Most of the first week of the month was dominated by the interactions between the remnants of Hurricane Ian to our south and high pressure to our north which caused several days of strong northeast winds with several bouts of rain and cool temps that finally broke on Thursday. The beginning of this poor weather brought in some waterfowl on the second that I covered in an earlier post. With the beautiful sunny weather I headed over to Arcadia before dawn and spent the next four hours there. Among the 80 species for the day were many highlights including a Sandhill Crane feeding in a harvested cornfield, a very late Virginia Rail calling from the marsh early on, at least 19 Eastern Phoebes, a Myiarchus flycatcher that I saw very briefly (either Great crested Flycatcher or perhaps Ash throated...either would be a very good bird for October but the view was just too brief to be certain and despite a lot of effort I was unable to relocate it), a couple late Wood Thrushes, lots of Purple Finches flying over, seven species of sparrows with Song Sparrows and White throated Sparrows being the most prevalent and eight species of warbler with Palm Warblers showing in the greatest numbers. After Arcadia I made a brief stop in Hadley and turned up a few more species for the day but nothing too unusual. More on warblers for the first week of October at the following link. I'm certain tomorrow will also be a good day to get out and bird but I have to work so I will have to rely on others to find some good stuff. More on the rest of the first week of the month below.
I decided to travel a bit west on Tuesday and headed to Arcadia where I actually had a little blue sky and a brief amount of sun early on before the clouds and rain moved back in. I was mainly looking for passerines and found some despite the wind with highlights including a couple Wood Thrushes, half a dozen species of sparrows, a Yellow Warbler and a Rose breasted Grosbeak among a total of sixty species. Waterfowl were also around in decent numbers and variety with nine species overall. I tried a brief walk in the East Meadows but the winds were too strong so I headed south to the Holyoke Dam where I had more waterfowl with a good count of Common Mergansers. The dam also produced a late Chimney Swift zipping past, a couple Spotted Sandpipers and another Yellow Warbler for the morning. The rain really started picking up around ten so I called it quits and headed home. In between bouts of rain I made a few stops at Winsor Dam and the best species I could find was a single Bonaparte's Gull hanging out with a few Ring billed Gulls.
I had family obligations on Wednesday that kept my birding to a minimum with just a quick stop at a very windy and rainy Winsor Dam early on that didn't produce anything of note.
A quick update on my boy Wilson....It has been about a year since we got the bad news that Wilson had cancer and after a lot of discussion and consultations we decided to not take any drastic measures for him that would have negatively effected his quality of life and a year later that appears to have been a good decision as he continues to be largely unaffected by the tumor on his foot. The tumor has gotten a bit bigger but still is not giving him trouble.
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