Palm Warbler 'western', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
Palm Warbler 'western', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
Palm Warbler 'western', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
Yellow rumped Warbler 'myrtle', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
Yellow rumped Warbler 'myrtle', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
Yellow rumped Warbler 'myrtle', Hadley mall thicket, Hadley, MA, Nov 20, 2022
After a long night of an overtime shift I headed out to this morning to take advantage of the no hunting on Sundays and hit a few areas I normally would not go to during the rest of the week. The past week plus of November has been very cold for this time of year and I have not had a lot of luck tracking down any warblers with just a couple of Yellow rumped Warblers in a couple spots in Hadley despite visiting a lot of areas that have produced late warblers some years. It was a cold start and I first headed over to Arcadia to check areas I have had overwintering Yellow rumped Warblers in the past but had no luck. I then headed over to the East Meadows and arrived just as the cold front was arriving around eight. The clouds looked threatening and produced a few flurries but the big change was the pick up in the wind (which stayed up the rest of the day). No luck locating any warblers in that location either. At this point I decided to try the Hadley DPW but the wind was strong and made seeing and/or hearing birds tough. I decided to try one more place before throwing in the towel on finding warblers for the day. I saw a report from Cory that he had a Yellow rumped Warbler at Silvio Conte NWR -Fort River and briefly thought of going there but I decided instead to go by the Hadley Mall to follow up on the single Yellow rumped Warbler I had there a couple days before. When I arrived I heard a Yellow rumped Warbler calling. I quickly got my camera and binoculars out and headed toward a small thicket and almost immediately saw a bird low in the thicket pumping its tail and quickly identified it as a ‘western’ Palm Warbler…a good bird for this late in the season. In fact it is my second latest date for the species in Hampshire County (latest was a ‘yellow’ subspecies on November 28, 2018) and it is my latest record ever for the western subspecies in the county. After getting some photos of the Palm Warbler I got some photos of the two Yellow rumped Warblers present. I also had another warbler that called just a couple times and was not a Palm or Yellow rumped Warbler. I saw what I believe was the unidentified warbler flying away in bad light. No idea what it was but it was certainly something very interesting. It appeared that all the warblers were feeding off of something (probably insects) at the base of leaves in the thicket. I was really surprised to find any warblers given how cold and windy it was. I will certainly be checking this thicket again over the next few weeks as it has produced some great late season warblers in the past with the small area producing multiple Tennessee Warbler and a Wilson's Warbler in mid November of
2020.
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