10/16/2021
A bit of a retrospective post. Migration died down and immediately bled into one of my other favorite seasons - sparrows. Around the first of October, sparrows start moving in mass through the state. It is also a good time to start looking for the infamous "orange" sparrows (LeConte's and Nelson's).
I made two separate trips down to Goose Pond on successive weekends. Neither time was overly successful. It seems that species are moving a week to two weeks later than usual. With sparrows, it did not get cold enough to really force a mass movement. Whereas there usually seems to be be hundreds of Swamp Sparrows at Goose Pond this time of year, there only seemed to be around a hundred. I had a decent number of Lincoln's Sparrow during my visits, but I did not have any White-crowned. Of my true targets, I only had one Nelson's Sparrow on my first visit. Unfortunately, much like the Lincoln's, it did not have much interest in having its picture taken. Sparrows... right?
I did about as well photographing non-sparrow species as I did sparrows. There were a good number of Palm Warblers on both trips. I had one Marsh Wren that refused to pish out of cover. Fortunately, the Sedge Wrens were a bit more curious; although only briefly.
And that pretty much covers my first couple weeks of October. I wish it had gone a bit better. I started experiencing car troubles right about then, and it gave me a good excuse to go ahead and sleep in on the weekends instead of venturing out into the middle of nowhere. Luckily, the issue turned out to be a failing car battery and was fixed, eventually, rather easily.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
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