North Hadley - Oct 1st

Peregrine Falcon - Juvenile of Arctic race 'tundrius'. Obviously a really poor image but has generally pale-headed appearance with distinct white cheek and well marked, but not especially broad, black mustache.The crown of this bird was pale, creamy-buff, well shown by this bird in Northampton's East Meadows in October 2005.


Lincoln's Sparrow - Five plus today at North Hadley, plus one at Mt. Warner Road, Hadley.

The day started with heavy showers which soon eased up after 07:30am. Not having too much time to play with, I headed across to North Hadley to have an hour checking for migrants by the CT River. It was very slow to begin with, but after a little while I found a decent feeding flock consisting mostly of sparrows, primarily Song and White-throated Sparrows. Loosely associating with the flock were 2 Blue-headed Vireos, 5 Blackpoll Warblers, 1 Magnolia Warbler, a dozen or so Common Yellowthroats, 1 Scarlet Tanager, 6 Indigo Buntings, 2 House Wrens, 10+ Swamp Sparrows and 5+ Lincoln's Sparrows. A latish Chimney Swift also flew over south.

On the way back to Amherst I made a very brief stop at Mt. Warner Road in Hadley and found the place pretty busy with Chipping Sparrows, Savannah Sparrows, Eastern Bluebirds and at least 5 Eastern Phoebes. The highlight was a stunning 'blond-crown' juvenile tundrius Peregrine which swept through my binocular view as I was scanning the fields for sparrows. The views were immaculate, but were also very fast and the bird was already moving away by the time I'd got the camera to my bins. A fine bird to finish the morning though!


Best birding,


James