The last week of February has finally seen the arrival of some warmer weather giving us a break from what has been a colder and snowier than normal month. The sun has actually shown itself and temperatures have made it into the mid to upper 40's a few times. This warm up brings us up to more average temperatures but are still a far cry from our record warmth we experienced back in 2019 and 2018 when we reached the 60's and 70's! With the warmer temperatures the ice has started to break up resulting in more and more open water and the arrival of some early migrating species of waterfowl.
I have been working a lot lately so have had not had much in the way of extra time to get out birding but I have been able to get out a little in the morning before work and on Thursday I tried my luck along the Connecticut River and found a total of eleven species of waterfowl with the rarest among them being a male Lesser Scaup. The river was still at least 50% ice covered in the areas I checked on Thursday. Prior to Thursday the best waterfowl sighting I had was a flock of at least 83 Hooded Mergansers along the Swift River in Ware on Tuesday.
Yesterday I had the entire day off so tried my luck once again with checking for waterfowl along the Connecticut River before heading to the Quabbin Park area. I didn't have quite the diversity of species I had the day before but the river was even more ice free so the birds had many more spots to disperse to. Nonetheless I still had nine species of waterfowl over the course of the morning. The biggest surprise of the morning was at the still nearly totally frozen over Quabbin Reservoir. I stopped by to see if there was any open water (there was some way, way out) but I quickly noticed a deer carcass that was out on the ice and being picked over by an Eastern Coyote, Common Ravens and Bald Eagles. As I was watching the interactions I noticed a juvenile Golden Eagle in the area being pursued by a Bald Eagle. I tried to get some photos through the scope but failed. I last saw the Golden Eagle headed north and although I waited around for another 30 minutes it never returned. There were at least eleven Bald Eagles of various ages coming into the carcass to feed. This is the first time in a few years the reservoir has frozen over and featured a deer carcass out on the ice. Here are a few links to videos of the various scavengers feeding on the carcass...video 1, video 2 and video 3
Today featured a little early snow that quickly turned to rain after giving us a coating of snow. I headed out to the area of Winsor Dam and along the Swift River. The snow dropped the visibility too much to see if the deer carcass was still on the ice (typically a deer doesn't last too long on the ice with all the scavengers taking part in the feeding). The Swift River had some waterfowl with the highest total for Hooded Mergansers (91) and Ring necked Ducks (11) I have had there this season.
Like January this month has featured a record setting number of species for the month in Hampshire County. I have seen a total of 97 species for the month in the county, breaking my previous best February total of 88 which I set back in 2018. I have made it to 115 species so far for the year in the county, which is still way ahead of any previous year at this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment