, two Wood Ducks, two Black Ducks, 11 Mallards and two Common Mergansers plus around 140 gulls of the three expected species.  Tuesday found 794 Canada Geese, six Wood Ducks, three Mallards, 230+ gulls of the three usual species (still mainly Herring Gulls) and a Peregrine Falcon.  My stop on Wednesday turned up 533 Canada Geese, three Mallards, a Ring necked Duck and a Greater Scaup (species #100 for the county so far this year) for waterfowl and a Glaucous Gull among the 250+ gulls (38 Ring billed, 212 Herring and 2 Great Black backed).  Today I stopped by the Connecticut River on my to and from work and had 32 Canada Geese, 16 Black Ducks, 465+ Mallards, a Green winged Teal, two Ring necked Ducks, two Hooded Mergansers and 3 Common Mergansers.  At home in the evening I had a Belted Kingfisher rattling away in the rapidly opening Jabish Brook as well as a Winter Wren.  It does appear that waterfowl are finally able to start pushing into the area.

The middle and end of the week continued to be cold with high temperatures a bit above freezing and lows a night in the single digits to teens.  A slight moderation in temperatures started on Wednesday into today with rain late Wednesday continued into today.  Still no big warm up but at least it is above freezing today.


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