After a long ride home with Wilson that started before dawn on Monday we arrived home to a snow filled hellscape on Tuesday. Thankfully we missed the absolutely brutal cold of the weekend when it was below zero with wind chills at -30. The only silver lining was I still had some new species to try to find in Hampshire County for the year as I only had New Years Day to find stuff before I left to Florida. After spending most of the morning Wednesday cleaning up all the snow I eventually made it out to try to track down a Yellow rumped Warbler along the river and eventually I had a single flyover. I then spent some time trudging through a foot and a half of snow trying to track it down to get a photo without any luck...just ended up getting soaked. I also stopped by Winsor Dam and found the reservoir totally iced over...something that doesn't occur most years. Thursday we had to drive down to Tufts for an appointment for Wilson in the morning and the only birding I did was to stop down at a private residence where an Eastern Towhee is overwintering. I managed to get some good looks and marginal photos of the bird after a bit of looking (thanks Carol for allowing me to stop by). Friday was a very cold morning with a low near 10 but the winds from the last couple days had abated. My main focus for the morning would be trying to catch up with a Pine Warbler at a private residence in Williamsburg (which I did indeed catch up with). Before making it to see the Pine Warbler I was out the door well before dawn to chase down owls and hopefully get a look at a rocket launch headed to the International Space Station (I missed seeing that). Owls were around and I had a few species before hiking a bit in Williamsburg where I had at least three Red Crossbills flying over. Around eight I made it to the spot with the warbler and had the bird on a couple occasions coming into a mealworm feeder over the course of 45 minutes. I then headed east with stops at Arcadia where I had a couple Yellow rumped Warblers, the Coolidge Bridge where I had both species of scaup, three Ring necked Ducks, a couple Bufflehead and a possible Barrow's Goldeneye and then Aqua Vitae Road before going home to pick up Wilson for a walk. Once back home I had a couple Black Vultures flying over the house. By the end of the day I had found several new species for the year in the county and my count now stands at 82.
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