Heather Bellow reports in The Berkshire Eagle that birders in Western Massachusetts are excited by the spotting of two rare yellow- and black-breasted birds called dickcissels having a wintry layover in Ann-Elizabeth Barnes and Richard Meyers' yard in Egremont. The birds usually winter in Mexico, but Barnes, who is a member of the local Hoffman Birding Club, reported the sighting on eBird on Jan. 8 and Audubon on Jan. 13., and also to the local Hoffman Birding Club. Barnes said, “It’s a lifer for me,” of spotting the dickcissels, using the birder jargon "Lifer" that means you're seeing a bird for the first time. The Cornell Ornithology Lab at Cornell University says dickcissels are mostly found in “overgrown pastures, savannahs, and croplands in the central Great Plains,” and migrate to Mexico and Central and South America in the winter. One of the type of birds was sighted October 2021 at Linear Park in Williamstown, according to to Mass Audubon, which says they are a “regular but rare-to-very-uncommon migrant in Massachusetts.” Read more about this story in The Berkshire Eagle.