A fantastic end to November today with an 'Audubon's' subspecies of Yellow rumped Warbler in Hadley! I had more time free than typical this morning so I decided to head over to the Amherst/Hadley area. I try to take advantage of Sundays to spend more time at areas that are usually too busy during the week or get heavily hunted in the fall. I originally was going to go to some spots along the river but instead decided on the area around UMASS (after a brief stop at Winsor Dam). The forecast called for windy conditions with an increasing chance of rain/snow as the day wore on so I didn't have a lot of confidence in tracking down any warblers or other lingering passerines. The forecast was wrong and the wind held off through the majority of the morning thankfully. I was over in Amherst around 8:30 when I got a text from Ted letting me know he found an 'Audubon's' Yellow rumped Warbler in Hadley (oddly in the exact spot I was thinking of going instead of the UMASS area). I immediately headed south and arrived there about twenty minutes later and walked in with Mary. We caught up with Ted and got some info on where the bird has been and then started looking and listening for it. We found some 'Myrtle' Yellow rumped Warblers but initially no luck with our target. We then split up to cover more ground and Scott also arrived. I heard the bird flyover fairly high (it sounds much different from the Myrtles in the area). I quickly caught up with Mary and Scott and after a few minutes the bird flew back over us and briefly landed and I got a few marginal photos before it flew off again and was not seen again. I thought I heard it distantly perhaps an hour later but it was quite far. It seemed to be covering a large area and occasionally was with some Myrtle's but other groups of that subspecies I found later did not contain the bird. I wish I got better looks and photos (and perhaps a recording) but it was not to be and I feel luck to have even gotten the photos I did get. It is a fairly dull bird with a noticeable yellow throat that does not wrap around the side of the face and an overall plain gray face. Unfortunately the area it was in gets hunted fairly heavily and with shotgun season for deer starting tomorrow and then snow forecast to arrive I'm not sure how much luck anyone will have relocating it. In addition some areas the bird seemed to go to is either inaccessible due to water or is private property. Although a subspecies now it was once considered a unique species before being lumped with other subspecies into Yellow rumped Warblers. At the very least this species should be split three ways (and possibly four ways...more on that on a future post sometime).
In looking through old records that have been published regarding this subspecies the only record I was able to find for the entire western Massachusetts area was a bird in Greenfield in 1988. There was mention in the Baggs and Eliot "Birds of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts" that mentions a record from Southampton but the observer was not certain of the ID and she retracted the report. There are certainly records from coastal Massachusetts but even there it is a rarity and the subspecies is on the review list for the state (meaning reports get reviewed by the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee).
Earlier this fall I had an interesting Yellow rumped Warbler in the early part of October that looked good for a hybrid Myrtle x Audubon's Yellow rumped Warbler.
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