Monday, January 5, 2015

MA - Northern Shoveler and more, Turner's Falls

We're bracing ourselves for a plunge of Arctic air and even had a little taste of it this afternoon. In between times, I had a quick check of the Turner's Falls area finding a few nice long stayers but no obvious new arrivals. The female Northern Shoveler continues at the power canal, neatly hidden among the Canada Geese. A male Merlin was soaring over the Turner's Falls bridge this afternoon and a slight improvement on the gull situation found a nice adult Lesser Black-backed Gull at Unity Park. A couple of Cedar Waxwings were feeding along the power canal, a species that was curiously absent during the same sector of the Greenfield CBC on December 28th.

 Northern Shoveler (right) - female continuing from late December, Turner's Falls power canal, Franklin Co., MA. January 5th, 2014. Skillfully hiding among 350 Canada Geese!


Canada Goose - abberant bird with unusual amounts of white flecking on the black neck.
Turner's Falls power canal, Franklin Co., MA. January 5th, 2014. The goose flocks at Turner's Falls often
hold two or three birds like this which seem to have increased over the last five years or so.




 Lesser Black-backed Gull - adult, Unity Park, Turner's Falls, Franklin Co., MA. January 5th, 2014.


 Cedar Waxwing -  Turner's Falls power canal, Franklin Co., MA. January 5t., 2014.
Nice to see after completely dipping on this species during the Greenfield CBC.

Yesterday evening I hung around for the goldeneye roost at the power canal. It was a fine show with about 85 birds coming in and a great deal of displaying. There was, however, no sign of the male Barrow's Goldeneye which I don't think has been recorded here since the beginning of the New Year. The Eastern Phoebe was also calling toward dusk, continuing from late December. 

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hallo James. I love your blog.
Just one question, wich LBB Gull ssp.
that will be?

James P. Smith said...

Thanks Tuvia.

The subspecies is graellsii..the only truly expected form of LBBG over here though one or two claims of intermedius have cropped up recently from the eastern US.

Did you get the Great Shearwater in Jaffa? Very cool that such birds can be photographed from that spot!

Unknown said...

Thanks
That's what I thought only I wasent sure.
Did Not see this time Great Shearwater, but I saw one on the coast near Haifa in winter 2012. Indeed great bird! :-)