Greetings - this is my first post, and I'm a relative newcomer to birding,
but I thought I'd pass this on...
At 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 29, 2003, I was in the neighborhood just
north of U.Va. and had stopped to check out what I thought was a brown
thrasher singing (I had heard one last week in the vicinity). Suddenly a
huge bird soared directly over me - for a split-second I thought it was a
plane. Just after I caught sight of it soaring, it made a few lazy flaps of
its wings, sort of rolling in from the outer edge, then glided out of
sight, neck held straight. I could hear the wingbeats, even though it was
40-50 feet in the air, just over the treetops. It made no vocalizations. I
lost sight of it after about 5 seconds, and it was backlit so I couldn't
get a good color reading, but I can say that it was light in color --
certainly not the typical black/gray of vultures.
I waited around to see if it had any pals, but none appeared. I am
accustomed to seeing Canada geese, turkey vultures, and hawks overhead, and
this bird had an even larger wingspan than any of these, and its body was
slender. I've been trying to convince myself it was a Great Blue Heron, but
the neck was definitely held straight, like that of a goose. When I finally
got to my guides last night, the diagram in Sibley of the Sandhill Crane
from below is most like what I saw. Even if it's a false alarm, I'd hate to
think I saw a Sandhill Crane and kept it to myself.
Winston
P.S. Last Friday I was treated to a veritable chorus of white-throated
sparrows in my yard. They seemed to love the damp, dreary afternoon. I
couldn't even count how many were singing!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Winston K. Barham
barhawk at virginia dot edu
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~wkb5j/
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