Good excuse to spend an hour in the car with the AC cranked yesterday.

My third Fork-tailed, next one will hopefully have the full tail.

Back to the Arlington Res today in equally lousy conditions (sunnier but much colder). Haven’t rushed around like this for a bird in a couple years.

360/285, thanks Bob.

Wednesday 11/27: Owl

Thursday 11/28: No outdoors time and nothing incidental in Otis.

Friday 11/29: Started at BBN, where I managed a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and Hermit Thrush. Nothing at the West Meadow. Continued on to Hanscom where one Snowy was way, way out. School St. was quiet. Common Loon and the usual ducks at Flint’s. Thought that was it for the day, but a late afternoon phone call had me running back to Hanscom where Simon had found a Short-eared Owl. About as far as the morning’s Snowy, but fortunately it eventually started hunting in the field on the other side of Virginia Rd (and flew over our heads).

With the rain today, wasn’t expecting to go out (had debated circling the res but didn’t bother). A 3:15 call from Marj was a nice surprise then.

Glad someone was out and about, thanks Simon!

See here, here, here, here, or here among others for actually identifiable photos.

Wednesday 1/16: Went to the river walk in crappy weather. About 9 Ring-necks, 1 Hoodie, and 2 coots were about it.

Thursday 1/17: Nothing exciting at the duck ponds.

Friday 1/18: Moody St. again. Two Bufflehead and not much else. Gull was present and was just a Herring.

Saturday 1/19: Pretty slow at Dunback and elsewhere.

Sunday 1/20: Started with a Charles tick, 2 Canvasbacks at Norumbega. Continued to finally try for the chat behind the Kohl’s in Burlington. No luck with that but I finally got a Red Crossbill for the county flying over. Horn Pond next was fairly quiet, one flock of redpolls was about it. On to Silver Lake and hopefully another county bird. No luck with the Glaucous Gull however and not many gulls to scan through. That turned out to be good as I got to the coast just in time for the Mew Gull show, would have missed it if I had lingered at all.

Last night I did my usual routine after dinner: turned off phone, took off shoes, took off socks, and picked up laptop. I was debating if it was hot enough to lose my pants as well when I noticed that Echofon (twitter client) was showing activity even though I had just checked. That generally means someone has been spamming the BBC account. Sure enough, I switched over and saw a new mention. However, not spam: @jryandoherty: @bbcbirds Black-bellied whistling duck @ great meadows concord!

I missed a Bonaparte’s Gull at Great Meadows yesterday (see WIR eventually). However, one of the eBird comments mentioned something about it possibly having been around for a few days, so I figured I’d head over this morning before the rain started.

I decided to bird my way over, checking the Cambridge Res and Flint’s Pond on the way. The southern end of the Cambridge Res was busy (although I initially drove by and decided to double back) with a couple Common Mergansers and some Wood Ducks. Rounding the bend, I pulled over to scan in the usual spot and saw enough to get out the scope (it had starting spitting a bit, so I did hesitate). First thing in the scope were four birds together. Three were quite dark and one showed some white. The odd one out stopped rolling over and looked like the rest. Yellowy ‘horns’ were also visible, a group of Horned Grebe! This is among the high counts for Middlesex county (ties the highest in eBird).

The long weekend provided lots of birds. Sunday was the Big Sit, so I spent the day at the tower by parking lot 7 on Plum Island with Joshua Rose and Nick Paulson. Felt slower than last year but we ended up with 72 species (plus several things like peep sp) so it couldn’t have been that bad. Highlights included a good afternoon jaeger show, 2 bitterns, and a Merlin hunting at dusk. And this guy: