Hot Birds: April 2025

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:15 GMT

On January 16, Miles Brengle spotted a Swainson’s Hawk between Ipswich and Plum Island. Erik Schiff had photographed what may have been the same bird on Plum Island in late November, but it had not been seen since. After a brief showing the next morning, the hawk disappeared again, but this time for only a couple of weeks, until Elizabeth Davis spotted it in Gloucester near Good Harbor Beach on February 2. It was more cooperative there and appeared almost daily until the end of February. Sam Zhang took the photograph.

Ted Gilliland, who found the first Tufted Duck documented west of the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts in fall 2023, found the second one, too, on March 1. It was near the Longmeadow sandbar in the Connecticut River, one of western Massachusetts’s most magnetic spots for rare shorebirds, seabirds, and waterfowl. Two other Tufted Ducks appeared this winter in more typical locations: Nantucket and Harwich. Trish Pastuszak took the photograph.