In more conventional rare bird reports, mostly things that have been around for a while, the Swainson’s Hawk that has spent the winter in coastal Essex County appeared yesterday at Salisbury Beach State Reservation:
Plus the Spotted Towhee at Provincetown Airport, which has been around about as long as that Swainson’s Hawk, made another appearance for Ted Bradford on Thursday:
I got to see some nice birds myself for once on Friday. My son wanted to try his hand at making ice cream (specifically red bean ice cream mochi), so we were driving to the Mill Valley Milk Store in Hadley for ingredients, when I spotted a pair of Sandhill Cranes by the side of very busy South Maple Street! Local birder Noah Kahn (who works at the USF&WS NE HQ in Hadley that the Trump administration is trying to close down) had seen and eBirded the cranes less than half an hour earlier, but since we were out running errands I did not see his report until later. The cranes, when I first spotted them, were in a location with lots of traffic and nowhere that I could pull over to take photos, but cooperatively foraged their way through the pastures until we could see and photograph them from the milk store’s parking lot.
