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-----Original Message-----
From: Kurt Gaskill [mailto:KurtCapt87@xxxxxxxxxxx] ;
Sent: Sunday, December 04, 2005 6:46 PM
To: (va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)
Subject: Burke Lake, Frfx Co, 12/3/05 & other spots
VA BIRDers,
Sherman Suter, Rich Rieger and myself visiting a few piedmont locations
Saturday, mainly focusing upon waterfowl. Our first stop was Burke Lake
which was quite productive. As we were finishing up, we ran into Fred
Atwood, Carol Sottili and company doing an early waterfowl count for
Northern Virginia Audubon. Here are the notables that we tallied at this
location its possible that Fred and company added a few more goodies.
Canada Goose 25
Mallard 22
Lesser Scaup 15
Bufflehead 12
Hooded Merganser 24
Common Merganser 2
Pied-billed Grebe 3
Horned Grebe 4
Belted Kingfisher 2
Brown Creeper 2
Winter Wren 1
Hermit Thrush 1
Cedar Waxwing 3
Yellow-rumped Warbler 4
Common Grackle 1 (just one seemed a bit odd)
We then headed over to Crosspointe Lake and noted the following:
Canada Goose 14
Mallard 14
Ring-necked Duck 18
Bufflehead 10
Ruddy Duck 2
Brown Creeper 1
E. Towhee 1
Burke Lake and Crosspointe Lake are portions of the Burke Sector of the Fort
Belvoir CBC, scheduled for Saturday, Dec 31. If you are interested in
joining in with the efforts in these areas, please contact Larry Brindza at
ljbrindza at earthlink.net
We next headed out west, where a stop at the UOSA sewage ponds netted
. not
much! Our tally here was:
Canada Goose 435
Am Black Duck 4
Pied-billed Grebe 2
Brown Creeper 1
E. Towhee 1
We continued out west visiting the ponds along Harrison Rd in Fauquier Co
the results have been detailed by Scott Baron in a recent posting. The
waterfowl were:
Canada Goose 106 plus ca. 100 in flight overhead
Am. Black Duck 8
Mallard 30
Green-winged Teal 1
Bufflehead 2
Hooded Merganser 16
Ruddy Duck 1
Nearby was a large blackbird flock we never got a really good look at the
constituents but from what we saw we broke the flock down to:
Red-winged BB 1250
Common Grackle 7000
Brown-headed Cowbird 250
We started back east, but made a short detour to the Lake Brittle area. The
most amazing bird was a Great Egret on the pond south of Lake Brittle.
Waterfowl totals were:
Canada Goose 245
American Black Duck 4
Mallard 12
Lesser Scaup 14
Bufflehead 24
Ruddy Duck 2
Plus our first YB Sapsucker of the day.
Next, we headed for the Nokesville area of Prince William Co. We finally
found a large flock of Canada Geese but nothing unusual and wild was mixed
in although there were 4 barnyard mixes in the group & the flock totaled
975. This area also netted American Kestrels and White-throated Sparrows.
We headed to Cedar Run Wetlands and found no geese or ducks (pretty
amazing!) but we were quite pleased with a passing Northern Harrier which
put up 22 Wilsons Snipe. We added Savannah and Swamp Sparrows to the tally
sheet at this mitigation site. The sun was now nearly down and so we headed
for home.
Kurt Gaskill
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