Happy New Year!
In my ongoing quest to find the Red-headed Woodpeckers at Huntley Meadows I
began the New Year on the boardwalk there hoping that my bad luck last week
with these woodpeckers wouldn’t carry over to today. At Huntley, highlights
were: an adult Bald Eagle (flushed the ducks at least once while I was there),
two pairs of American Black Ducks, 35 Northern Shovelers, 50 Northern Pintails,
32 Green-winged Teal, 2 American Coot, and a single Phoebe that came out once
it started to warm up. After spending a couple hours there, notably without
finding any of the later-in-the-day reported Red-headed Woodpeckers, I headed
over to Belle Haven/Dyke Marsh.
At Dyke Marsh highlights were: missing a Red-necked Grebe by 15 minutes, a
drake Ring-necked Duck amongst the Lesser Scaup, three scaup that could have
been Greaters, a singing and two loudly chipping Winter Wrens.
At the Belle Haven picnic area: A single “Richardson’s” Cackling Goose amongst
the approx. 1000 Canadas (some of which were too far out to scan for rarities
with only binoculars, sigh!), 7 Canvasbacks interspersed in the Ruddy Duck
flock close to shore and a Merlin that was zooming south along the shoreline
(with a brief break to dive after something) whilst being chased by the local
crows.
Later in the day I stopped by Burke Lake, or Lake Burke as one sign states, to
try to draw out a few more species on this mini big day. Waterfowl diversity
was low and besides a few Mallards, Canada Geese, and some Red-breasted
Mergansers that flew in late. The highlight of the entire day, however, was
definitely watching mixed crow flocks fly over the park for about 40 minutes.
An interesting trend I observed was that at the beginning the flocks consisted
mostly of Fish Crows, after about ten or fifteen minutes the composition
changed to be about half American half Fish and then towards the end they were
almost exclusively Americans. If anyone goes out to observe this excellent
sight please try to keep a detailed tally (perhaps start a new count every five
or ten minutes) and start and stop times of the flight as well as reporting it
to the list (or at least me as I am very curious as to the numbers and species
composition over time). The spectacle, for me, began at 4:10 (it could have
been earlier) and ended at about 4:45 but a silent flock of about 100 surprised
me as I was leaving at 4:55. The total estimate (counted roughly by hundreds)
was: Americans-1000 and Fish-1500.
Have a fantastic start to 2014,
Nick Newberry
Williamsburg/Oakton, Va
http://www.flickr.com/photos/32293993@N04/
