Saturday, September 19, 2020

A great morning of migration


                                                   Northern Parula, Arcadia, Northampton, MA, Sep 19, 2020
                                           Tennessee Warbler, Arcadia, Northampton, MA, Sep 19, 2020
Eastern Phoebe, Arcadia, Northampton, MA, Sep 19, 2020
Lincoln's Sparrow, Arcadia, Northampton, MA, Sep 19, 2020
                                            Indigo Bunting, Arcadia, Northampton, MA, Sep 19, 2020

This mornings trip to Arcadia finally produced a good show of migrants following several mornings lately that looked promising but were rather slow.  There was an obvious influx of migrants that arrived on northerly winds overnight.  The morning started off cold with a few patches of frost but once the sun came up it warmed up a bit and thankfully the strong winds from yesterday were not present until much later in the morning allowing much better viewing of birds.  Most any area that the sun was hitting and warming up produced birds with a nice mix of species spread throughout the fields and hedgerows of the meadows.  Among the 82 species I found for the morning were multiple highlights including a big flight of Broad winged Hawks that started kettling around nine and moving down the ridge toward Mount Tom (I will be interested to see the numbers the hawk watches had for the day but I'm sure they were high), lots of Purple Finches flying over, half a dozen species of sparrows with a large influx of Lincoln's Sparrows, 19 species of warblers including at dozen plus Tennessee Warblers, a Connecticut Warbler, three Cape May Warblers, at least four Yellow Warblers, both subspecies of Palm Warbler and a Wilson's Warbler (more on warblers for the morning at the following link) plus at least 32 Indigo Buntings and a flyover Dickcissel.

Black Vulture, Home, Belchertown, MA, Sep 19, 2020
New water feature Home, Belchertown, MA, Sep 19, 2020

At home while working around the yard and trying to finish up the new water feature I had a couple of Black Vultures fly over and I actually managed to get a marginal photo of one.  This is only my third time ever seeing Black Vultures from the yard and the first time of there being more than one.


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