Spent about an hour yesterday, with a birding friend, from about 3:45 to
4:45 PM looking for rough-legs along Montressor Rd, Rt 661 west of Rt
15, in Loudoun County.
Instead of rough-legs, not one of which we could convince ourselves we
saw, we viewed well over 25 individual red-tails in about every possible
plumage variation. I have never seen such a concentration of buteos
except at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal site outside of Denver. At times,
we had 5 red-tails in a single tree and as many as 8 in a single field
of view with our binoculars. Also seen were a single northern harrier,
at least two American kestrels, some white-crowed sparrows, and both
vultures.
We exited north on Montressor onto Rt 662, Stumptown Rd to Rt 663,
NewValley Church Rd back to Rt 15 north. At the junction of Rt 15 and Rt
657, Spinks Ferry Rd, there were 4 northern harriers feeding together in
the fields just south of our turn east onto Spinks Ferry.
We continued east on Spinks Ferry to its junction with Limestone School
Rd, which is Rt 661, but east of Rt 15. We took it south and after a
half mile or so, turned left, now heading east again, on Rt 656, Hibler
Rd., towards the Potomac River. This stretch of road had yielded
interesting birds in years past.
Just 100 ft after turning, I spotted a single short-eared owl sitting
about 3 ft off the ground in a sapling, just 30 ft from our vehicle. We
watched it from the car and after a few minutes, it flew to the top of a
30 ft tree along Limestone School Rd. It settled down and we got out
with our scope. By the time we were set up, it was joined in the tree by
a second short-ear. We watched the two of them, both in the same field
of scope view, in perfect light, for almost ten minutes. During that
time, two additional short-ears appeared, vocalizing and feeding, again
in this northeastern quadrant of field and tree patch of Rts 661 and Rt
656, just south beyond the encroaching McMansions filling up these
fields.
After viewing the owls, we drove south along Rt 661 to Rt 15 and headed
north again briefly to again try Montressor Rd, Rt 661, west of Rt 15.
We stopped at a vantage point over the fields north of the road. A pick
up truck rumbled towards us, the driver a construction guy on the well
drilling rig up the road. He saw our scope and stopped and spoke to us.
He said, "Do you see all those "tails" out there? Beautiful, aren't
they. I've never seen so many in one place and I'm from Augusta County
where we have lots. Too bad this whole place is going to be big homes
real soon. They should make this a preserve for these birds. Lots of big
bucks out there too."
Craig Tufts
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