It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Winter-Bird Wise That is!

I figured it was that time again considering it's been a couple of weeks now since looking at some of the past data from Recent Central Mass Bird Sightings and as you can see, a lot has changed bird wise since!  Most interesting to me above are the following birds;  Bonaprate's Gull's, Common Goldeneye, both Evening and Pine Grosbeak, Fox Sparrow (I've really lucked out with them this year), Gadwall, Lapland Longspur and the always elusive Northern Shrike!  All of these numbers increase the 15th to 30th with a peek the 15th to the 23rd.  NOTE:  All of this data is from 1998 to 2011 and totals only (no averages)

I'd then look at it vice versa with the birds peeking the 24th to the 30th with Common Redpoll being most impressive followed by a Great Cormorant who I really want on my Worcester County list this year if possible as it would be a county bird!

Next would be drilling into more data on a few chosen birds to see where most of the reports have been this time of the year which I've summarized above for the Common Redpoll.

Followed by Evening Grosbeak.  Nothing surprising here with Royalson having the highest reports and will be interesting to see what this year brings us winter finch wise considering we've been getting plenty of them already which is earlier than normal so the data above isn't a good representation of what we can expect this winter, but it will show you places to look for them!

And the last of our winter finches, the Pine Grosbeak.

Now for my selfish birds which are birds I still need for the year (need all of the finches above but guessing so do most others), but these are birds many probably already have except for me with my slacking the first couple months of last year.  The Gadwall is one of those examples.

Followed by Wilson's Snipe and I was happy to see a report of them at Bolton Flats today through my eBird alerts so there's still hope.  A total PITA though with it being hunting season I should add.

And last Northern Shrike.  That high number of 7 at Barre Falls is mostly in previous years as from what I understand they no longer see it at the hawk watch site (FYI).

And last a little more data on other birds of interest and yes the number of 37 for Bonaparte's Gull is correct!

So I'll leave you with this data for the time being but be on the lookout for Part Two of my Massachusetts Owl Forecast that I'll be sharing with you all tomorrow.  NOTE:  This will be for the entire state as I haven't gotten to the Worcester County location detail yet, but will do so next week.

Take care all.