Quabbin Reservooir

The trip started at the Quabbin Park HQ on a pretty sunny and warm Sunday morning, with 6 members in attendance.  We birded around the HQ for a few minutes before heading to the other side of the Winsor Dam.  We usually catch a raven over there and this time we came upon a whole family.  I was reminded that sometimes it is not about the birds you see but what they are doing that can make the sighting memorable.  This group consisted of two adults and two ado-lescents and another one that I could not tell.  They were flying around, with the two younger birds following the adults begging (calling) for food from the adults, who seemed more content to fly around with them and show them where to look.  Many of us thought this might be the high-light of the trip but there was more to come.  

With the trees in full foliage, finding the birds was a little harder but the Winsor Memorial did yield good views of a Black-and-white Warbler and an American Redstart (which we were hearing all day).  As we drove towards the tower, we heard a Prairie Warbler calling and so we pulled over.  After much searching, he decided to come out and sing for us in the sunlight for a number of minutes.  At this same location we had great looks at a Chestnut-sided Warbler and heard a Cerulean Warbler calling.  

Not much in the tower area so we headed to Gate 54 (the artillery platform) and walked down to the shore.  On the way down while looking for a Hairy Woodpecker in a nearby tree we found a Black-billed Cuckoo.  We then proceeded down to the water where we saw a distant duck and a raptor that flew past us and landed in a tree on the far shore (even with binoculars this raptor was near impossible to see).  A scope was retrieved and the duck turned out to be a Common Merganser with at least two ducklings and the raptor turned out to be a Merlin.  The other interesting thing we saw there was a Great Blue Heron that flew into a pine tree near us and about 30 ft up, who proceeded to stand on the branch with bill open and gullet fluttering, cooling itself.  At this point the morning was running out, the heat was climbing and the two birds we usually look for at the power lines at the end had already been seen, so we decided to end the trip on those high notes with 40 species tallied.  

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