Just returned from a trip to the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia with
Peter Frechtel and his friend Charlie Lawrence, who is visiting from Colorado.
They're still out at Shenandoah and hopefully will pick up some good stuff
today, but in the meantime here's the highlights.
In hindsight, we probably did this trip too early for the higher elevations, at
least with migration running a bit late (or at least not early) this year. So
we missed Mourning Warbler and Alder Flycatcher entirely. But we did get one
GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER east of Monterey the evening of 5/15, and returned for
better looks the morning of 5/16. This was a lifer for everyone. The other
highlight was 2 BLACK-BILLED CUCKOOS--one on 5/13 at Hidden Valley Park in Bath
County (I think) and one on 5/15 in the southern part of Back Creek Valley,
Highland County, which will be included in Kurt Gaskill's Highland County count.
Along Warbler Road in Botetout County on 5/13, we had decent luck at the low
and mid-elevations, not so much as we climbed. We had good numbers of CERULEAN
WARBLERS, plenty of Blackburnians, nice looks at a Canada, and got Charlie a
number of other eastern warbler life birds. We ended the day at Hidden Valley
Park, a great spot where we had the aforementioned cuckoo but not the hoped-for
golden-wing.
We then crossed into West Virginia, and I won't go into the extralimital stuff
except to mention my life Henslow's Sparrow at Canaan Valley NWR, heard and
seen nicely in the scope (along with beautiful looks at Bobolinks)!
On 5/15 we came back into Highland County in the afternoon and birded Paddy
Knob and the southwest part of the county. No really exciting birds other than
the other aforementioned cuckoo and a probable WILSON'S SNIPE flushed by Peter
on Paddy Knob (Peter was the only one who saw this bird, fairly poorly, and we
can't completely rule out Woodcock). Great numbers of Veeries (but none
singing) and Least Flycatchers (calling). Kurt will no doubt do a complete
write-up of the 5/15 count at some point.
We did a bit more Highland County birding the morning of 5/16, with the
highlight being the second look at the Golden-wing. The only other possibly
unusual bird was a heard-only Greater Yellowlegs along Back Creek--not sure how
common these are up there.
All in all, a good trip--but if anyone out there wants to duplicate it, I'd
wait a week or two before going!
Jason Waanders
NW DC
jwaandersATstarpower.net
