grosbeaks and redpolls - 01/08

Pine Grosbeaks - all female/first-winter types.

Joined a few minutes later by a flock of Common Redpolls.

Turkeys in the fields as well..........

A casual twenty minute stop with the scope along Mt. Warner road, Hadley produced 4 Pine Grosbeaks as well as about 40 Redpolls, at one point all teed in the same spindly tree together. I still can't get used to this idea of tripping over Pine Grosbeaks throughout my travels over Hampshire and Franklin Counties but it's very much a reality this winter. I also saw 2-3 Pine Grosbeaks from the apartment today on North Whitney Street.

Lots of other birds around the scrubby fields on Mt Warner road besides the grosbeaks including a male Cooper's Hawk, several Red-tails, about 600 American Robins heading to roost, half-a-dozen each of Northern Mockingbird and Eastern Bluebird, and around 30 American Tree Sparrows in the area. Only the bluebirds were close. A flock of about a dozen Wild Turkeys wandered across the snow covered fields as well. Temperatures were absurdly high today, reaching 57 deg F, which I think was a local record.

GB,

JPS