After another night with great migration I got up and got some stuff down around the house and then headed out for a little birding before having to run some errands. It was warm and humid with low clouds to start the day and I ran across some birds for sure with just a smattering of obvious migrants. While I was on my way to run some errands I saw a post from Aaron from UMASS saying his group of students had a Hooded Warbler on the northwest side of campus so I made sure I had a bit of time to try for it and headed in the direction of the campus. I knew it was graduation weekend and the doctoral degrees were being awarded during the morning but I figured I was early enough to beat the crowds and came in the backside of the campus. I arrived on campus and started the walk out to the area where the bird was reported and had some birds on the way. Once I made it to the area I had a Magnolia Warbler singing strongly and sounding a lot like a Hooded Warbler (I even tried an experiment with the often fallible Merlin app and it suggested both species as possibly making the song). I had a fear that perhaps the original observers had mistaken the Magnolia Warbler for a Hooded Warbler but given that they usually get their identifications correct I was still hopeful. Steve arrived and we discussed the bird and decided to give it another try and after a bit of waiting we finally heard the Hooded Warbler fairly close. Despite being so close we could never get a look at it as it moved through the woods. The bird moved around a fair amount and usually was not too close and would also go silent for periods. After lots of scanning I had a few second view of the bird and it was the only view I would get of the bird. A very frustrating bird to try to see for sure. Eventually the sun came out and it warmed up quickly and really felt like summer. A decent morning with a bit over a hundred species despite not covering as many areas or spending as much time outside.
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