Friday afternoon, January 28, I decided to bird an area that I hadn't
visited beforeand decided that rather than focusing on sparrows, I'd
look for open water on the Potomac. Had originally planned to check out
Julie Metz but instead headed to Aquia Landing County Park, a small
Stafford County park area close to the Crows Nest area and Brooke, VA.
The park is closed for the season but many people park outside of the
gate and walk the 200-300 yards to the mouth of Aquia Creek.
The habitat near the gate is wooded, then brushy, then marsh and full
of sparrows and other common woodland birds. Before I got to the water,
I found white-throats and song sparrows, cardinals, chickadees, Carolina
wrens, titmice, wb nuthatches, and a single rusty blackbird.
As the brush gave way to marsh, a group of 15-20 male rw blackbirds
were in the tops of roadside willows. A couple of them were singing.
There were a number of swamp sparrows in the marsh and dozens of song
sparrows.
There were three small open water areas close to shore at the south
east end of the park; there was also a large area of open water in the
mouth of Aquia Creek.
In the 45 minutes that I birded here, I saw the following:
Mute swan: 46
Tundra swan: 17
Canada goose: 60-80
Mallard: 3
American black duck: 2
Gadwall: 200-250
Canvasback: 70
Redhead: 18
Lesser scaup: 120
Common goldeneye: 3
Bufflehead: 8
Hooded merganser: 7
Red-breasted merganser: 3
Bald eagle: 1 adult on ice near redheads and gadwalls
American coot: 45
Ring-billed gull: 80-90
Herring gull: 3
Great black-backed gull: 6
On the way to Aquia, I stopped in an oak-pine hickory woodland along
the Quantico/Prince William Forest Park boundary and pished up 2-3
hermit thrushes and a red-breasted nuthatch.
Yesterday, near my home west of Middleburg, found a flock of 15 eastern
meadowlarks near Unison.
Craig Tufts
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