All, We'd received a report of a small fire Monday night at Hughlett Point NAP so we took the opportunity last night to check it out. The fire burned maybe 500 square feet of woods, not a lot, but if it hadn't been detected when it was there is no telling how bad it could have been. Please be careful with fire when in the woods this time of year. Pine warblers and ovenbirds sang in the wooded section of the preserve. Male red-winged blackbirds sang, if you can call their hoarse creaking a song, from the marsh. Better yet, several marsh wrens sang their tinkling song from the reeds. There were at least a dozen greater yellowlegs and three lesser legs moving around from beach to marsh and back. A pair of Bonaparte's gulls, one in breeding plumage, were loafing on the northernmost point. Breeding plumage Bonaparte's look something like laughing gulls with their black heads but they are smaller and paler, with white on the leading edge of their wings. Four mute swans were in the lower end of the lagoon. Best bird of the evening was an adult red-headed woodpecker excavating a nest hole in a dead pine near where the beach meets the woods. It has been over a year since we'd seen one of these in the preserve. Tom Saunders Balls Neck