The continued northwest winds the last few days resulted in the arrival of even more waterfowl this morning. Once I got out of work I headed right for Winsor Dam where I started scanning the water and quickly came across a large flock of Black Scoters (plus a few White winged Scoters and a Long tailed Duck) moving back and forth and occasionally settling down on the water. The highest count I was able to get was 137 Black Scoters after review of the photos I was able to get through the scope (a good count but far from my highest counts for the species at the dam...previous highs being 610 on November 5, 2012 and 487 on November 3, 2013). I had a total of ten species of waterfowl during my first stop at the dam. I then stopped at a couple other spots looking for waterfowl, ran a few errands and then returned to the dam. The scoter flock appeared to have moved on but the second stop produced a single flyby Brant. I picked it up flying southwest fairly low and had good looks through the scope. I tried to get some photos but with the bird flying against the forested hills my phone just could not pick the single bird out as it moved by. I suspect more Brant will show up with the current push of birds or after the next cold front next weekend. With the Black Scoters and the Brant I added two more species to my year list in the Hampshire County bringing me to an amazing 245 species. This is the second highest species count I have ever had for the county with a few months of the year still left. Last year was my highest ever total in the county with 247. At this point of the year I'm ahead of the previous best year to date total by eleven species! (I was at 234 by this date in 2020, 2018 and 2015). All this with missing a few species that I could easily gotten to see if I was not working on the days they were seen. It will be interesting to see what (if anything) else shows for the year.
No comments:
Post a Comment