WIR 7/5-7/11

Wednesday 7/5: Usual birds at BBN. Lots of Spot-winged Gliders among other odes, Silver-spotted Skippers among other butterflies, and a whole family of Short-tailed Weasels.

Thursday 7/6: Nothing of note at Cookson or the river.

Friday 7/7: At least one Red-billed Tiger Beetle at Prospect Hill. Swift River Cruiser about the only other thing of note. Nothing on the res on the way home.

Saturday 7/8: Concord butterfly count. We changed up the route a bit this year and hit spots that actually had butterflies instead of overgrown brush. Still wasn’t great but we had about 20 species instead of the barely 10 last year. Also decent numbers of odes, an antlion, the wasp mimic robber fly Ceraturgus fasciatus, and 3 mantisflies. Broad-wings were about it for birds of note.

Sunday 7/9: Started at Squantum where the rail wasn’t calling but a few shorebirds were around. Went to Nut Island for Wilson’s Storm-Petrel next (wish I had seen the Whimbrel report from the spit by then), then to Ponkapoag. Worked the dam a bit and eventually got a single Attenuated Bluet, which I believe is my 30th Enallagma. Also a couple Scarlet Bluets but not too much else. An eagle flew over with a fish and kingbird escort. Started down the boardwalk but it looked to be getting hairy, so I gave up and went back to the dam without finding anything different.

Monday 7/10: Too rainy, so Least Sandpipers at Nine Acre were the only things of interest on a pond/farm field loop.

Tuesday 7/11: More or less the usual at Hanscom, a few FOY butterflies included Dun Skipper and Great Spangled Fritillary.