Larry Meade and I headed down to the Virginia Beach area this past Friday
through Sunday (Feb 6-8). The trip was originally to be a couple of days of
birding on the CBBT and Eastern Shore sandwiched around a pelagic trip out of
Virginia Beach. Unfortunately, the pelagic was cancelled due to a very windy
weather forecast. As it turned out, the weather on land was cooperative and the
extra day of land birding proved fruitful.
We arrived at Craney Island early Friday afternoon. The best sighting there for
us was a Peregrine Falcon with a meal in its talons that zipped past our car.
We watched it feed for a few minutes in the middle of the cell closest to the
entrance. Other good sightings included some Brown Pelicans, a female Common
Goldeneye, some Black-bellied Plovers, and 2 Black Skimmers, most of which were
seen along the road on the north side of the island. We did spot 2 Horned
Larks, but no Snow Buntings.
After wandering around the area for a while, we made our last stop at First
Landing State Park around dusk. A lone Northern Gannet was offshore.
On Saturday, we had a great day. The temperature climbed up to about 70, and we
saw most of what we were looking for. We started the morning by eating
breakfast at the restaurant on island #1 of the CBBT around dawn. The entire
time we ate, we watched out the window as thousands of scoters flew by to join
the giant rafts of scoters all along the bridge span. All 3 species were seen.
The vast majority were Surf, and there were plenty of Black and a few dozen
White-winged, which were easy to pick out as they flew by. Our estimate of the
total number of scoters is unprintable in a forum such as this, so let's just
say there were a whole lot. Other birds we saw at the islands included Great
Cormorants, Brant, King Eider (#2), Common Eider (#3), 2 American
Oystercatchers, Long-tailed Ducks and a Red-throated Loon. Despite our best
efforts we could not find a Harlequin.
From the bridge we headed to ESVANWR. The first pond was nearly dry and yielded
little, while the second had some dabblers. As we were walking to the docks
from the second pond, an immature White Ibis flew directly over our heads. We
crossed the highway to Kiptopeke where we saw a pair of Common Goldeneyes and
both Common and Red-throated Loons.
On our way up to Willis Wharf we could not spot any Eurasian Collared Doves on
the wires along Route 600. Willis Wharf turned out nicely, though, as we
spotted a large flock of shorebirds as we were driving by. There were about 35
Marbled Godwit, maybe 50 Willets, and dozen or so Short-billed Dowitchers in
the group. We then headed down to Oyster, which was pretty quiet. A small group
of Lesser Yellowlegs and 2 Brant were there.
We then went to Magotha in search of more shorebirds and Virginia Rail. No such
luck. When we arrived at the end of Magotha Road, we got out of the car and saw
a group of about 25 people hootin' and a hollerin' about a third of a mile
north of us. Our conversation went something like this:
Larry: Do you think they're yelling at us?
Andy: I don't know, but if we hear gunshots we should probably go.
(5 seconds later)
-- BANG! BANG!! --
Andy: Do you think they're shooting at us?
Larry: Probably not. I didn't hear any bullets whizzing by.
-- BANG!! BANG! BANG!! BANG!! BANG!!! BANG!!! --
Andy: I don't see any birds here. Let's go to our next stop.
Larry: Good idea.
-- BANG!!! BANG!!! BANG!!!! --
So, no birds at Magotha. Just some Rufous-necked Yahoos. Consider yourselves
warned.
We ended our day back at the CBBT to try again for the Harlequin but came up
with a few Northern Gannets instead. We did run into a birder who said he saw a
Harlequin at #1, but we could not relocate it.
On Sunday we decided to head up to Chincoteague, via the bridge and Route 600.
Again, no luck with the Harlequin (the bitterest miss of the trip for me), but
we did see the best bird of the trip there. The temperature hovered around the
freezing mark Sunday morning and the wind was steady and brutal. This worked in
our favor, though. On island 2, a Peregrine Falcon was flying into the wind,
right over our heads, about 20 feet up. It was fighting the strong wind and so
was making very slow progress. It stayed low and very close to us for about 20
seconds as we got stellar looks at what was a life bird for Larry just a couple
of days before.
Along Route 600, a few miles north of Townsend we stopped next to a field where
we saw some movement. We were rewarded with nice looks at some American Pipits
and Eastern Meadowlarks, despite the best efforts to scare us off by a very
large unleashed barking dog.
The next stop of note was at Saxis Marsh. It was pretty quiet (or maybe it was
just too cold and windy to send much time searching the marsh). We did luck out
with a nice light-phase Rough-legged Hawk on our way out. We finished our trip
at Chincoteague, where we found a few Brown-headed Nuthatches on the Woodland
Trail. The ponds had plenty of ducks, most of which were Shovelers, Gadwall and
Pintails. We spotted a single Redhead and a large flock of Green-winged Teal. A
single immature Snow Goose was on the Marsh Trail. No one was shooting at us.
Overall, a great trip for both of us. Our goal was to add to our Virginia and
life lists and we did pretty well. I believe we had 7 life birds and about
25-30 state birds between us. We saw a total of 99 birds for the weekend.
Andy Rabin
Reston, VA
andyrabin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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