The first few days of the third week of September have largely continued our sunny and pleasant weather with great migration conditions overall. I have continued to concentrate on warblers and managed to find my second Connecticut Warbler of the fall this morning. Another big highlight while out this morning was getting up close looks at a Bobcat that popped out on the trail and stayed put long enough for me to fire off a number of shots and get to admire it as it stared back at me. It has been a good few days for mammals overall with several species beyond the Bobcat including a family of four Black Bears yesterday. Yesterday I stayed fairly close to home in the morning and had a few pockets of birds and had my first Rusty Blackbirds of the fall. In the afternoon I was over at Smith College to give a brief talk on eBird to a biology class there followed by a bird walk along the Mill River...hopefully the talk was well received and was not too boring! On Tuesday I tried my luck over at Arcadia but due to poor bird management choices there it was quite quiet (they have mowed down almost all the weedy fields leaving very little sparrow habitat). Nonetheless I still had some birds there including the continued pair of Sandhill Cranes plus my first Lincoln's Sparrows of fall plus another Philadelphia Vireo. To start out the third week of the month I stayed close to home again and started my morning with a couple Virginia Rails at Lake Wallace and then added some other neat sightings including a good look at a Barred Owl at Quabbin Park and a number of raptor species migrating south.
love the bobcat
ReplyDeleteMe too!
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