I ended the month with a few stops on my way home on a chilly morning mainly looking for warblers and I found three species including a late Common Yellowthroat and a few late Palm Warblers. I also added my first Snow Bunting for the fall, bringing my total for the month in Hampshire County to a slightly above average 151. The forecast for the next week or so looks to feature above normal temperatures continuing with no really cold weather in the immediate future.
I added a more waterfowl for the month on the 28th following a big night of migration (the biggest night of the fall for overall numbers according to Birdcast with an estimated 4.28 million birds passing over the county). I thought Arcadia would be the place to be but the area turned out to be quite quiet with little in the way of passerine migration evident. I did have woodcocks still flying around in the morning plus continued decent numbers of Purple Finches flying over but sparrow numbers were very low and the only warblers around were some Yellow rumped Warblers. A group of four Black Scoters in the Oxbow were a bit unusual for the location but not totally unexpected given the large number of the species being reported elsewhere on larger bodies of water. After running some errands in Northampton I headed over to Winsor Dam and found large numbers of Black Scoters continuing with at least 266 present in a few groups. There were also a couple Red necked Grebes way out. I then headed home to take Wilson for a walk and do stuff around the house. Late in the afternoon I headed back to Winsor Dam and the waterfowl were even more impressive with 316 Black Scoters, 3 Surf Scoters, 17 White winged Scoters, 5 Long tailed Ducks, four Red breasted Mergansers among some eleven species of waterfowl. There were also three Bonaparte's Gulls mixed in among the Ring billed Gulls.
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