Date: 11/3/24 1:58 pm From: Josh <opihi...> Subject: [MASSBIRD] Halloween X: The Return of Josh's Birding Trip
Hi MassBirders,
This fall, HBC’s Janice Jorgensen prompted me to reanimate my formerly annual Halloween-ish birding trip to Satan’s Kingdom, Hell’s Kitchen, and nearby places in Franklin County, the 10th iteration of this trip. I met up with my group at the power canal in Turners Falls, and we started with a short walk there. The canal’s water level is still far below normal, so birds were few and mostly passerines. The highlight was probably a close-up Brown Creeper right by the parking lot just before we left.
We organized into a couple of carpools and headed toward Northfield. Our first stop up there was the Sawyer Ponds that bracket the south end of Old Vernon Road, where we tallied over 30 Wood Ducks plus a few each Ring-necked and American Black.
From there we proceeded to Hell’s Kitchen, a large marshy wetland. A group of 10 Green-winged Teal greeted us in the first small section of the Kitchen. A couple of Killdeer headlined the larger portion. A flock of goldfinches that descended to the water’s edge to drink brought a female/immature plumaged Purple Finch with them. Pine Siskins called from overhead but did not follow the other finches to the water. A Hermit Thrush was eating Euonymus berries at the edge of a nearby residential yard, and a Winter Wren skulked beneath a horizontal tree trunk near the shoreline.
We continued into Satan’s Kingdom Wildlife Management Area. Just a few minutes after we left our cars, a Black Vulture soared low overhead. A few more Killdeer, Wood Ducks, and GW Teal populated the pond, and we continued hearing Pine Siskins overhead, joined at one point by another Purple Finch. After we left the Kingdom, we drove nearby Caldwell Road, which sadly had dried out and lost the shorebirds which had been reported here in recent weeks (given the late date, those birds would likely have left by today even if the fields had been still muddy).
We stopped for lunch at the Upper Bend Cafe in Turners Falls, with 39 species on our trip list. We agreed that we needed to crack 40 before calling it a day, and made one last stop at Unity Park by Barton Cove. The Cove obliged us with our first Hooded Mergansers, Double-crested Cormorant, and Mute Swans of the day, bringing us to 42 for the trip. (I personally had 44 on the day, having spotted a pre-trip Great Blue Heron in Leverett on my way to meet the group, and an adult accipiter, not sure whether Cooper’s Hawk or Sharpie, over the power canal parking lot just after the rest of the group left)
