[va-bird] Huntley Meadows, 3/25/02

All of you who decided to sleep-in this morning instead of attend the Monday
Morning Bird Walk at Huntley Meadows Park missed out.  We broke our streak
of bad monday morning weather with a beautiful morning (just a little too
breezy).  We experienced the greatest diversity of species so far this year
with 54 species tallied.  With a little help from what are normally regulars
(field sparrow, pileated wp, red shouldered hawk, black ducks, etc.), we
could easily have tallied 60.

The highlights included:

double-crested cormorant - 2 fly-overs (first for the walk this year)
great egret - 3
wood duck - 12
BLUE-WINGED TEAL - 2 males (first for the walk this year)
hooded merganser - only 2 females
gadwall - 1 pair
killdeer - 1
common snipe - 12+
herring gull - 1 (not so exciting, but uncommon in the park)
BALD EAGLE - 1 ad
sharp-shin - 1
AMERICAN KESTREL - 2 (and possibly 3) heading north into the wind
turkey vulture - 1 (common in the park, but not before 9am!)
black vulture - 1 (uncommon in the park)
hairy woodpecker - 1
tree swallows - 30+
N. ROUGH-WINGED SWALLOW - 3+ (first for the walk this year)
winter wren - 1
eastern phoebe - 2
fox sparrow - 1
swamp sparrows - normal numbers, but they were singing this morning
eastern towhee - 1
RUSTY BLACKBIRD - 12+
brown-headed cowbird - 10 or so (first for the walk this year)
common grackle - 1000+
yellow-rumped warblers - 10+ (first time we've had them in any numbers)
golden-crowned kinglet - several
brown creeper - 1

plus Spring Beauties in bloom, and Spring Peepers peeping.

Good birding,

Chris French
Oakton, VA
frenchch@xxxxxxxx
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