So as I said in an earlier post, I love spring migration. Saturday was a great day, and we continued birding on Sunday, this time heading north to Plum Island. It was a pretty windy day so migrants were laying low, but in areas where there were wind-breaks, there were pockets of activity. Warblers included the expected suspects: Black-throated Blues, Black-throated Greens, Black-and-whites, Yellows, Palms, Yellow-rumps, Common Yellowthroats, Northern Parulas, as well as a Chestnut-sided and an early Blackpoll.
A few birds seen on the island recently, but that we were not able to locate were Bay-breasted, Cape May and Blackburnian Warblers. Hopefully next time around, as these are always exciting birds to see.
We got pretty good looks at a Northern Shoveler while there, but easily the most common duck on the refuge (or at least the most visible) were Gadwalls:
After being wind-blown on the island for a few hours, we decided to head inland a bit and went over to Mass Audubon's Ipswich River Sanctuary, where a Prothonotary Warbler had been putting in an appearance for the last several days. When we arrived, we were told the bird had been singing and was pretty active, to just head a little bit further up the path, ad look for people on the left. Well, we found them, and they were all talking, and had seen the bird just a few minutes ago, but lost track of it while they were talking. We spent another hour listening and searching for the bird, but he didn't show again. I tried a bit of pishing to see if I could convince him to check us out, and was buzzed by a very inquisitive White-breasted Nuthatch:
Just as we were getting ready to leave, Pileated Woodpecker called from quite close, and a few moments later flew past us, and landed at the base of a tree where we had been standing and worked at gleaning insects from a knot on the trunk for about 5 minutes before moving on.
