I posted this yesterday but the outage prohibited its getting through so
I''ll post it again.
John Irvine
Mike Smith, Richard Schiemann, and I spent Monday, July 7th, searching mainly
for butterflies (but since all of us are birders we were also alert to the
birds) along mountain roads in western Virginia and eastern West Virginia. We
went first to Bath County, turned south on county road #683 from VA Rt 39, and
took Forest Road 194 south along Brushy Ridge looking especially for Diana
Fritillaries. This is reputedly the best place in Bath County to see them.
But
apparently due to the spring rains making the season run late, they were not
in evidence. The fact that the road graders had taken out most of the
milkweed plants along the roadside didn't help either. We came back up the
valley on
county road 629and had an excellent if brief look at a hen Wild Turkey before
it melted into the woods. There were at least 8 singing scarlet tanagers
along the forest road.
We had gone to the Spruce Knob area about a week earlier hoping to find
Common Ringlets and Pink-edged Sulphurs, but that had turned out to be a
dismally
cool day, pretty much devoid of butterflies, and so we decided to run up there
and try again. We drove into Pocahontas county on Route 39 and turned north
on WV Rt. 28. More than an hour later we turned left and went up the south way
along Sawmill Run Road to the area near Spruce Knob Lake. Along the way up
to the lake, especially at switchbacks, we discovered some good butterflies of
more northern persuasion: Harris's Checkerspot, Atlantis Fritillaries (one of
which conveniently flew into our car where we trapped it and studied it from
inches away through the rear window, finally nailing the ID with its beautiful
blue-green eye color), and Black Dash (Skippers) being lifers for at least
several of us. We found Harris' Checkerspot, a Baltimore Checkerspot, several
Common Ringlets and many Pink-edged Sulphurs in the grassy meadow below the
dam. A singing male Purple Finch was in the top of a fir tree at the parking
lot, and its mate was seen below. Then, with the weather holding nice, in late
afternoon we drove up to the peak of Spruce Knob. On the way we found two
hummingbird sphinx moths nectaring on Viper's Bugloss along with the ubiquitous
Pink-edged Sulphurs and a Tiger Swallowtail. On the way back down we were
treated to a roadside hen Ruffed Grouse who flew up into a tree as we stopped
the
car and gave us killer looks before she flew down to the ground back in the
forest to join one of her nearly grown offspring.
Here is our bird list, a good part of which consisted of birds heard rather
than seen:
Turkey Vulture 6
Accipiter sp. 1
Buteo sp. 1
Broad-winged Hawk 1
Ruffed Grouse 2
Wild Turkey 1
Mourning Dove 10
Eastern Wood-Pewee 1
Acadian Flycatcher 1
Great Crested Flycatcher 1
EasternKingbird 1
Tree Swallow 12
Barn Swallow 7
Blue Jay 2
American Crow 5
Common Raven 2
Tufted Titmouse 1
White-breasted Nuthatch 1
House Wren 1
Winter Wren 1
Golden-crowned Kinglet 1
Blue-gray Gnatcatcher 1 feeding young
Eastern Bluebird 5
Wood Thrush 1
American Robin 20
Northern Mockingbird 2
European Starling 15
Solitary Vireo 2
Red-eyed Vireo 18
Chestnut-sided Warbler 1
Black-throated Green Warbler 1
Ovenbird 1
Common Yellow-throat 1
Hooded Warbler 1
Scarlet Tanager 9
Northern Cardinal 2
Indigo Bunting 15
Eastern Towhee 20
Chipping Sparrow 5
Song Sparrow 2
Dark-eyed Junco 3
Red-winged Blackbird 3
Eastern Meadowlark 2
Common Grackle 4
Brown-headed Cowbird 3
Purple Finch 2
American Goldfinch 8
Houe Sparrow 2
Mike also suspected he heard a singing Blackpoll Warbler, but we failed to
chase it down. The butterflying was too good at the time. That's 48 species
of
birds, and 23 species of butterflies for the day, of which a number were
new. Three happy nature enthusiasts got home late in the evening after a most
enjoyable day.
John Irvine
Harrisonburg, Virginia
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