Large waterfowl roost at Quabbin Park (including a Red breasted Merganser) plus a flyover group of Common Redpolls

Red breasted Merganser (center) with Common and Hooded Mergansers, Quabbin Park, MA, Jan 15, 2016

Red breasted Merganser (center) with Common and Hooded Mergansers, Quabbin Park, MA, Jan 15, 2016

Winsor Dam, Quabbin Park, MA, Jan 15, 2016

I had just a small window of time to get out this morning but it was still quite productive adding two new species for the year.  I headed over to Quabbin Park and came across a very impressive waterfowl roost that contained around a thousand individuals!  I'm sure this is a result of the freezing out of most small water bodies in the area and forcing the birds to move to the still ice free reservoir.  The breakdown of birds there included the following:  88 Black Ducks, 790 Mallards, two Common Goldeneye, 63 Hooded Mergansers, 42 Common Mergansers, a single Red breasted Merganser female (#79), 30+ unidentified ducks and a couple Horned Grebes.  I added a couple of Common Loons at Goodnough Dike.  A truly impressive congregation of waterfowl which I'm sure contained some other goodies I was just unable to find due to the low light conditions early on.  Hardly any of the birds stayed in the area much past sunrise.  As I was scanning the Goodnough area I heard some birds that sounded odd and then noticed three birds flying just over the trees heading southeast...Common Redpolls (#80)!  Hopefully this is just a sign of more redpolls (and perhaps other irruptives) to come as the winter moves along.