Chickering Farm, Westmoreland

A large farm located on Route 63 in Westmoreland, just south of the intersection with Route 12, like most other farms along the Connecticut River, Chickering Farm is planted with corn during summer.

Because of its size its a good birding location most of the year, the exception being summer when its under corn. October is when it starts to heat up. Pipits arrive and the sparrow party begins. I checked it out today (October 11th), hoping for a few choice seed eaters. The star of the show was an Ipswich Sparrow, a rarity away from the coast. It was faithful to the southernmost weed patch in the main field, and was pretty easy to locate with the naked eye once flushed (distinctly larger and paler than the abundant savannah sparrows).

The weedy border to the main house held a dickcissel, only my second for the valley. Other birds included 6 bobolink and 60 pipits (low # by the standards of the CT valley but its early yet). The Hinsdale Icterid roost is up to about 12,000, roughly 50/50  blackbirds/grackles. As I was leaving, a great egret came in to roost, my latest inland record.

Although not a sharp shot, the photo of the dickcissel is a good example of the power of digiscoping. I was more than 100 yards from this bird (about the length of a football field). The combined magnification of my scope (x60) and the optical zoom on my nikon point and shoot (x3) made for the equivalent of a 6,000 mm lens if my math is correct.  Such a lens does not exist (to the best of my knowledge), and if it did, would cost as much as the GDP of a small Latin American country and would require that country’s army to carry it around.

Dickcissel, Chickering Farm, Westmoreland

Ipswich Sparrow, Chickering Farm, Westmoreland