My wife and I wrapped up the day outside Sunday with a visit at about
4:15 PM to the short-eared owl area that Todd Day and Val Kitchens have
described before; on Crenshaw Rd, VA Rt 624, in Fauquier County.
After stopping briefly at the "gazebo" pull off and seeing 2-3 harriers
perched in a tree but no SEOWs, we drove further north on Rt 624 and had
a single owl fly out of the hedgerow on west side of the road and perch
conveniently in a red maple overhanging the road 0.25 miles north of the
gazebo. There it sat some 30 ft above us. After passing below the owl,
we had an adult male harrier fly over us from west to east.
Turning around and returning to the gazebo(SEOW still in its red maple
perch), we stopped on the road about 200 yds from the gazebo and pished
up a good mix of wt, wc, song and savannah sparrows. Returning to the
gazebo about 10 minutes after our first visit, there were three birder
cars now at the pull off. We hung out for about 5 minutes, saw a couple
of rt hawks and a couple of harriers, then drove home(the SEOW remaining
at its red maple perch) north via Rt 624/Crenshaw to Rt 50 just east of
Upperville and just across from the Civil War bridge over Goose Creek.
This is one of our favorite neighborhood drives for habitat, birds and
horse country vistas. The road is often marginal as you get closer to Rt
50 and requires crossing two or three very narrow, old, one lane cement
bridges. It was along this stretch that a stop to watch first a
red-tailed hawk, and then an injured deer produced a dark hulk(it was
now about 5:10 PM) perched in a large sycamore overhanging the small
creek that parallels Rt 624 before joining with Goose Creek itself. As
the large owl flew, we first called it a barred, as they are the
dominant large owl in the area. But the bird perched and a number of
long looks showed the bulky bird to have very prominent ear tufts. This
was our first great horned of the year.
Earlier in the afternoon, I had gone out for a 10 mile run NNW from our
St Louis home via Rt 709 to Unison, turning onto Bloomfield Rd NNW to
its junction with Willisville Rd then south on Willisville Rd to
Wellbourne Rd and southeast to Rt 611 and home via Rt 709. On this
route, I was able to hear and/or see all 7 species of local woodpeckers.
Maybe due to the mild winter, red-headeds, flickers and sapsuckers all
seem relatively common in the area this year. There are 4 clusters of
red-headeds along this route that I can usually hear and all were vocal
yesterday. The hairy woodpecker seems to be the most difficult to find
with only the very largest woodlots seeming to support them.
Still earlier in the day, some time at our feeders showed the usual
cardinals, Carolina chickadees, titmice, wb nuthatches, downies, rb
woodpeckers, bluejays, wt and song sparrows, Am goldfinches among others
but also the two or three red-breasted nuthatches and a single female
purple finch that have been around the house since at least early
October.
Craig Tufts
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