Today brought the annual Global Big Day and I started off my morning at Quabbin Park and was having a great morning with lots of stuff around and my original intention was to stay at the park for a few hours but a text from Jack changed my plans when he had a Hooded Warbler at Skinner SP. I ditched my plans to stay at the park and headed over to Skinner SP where I arrived a bit before six and made the walk up the hill to the area where he had the Hooded Warbler. I looked and listened for awhile but no luck. I eventually caught up with Jack and we discussed the bird and where it seemed to be headed (upslope and further down the ridge). I headed in the direction it seemed to be heading and yet again had no luck. However a bunch of other migrants were showing well with a number of warbler species as well as a big influx of thrushes with really impressive numbers of Swainson's Thrushes and Veery...some of the biggest numbers of these species I can remember in a single location. After getting caught up in the migration spectacle on the way to the summit I got another text from Jack saying he relocated the Hooded Warbler so I headed back down again. It had gone silent again by the time I arrived and I then spent a significant amount of time trying to hear it or see and eventually I got rewarded with distant songs. It only sang a few times again and then went silent. Although I never saw the bird it was nice to hear it (even distantly) as I totally missed the species last year. After three hours at Skinner I headed back over to Quabbin Park where I had a decent amount of migrants around but failed to relocate the Lawrence's Warbler I had at then location yesterday. As a word of warning the ticks were extreme if one goes off trail in the park...I ended up with 38 ticks in going perhaps three hundred feet off trail...a crazy amount of ticks, even for Quabbin. I didn't really try to maximize species for Global Big Day but I still managed to find 106 species with only a few stops...gotta love mid May!
I also checked duck box #2 today and found the Hooded Mergansers had fledged. I immediately took the camera off the base of the nest box pole to see if I managed to capture any video of the birds leaving the nest. I also checked duck box #3 (the next in line to fledge and found the eggs unhatched). Once I checked the card from the camera I was very happy to see I got video of the Hooded Mergansers leaving the next box on the 11th. A link to the video can be found here: Hooded Mergansers leaving the nest
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