Some more town listing today. Started at the Dunstable Rural Land Trust property, hoping for a county month bird in Purple Martin. No luck with that but the other goal was 5 new Dunstable birds. Ruby-crowned Kinglet was singing right away for one. Spent a while at the pond without much then had a kestrel as I moved on. The other pond had a few swallows and that was about it. Tried looping the trail like I did last time and took a wrong turn, which ended up adding Louisiana Waterthrush (and FOY Ovenbird). Got back to the right spot and went out to Fletcher St, picking up a Pileated and a few sparrows. On the way back, another waterthrush was singing. Another look at the pond added a Rough-wing and FOY Eastern Kingbird.
Still needing two and with the weather going downhill, I decided to check the pond in the center of town, then head into Pepperell. Nothing on the pond, so off to Marion Stoddart. First bird out of the car was a Killdeer, which was Pepperell #100! That’s town 27 reaching the mark in the county, which means I’m halfway to the goal of every town (or 72% if we consider each town bird up to 100 part of the total). Walked the trail to the other parking and added Rough-wing, Palm, and raven plus a ton of Yellow-rumps. BT Green sang once on return.
Looking over my target list, I realized I had forgotten Wood Duck was on there, so Dunstable was at 99. GPS said it was faster to go back to Rt. 3 than down to 119, so I doubled back and pulled in at Amos Kendall. Walked a bit but the wind had picked up and it was really quiet, so finishing Dunstable will wait for another day.
Looking ahead, obviously Dunstable will be over the line shortly. Somerville’s also in the high 90’s and needs a ton of common warblers so that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes in the next few weeks. Wakefield is next at 87, also needing a bunch of common migrants. After that, I’ve got a ways to go on most, Townsend and Littleton in the 70s and 11 more past 50. The goal for the rest of the year is probably getting everything under 50 past 50. Fortunately there’s a geographic pattern, with clusters in the northeast, western edge, and southern corner of the county, so doing a few in a day should be possible. If only May was 60 days long…