Greetings,
Apologies for a delayed posting, and thanks to Mike Stinson for posting about
the kites on Saturday night.
On Friday afternoon, 13 June 2003, Jon Little, Ian Topolsky and I drove to
Emporia with plans on birding Southside Virginia for a couple days. This is a
bit of birding that I did a few times in 2002 and thoroughly enjoyed. There
are a few goals for this area, and while we didn't fare very well on them, we
still had a few great highlights and quite a good time.
Friday afternoon we arrived in Emporia, got checked into the Hampton Inn
($67.50 a night, a bit steep but right off I-95, and it was quite a clean
room).
We headed out a bit before dusk to listen for nightjars and owls in
Greensville County, and had little trouble finding either. Chuck-wills-widow
was
calling from a couple locations on Route 660, and an Eastern Screech-Owl was
heard
from the same road at Caney Swamp. We didn't spend a whole lot of time out
Friday night, hoping to get a pretty early start on Saturday.
Saturday had us leaving the Hampton Inn at about five-forty AM, with the
intent to head into Brunswick County looking for Bachman's Sparrow in the
morning,
and then back to the Meherrin River area downstream of Emporia looking for
kites.
Weather was surprisingly cooperative, giving us a cool and cloudy start to
the day, and a hot and sunny afternoon. Good for both targets. Unfortunately,
the Bachman's Sparrow wasn't playing ball. We checked the location where a
bird was seen last year, and while the habitat remains very good, we weren't
able to extract a Bachman's. The general area that we scoured for habitat was
the most southeastern part of Brunswick, and a bit of southwestern Greensville.
The best looking areas seem to be along routes 602 and 601, just east of
Triplet. We were fooled for a bit by a field sparrow doing a monotone trill
that
sounded enough like a Bachman's to get our hopes up, and then actually saw the
bird and still almost blew it until we got it in a scope. About the best
find was a morbid one, two road-killed Chuck-will's-widows. These birds look
like they were either chasing one another and flew into the grill of a car, or
perhaps were just sitting on the little-traveled road when they were hit.
While
sad, it was a pretty good opportunity to look at them. Unfortunately they
were a bit unsalvageable.
Other birds encountered while looking for Bachman's are the typically
abundant things for this area: many Summer Tanagers, Blue Grosbeaks, Eastern
Towhees,
Indigo Buntings, Yellow-breasted Chats, Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Prairie
Warblers, Common Yellowthroats, Red-eyed Vireos, Eastern Kingbirds, Field
Sparrows,
Northern Cardinals, Chipping Sparrows, Yellow-throated Vireos, Ovenbirds,
Pine Warblers, White-eyed Vireos, Great Crested Flycatchers, Eastern Bluebirds,
and Northern Bobwhites. Other less common but still pretty easy to find birds
included Hooded Warblers, Black-and-White Warblers, Acadian Flycatchers,
Red-headed Woodpeckers, Yellow-shafted Flickers, Barn Swallows, Carolina Wrens,
Cedar Waxwings, Wood Thrush, Brown Thrashers, Northern Parulas, and Orchard
Orioles.
About midday we made for Emporia to get some lunch, and start hunting kites.
The habitat changes a bit from the pines and clearings we searched in
Brunswick to more farmland and deciduous/pine mixed woodlots, as well as the
very
high Meherrin River giving lots of swampy areas. Still we found mostly the
same
diversity of birds with a few changes. Chats and Prairie Warblers become much
less common , but Blue Grosbeaks, Summer Tanagers, and Yellow-throated Vireos
are still heard at just about every stop. Species added here are things like
Prothonotary Warblers, Barred Owls, Louisiana Waterthrush, more Northern
Parulas, herons and egrets, White-breasted Nuthatches, Kentucky Warblers,
Yellow-throated Warblers, and the sought after Mississippi Kites (MIKI).
Clearly for the whole weekend, the kites stole the show. We stayed entirely
south of US 58, east of 95, and never made it as far east as Route 35. We
dipped into North Carolina a few miles, driving from US 301 to Route 186.
(Most
notable bird in North Carolina were eight Cattle Egrets just north of
Margarettsville on 186.)
We struggled for a little while to find a kite, which had me wondering if
seeing fifteen or so of them last year in this area was a bit of a fluke.
Finally, on Route 662 about a mile south of the intersection with 615 we picked
up
our first three kites. They took some work, but were able to find a few while
scanning distant tree lines. We then continued down the road another
mile-and-a-half to where we saw a swarm of birds over a woodlot. From about a
half
mile, we knew we had found a flock of kites. We tried from a distance to get a
count, but realized we needed to get a bit closer. Fortunately the road went
right under them. We were able to get out of the car just under them and
watch them at will. This was at the 2.5 mile mark from Route 615 on 662, in
front
of a house numbered 27665. The highest count we had was sixteen birds,
mostly adults with a few second year birds mixed in. Having never experienced
anything like this with this species, the three of us were pretty tickled. The
birds were relatively easy to photograph, but it waspretty tough to get more
than six or eight of them in a frame at once. The vast majority of these birds
were adults, and the balance were probably all second years.
After leaving this spot, we drifted around a bit more, finding a few more
kites in route. The next group of MIKI were along Route 730 about a mile west
of
the Meherrin River, working over a wheat field on the north side of the road
at the intersection of Route 655. This was three adults and one second-year
bird. The next spot with another adult MIKI was in Southampton County, just
south of Branchville on the east side of a pond that is on the east of 701. We
had two more singletons around six PM back in Greensville County a little less
than a mile apart on Route 622. The first was at the intersection of 622 and
626, and the second was .7 miles further east on 622. The total of sightings
for kites was 26, from about six locations. While certainly the birds seen
later in the afternoon could have dispersed from the large flock, there's
simply no way to be sure, though it seems very unlikely that the bird south of
Branchville was part of the bigger group. The group of four birds was only six
or
so linear miles from the group of sixteen, about thirty minutes later, we
still found it reasonable that they were a different group of birds. In short,
there's a lot of kites down there, and we didn't see all of them.
Saturday night we did some owling and nightjarring, mostly in the same areas
where we looked for Bachman's Sparrow. We fared well on Chuck's, Whips,
Screeches, and Barreds, getting several of each. We only heard one Great
Horned,
and that was in Brunswick.
Sunday we drifted west to Kerr Lake, and then did some county listing as far
west as South Boston before taking US 360 back to Richmond and I-95. We ran
into rain as we entered South Boston, and it followed us the rest of the day.
The only notable thing here was several Barred Owls calling spontaenously
during the day in a few different counties.
Disappointing for the trip was our inability to find an Anhinga, though we
were hampered here due to no access at Taylor's Millpond. We also failed to
find a Swainson's Warbler anywhere.
Cheers,
Todd
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Todd Day
Jeffersonton, VA
Culpeper County
Blkvulture@xxxxxxx
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