I returned last night from a few days spending
all the daylight hours and some of the night
hours in the field, savoring the sounds, sights,
and smells of spring. The parents of a former
student let me stay in the farmhouse at their
hunting lodge and this provided a much-needed and
appreciated break from grading papers. A lot of
the time I was putting up bluebird boxes, or
doing frog-and-frog-egg surveys, or hunkered down
in a blind or a thicket trying to photograph the
birds that in this area are very nervous because
of the heavy hunting pressure, so it wasn't full
of intense checklist-birding. Frogs (spring
peepers, southern leopard, pickerel, American
toad and chorus, in order of abundance) were
singing in every little puddle, ditch, and pond.
And dozens of turtles plunked or slid off of logs
and beaver lodges wherever I went. Thrashers
appeared in places where they hadn't been all
winter and both they and ospreys were building
nests. A pine warbler was gathering spider webs
for its nest on the 25th. On the 24th I saw 11
pairs of wood ducks, but the next day I saw
mostly males. Perhaps the females were all
sitting on eggs. On the 23rd there were no
singing yellow-throated warblers, but on the 24th
they were in three locations. When I left on the
25th, blue gray gnatcatchers hadn't arrived yet
but I heard the captivating song of a hermit
thrush, perhaps for the last time this spring
before they head north, and I was again excited
by the tooting-honking calls of tundra swans, 106
of which were still at George Washington's
birthplace. Geese have moved north, leaving only
about 70 of them behind where there used be
thousands. Most of the red-breasted mergansers
have left the Rappahannock River, the males still
outnumbering the females here 31 to 11. In the
Potomac at GW Birthplace and Muse Rd, the rafts
of scaup are gone, as are the goldeneyes, the
most common duck being the bufflehead (75 at GW
Birthplace and another 70 at the end of Muse Rd).
The few ruddy ducks on the Rappahannock really
stood out since the males were sporting their
striking breeding plumage. At dusk on the 23rd,
a great horned owl flew across the marsh and
perched on a dead snag near the eagle nest at
Mulberry farm near Warsaw silhouetted, turning
his head, hunting. Meanwhile, a barred owl was
hollering next door in Wilna RRVNWR, and a
short-eared owl was flying back and forth (my
first for Richmond County) over the marsh. He
was obviously calling, his mouth opening widely,
but I couldn't hear him over the ear-splitting
chorus of spring peepers and leopard frogs. On
my last morning, just after being startled out of
my wits by 15 turkeys exploding out of a grove of
pines at Mulberry farm (and hoping that the
hunters can't find them during turkey season
April 10) I heard the rubber-ducky squeaks of two
brown-headed nuthatches and got great views of
them in the spotting scope, only the second time
I have seen them here.
White-crowned sparrows continue in two locations
where they have been all winter, immature plumage
greatly outnumbering adults. Savannah sparrows
were present in greater than normal numbers at
Mulberry farm (35).
New spring arrivals for my list were the
following:
Bonaparte's Gull: Leedstown 23rd
Forster's tern: 1 in Leedstown 23rd, 9 at George
Washington's Birthplace on 25th
Yellow-throated Warbler: 24th at Wilna RRVNWR and
Fones cliffs
House Wren on the 25th: near Leedstown
Blue-winged Teals (6 male and 4 female) near
Leedstown
Solitary Sandpiper on the 25th near Warsaw
(Mulberry)
40 rusty blackbirds at Peedee Creek, Leedstown on
the 23rd
2 chipping sparrows on the 23rd at Mulberry.
I can send a complete list if you want to contact
me off list.
Waterfowl included american wigeon, gadwalls,
green-winged and blue-winged teal, all three
mergansers, both scaup, ring-necked duck,
buffleheads, mallard, black, shoveler, and
ruddies.
Hawks included red-tails, red-shouldered, kestrel
and cooper's.
13 adult and 11 immature bald eagles.
7 barred owls.
All the woodpeckers except sapsucker were seen.
Sparrows: still good numbers of white-throats and
juncos (100-150 each, along the roads and
hedgerows). Most common sparrow (160) was the
song sparrow, seeming to be both territorial
residents and flocked migrants.
Treasuring spring,
All the best
Fred
=====
Frederick D. Atwood fredatwood@xxxxxxxxx
Flint Hill School, 10409 Academic Dr, Oakton, VA 22124
703-242-1675
http://www.agpix.com/fredatwood
http://www.flinthill.org
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