Ludlow Loses a Lifer

It has been over a month since my last update. Some blogger I am!  I got an anonymous note from a reader urging me to a) post more often; b) incorporate video and audio; c) make it more exciting.  Agreed. So, to appease the masses here is a video of one of the Louisiana Waterthrushes located during April in Estabrook Woods in Concord (an ongoing project, as their breeding status is uncertain).

LOWA, Estabrook Woods 4/24/14

I have also been doing some recording in Estabrook, primarily of warblers and particularly of Louisiana Waterthrushes, in an attempt to identify individual birds and estimate how many singing males there might be.

This week Ludlow received the sad news that his Swainson's Hawk sighting on Birdathon 2013 had not been accepted by the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee.  It was a split vote, but ultimately my birdathon team was not able to resolve differences between our observations, nor were we able to eliminate some even rarer possibilities (Short-Tailed Hawk), so even though the committee agreed that it very likely was a Swainson's, without an official confirmation I am going to take down Ludlow's record, although we will note it as an unconfirmed sighting in Ludlow's eventual checklist.

May is off to a good start, but the lingering effects of the long, hard winter are still evident in low numbers and a consistent lag of 6-10 birds behind 2013. But, a few SW front have brought in decent warbler variety, with a high so far of 13 species on the MassPort Trail on May 7th.