VA Birders,
I was nearly overwhelmed this morning from 7:00 until 10:00 as the birds
kept passing through my yard. Sometimes there were so many going in so many
different directions I could' hope to ID them all. The list totaled 38
species with 22 species of migrants. It was fantastic as I tried
frantically, but methodically to ID birds like 2 Blackburnian Warblers, a
male Cape May, a Black-throated Green, 20 Tennessee Warblers, a male
Cerulean, a Pine Warbler, 2 American Redstarts, 2 Chestnut-sided Warblers, 6
Yellow-throated Warblers,3 Red-eyed Vireos, a Rose-breasted Grosbeak,6
Scarlet Tanagers, 9 Baltimore Orioles, a White-eyed Vireo, an Eastern
Kingbird and 6 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, while flocks of Cedar Waxwings
and Am Robins flew back and forth. Some birds would feed and give me great
looks, while others just touched down and were gone, at times leaving me
wondering what I had just glimpsed. I know I missed many, but it was still
an adrenalin rush. When the birds come through in such numbers there is no
time to write down names or even codes, and my memory is certainly not good
enough to remember all the species and the number of each. So I resort to a
small hand held tape recorder. I am constantly switching from binos to tape
recorder, then back to binos, and if there is something really unusual or
mysterious I have the camcorder close at hand. It looks like some of you
birders are going to have to come down this way and give me a hand. If I
suddenly drop off the list you'll know I have reached critical mass, and
have exploded. :)
For those interested the complete list follows:
*Migrants
American Crow 6
American Goldfinch 7
American Redstart 2 (1 male, 1 female)*
American Robin 19*
Baltimore Oriole 8 (3 adult males, 4 immature males, 1 female)*
Barred Owls 3 (predawn)
Blackburnian Warbler 2*
Black-throated Green Warbler 1*
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 2*
Blue Jay 1
Brown Thrasher 1*
Cape May Warbler 1* (male)
Carolina Wren 1
Cedar Waxwing 13
Cerulean Warbler 1 (male late migrant)*
Chestnut-sided Warbler 2 (1male, 1 female)*
Chimney Swift 1*
Chipping Sparrow 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Eastern Kingbird 1*
Eastern Phoebe 1*
Eastern Towhee 3 (2 adults, 1 1st. year )
European Starling 20
Gray Catbird 2*
House Finch 9
Mourning Dove 8
Northern Cardinal 2 (1 male,1 female)
Northern Flicker 1
Pine Warbler 1 (early migrant)*
Red-eyed Vireo 3*
Rose-breasted Grosbeak 1 (immature male)*
Ruby-throated Hummingbird 6 *
Scarlet Tanager 6*
Song Sparrow 3
Tennessee Warbler 20*
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
White-eyed Vireo 1*
Yellow-throated Warbler 6*
Good Birding,
Roger Mayhorn
Grundy, VA
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