After a big warbler day and two new warbler species for the year yesterday I decided to stay a bit more local today following yet another great night of migration. With Quabbin Park still closed through the end of the week due to road construction I had to come up with a new plan for birding in the local area. I settled on some spots in Ware where I spent about three hours and had 18 species. Nothing really unusual although a nice mix of both breeding species and migrants moving north. At this point I decided to try my luck on a previously reported Lawrence's Warbler in Hardwick. Lawrence's Warbler is a hybrid between Blue winged Warbler and Golden winged Warbler and is the rarer of the two widely recognized hybrids (the other, more common hybrid is the Brewster's Warbler). The reason the Lawrence's Warbler is rarer is due to the fact that the genes that produce the plumage pattern are recessive and the combination that needs to come together occurs infrequently. Although not a true new species I can add for the year to my warbler list I still wanted to try and get a Lawrence's Warbler nonetheless as they are always so striking. I have actually found a number of Lawrence's Warblers over the years but had not seen one for the year until today. After a bit of searching I saw a regular Blue winged Warbler and within a few feet of it was the Lawrence's Warbler. The two appeared to be paired up and followed each other around. I did not hear the bird sing at all...it only called a few times and otherwise was silent. I got a few photos of it and then left it alone to continue on with its life. Now I had seen both of the common hybrids of the Blue winged/Golden winged Warbler complex. As I was not too far away from Muddy Brook WMA I figured I would stop there to look for more warblers but I arrived to find some heavy equipment being moved around so I skipped there and headed to a part of Quabbin Park I could access and as expected ran across a number of warblers. It was a 21 warbler species day...not quite the 28 species I had yesterday but quite successful with the addition of a Lawrence's Warbler.
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