West Coast vagrant MacGillivray Warbler! 12/18/2022

I spent this chilly, Sunday morning traveling to a few sites south of Boston looking for my usual screech owls hoping to catch them basking in the sun. However....there was no sun so I can only imagine that they were deep in their holes slumbering away after a fruitful night of hunting. I did run into some members, Stuart and Mary Lou, of the Brookline Bird Club on their annual Christmas bird count and tagged along for a bit. The Massachusetts Rare Bird Alert had recently posted about a MacGillivray's Warbler spotted in the Mission Hill area of Boston and, since I was only 15 minutes away and traffic was light, I decided to head up there for a look-see. There were a few other birders and photographers there when I arrived, and we all joined forces looking for the bird on a grassy hill in a park near the home plate of a baseball field. After an hour, the bird was a no show, but myself and a few others persevered. The little yellow and gray warbler finally put in an appearance in the exact same spot where it had been seen previously, and I managed to snap a few poor pictures as it flitted in amongst the vines. It then zoomed across the street where it bounced back and forth between two low, dense hedges. Another birder and I, the last that were left, finally called it a day as the snow flakes began to fall. As we said good bye and exchanged names, I realized that we had met before at Paine's Creek Beach on the Cape trying to find another vagrant, the Vermillion Flycatcher. Neither of us were successful with the flycatcher, so we were happy that we caught glimpses of this famous west coast MacGillivray Warbler. I am still defrosting...