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bird sightings

Recent bird sightings as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society:

The highlight of last week was a remarkable assortment of geese in Westfield, in fields near the Westfield Treatment Ponds. Present in a large flock of Canada geese were a pink-footed goose, a barnacle goose, a brant, and a cackling goose. Granville Road in Westfield affords a good place to view this remarkable grouping.

Plum Island: Sightings from Parker River National Wildlife Refuge included 40 northern pintails, 350 green-winged teal, 240 buffleheads, 1,500 migrating double-crested cormorants, an American bittern, an American golden-plover, 16 purple sandpipers, two stilt sandpipers, a great horned owl, a barred owl, four hermit thrushes, and a lapland longspur.

Nantucket: Sightings included a northern shoveler, four American woodcocks, both yellow-throated and blue-headed vireo, three American redstarts, a northern parula, a yellow-throated warbler, a black-throated green warbler, an indigo bunting, and a very late orchard oriole.

East Boston: Noted at Belle Isle were two great egrets, a Wilson’s snipe, three peregrine falcons, 14 tree swallows, a winter wren, and two hermit thrushes.

Concord: At Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge there were 18 wood ducks, two pied-billed grebes, two Virginia rails, 11 American coots, nice black-bellied plovers, and a merlin.

Squantum: Five American oystercatchers, a stilt sandpiper, a long-billed dowitcher, and a clay-colored sparrow.

Sharon: Observed at Lake Massapoag were a cackling goose, a canvasback, and a lesser black-backed gull.

Manomet: Reports featured a blue-gray gnatcatcher, a Nashville warbler, a black-throated green warbler, and an indigo bunting.

Miscellaneous: Reports included a greater white-fronted goose at the Jordan Dairy Farm in Rutland; cackling geese in Ipswich and Middleton; a black scoter in Carlisle; a brown pelican in Boston Harbor near the John F. Kennedy Library; four sandhill cranes in Uxbridge and four more in Lynnfield; an American oystercatcher in North Scituate; an American golden plover in Winthrop; yellow-billed cuckoos in Acushnet, Waltham, and West Roxbury; a yellow-breasted chat and a lark sparrow at Horn Pond in Woburn; and a dickcissel in Groton.

For more information about bird sightings or to report sightings, call the Massachusetts Audubon Society at 781-259-8805 or go to www.mass-audubon.org.