I headed out this morning before the extreme heat arrived with the beginning of our second heat wave of the year. We have had fairly strong southerly winds for a couple days and the temperatures have started to respond with highs today in the low 90's with increasingly high humidity. The highs for the next few days loom to reach the mid 90's with high indexes in the 105 degree range. My morning started off around dawn at Lake Wallace (which was fairly quiet...I think mainly due to the drawdown on the water levels this season). I'm forever hopeful that someday Black bellied Whistling Ducks will make an appearance at Lake Wallace but today was not the day. I then made my way down to the Holyoke Dam which held a few dozen vultures including at least four Black Vultures. The Chimney Swift count was down a bit from just a couple days ago when it peaked at over 400. As I had some errands to run in Hadley I headed north next with stops at Silvio Conte NWR-Fort River and the Honey Pot. I was stopping at Silvio Conte NWR mainly to check on the ongoing pair of Purple Martins that first showed up in mid June. I arrived to find one sitting outside the gourd the pair has been favoring the last couple weeks. As I was watching the single bird I heard some martins calling and noticed the bird sitting on the gourd was looking skyward. Within a few moments two more Purple Martins arrived! At this point the individual sitting outside the gourd quickly entered the gourd and I didn't see it leave. I thought I heard another martin calling but could not be sure. There are now at least three (and possibly four) Purple Martins present. One of the remaining martins started investigating one of the other gourds. Really amazing to have even one Purple Martin around but to have more than that is crazy given how rare the species is in the western part of the state. My stop at the Honey Pot was mainly to try to find the ongoing (but sporadically seen) Blue Grosbeaks. There were a few other birders present and despite our best efforts we struck out on the grosbeaks. Nonetheless we still had some good birds with nesting Brown Thrasher and Northern Mockingbird as well as a flyover Northern Harrier (unusual in the county in June).
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