Greetings,
Saturday Sue Heath, Bart Frazier, Eric Hynes and I birded around northern
Fauquier County and at Blandy in nearby Clarke County. It was a cold morning,
and a bit snowy early (though it snowed the entire time we were at Blandy).
Before Sue arrived we looked at some open water at one of the large lakes at
Airlie, finding a thousand or more Canada Geese with one Richardson's type
present, as well as a hundred or so Ring-necked ducks, four Canvasbacks, six
Tundra
Swans, and a few Gadwall, Hooded Mergansers, and American Wigeon.
Best bird of the day was while we were meeting Sue at nine AM at the
McDonald's/Amoco just south of Marshall. Bart was watching crows mobbing
something
while Eric and I shopped only to discover that it was a Long-eared Owl that had
the attention of the crows. When he fetched Eric and I (as Sue was pulling
into the parking lot) the owl had started fleeing the crows by gaining
altitude. The bird circled high in the snowy sky as the crows eventually lost
interest. The bird did some soaring with intermittent flapping before it
started
heading south alternating long glides and some strong, stiff-winged flapping.
We
watched the bird until it was out of sight well south of us. Pretty awesome.
We meandered our way to Blandy ostensibly to spend some time looking for the
Black-throated Gray Warbler, but weren't really expecting to find it. It was
snowing pretty good on the west side of the Blue Ridge for the two hours or so
we trekked about. A few inches had accumulated and it simply didn't seem
like it would be good conditions for finding the vagrant. We did enjoy the
assortment of sparrows, and were most impressed by the forty or more American
Tree
Sparrows we found. Other sparrows included good numbers of White-crowned, a
few White-throateds, Songs, Swamps, Fields, Juncos, and Savannahs. We walked
into an overgrown field on the south side of the farm along the state road
that runs to White Post, drawn from the car by seeing a couple harriers
interact
as well as flushing a group of sparrows. Best bird here was a Loggerhead
Shrike that Eric found on the western edge of this field, the same field where
Ian
Topolsky and I found a Loggerhead Shrike 21 Dec 2002.
Other stuff of note at Blandy were both kinglets, a sapsucker, harriers, a
couple Red-taileds, kestrel, vultures soaring around in the snow, and a few
other usual things.
We headed back to Fauquier, stopping at Sky Meadows and being delighted by
about twenty Red-headed Woodpeckers just beyond the fee shack. There were also
three juv. Bald Eagles at the park and a bunch of other raptors. Throughout
the day we tallied over 40 Red-taileds, and good numbers of Kestrels,
Red-shoulders, some harriers, and a Sharp-shinned.
Along Route 710 (Carr Road) there were over a dozen Wilson's Snipe at a small
creek crossing. Some were only a few yards from the car, others flying
around pretty close to the car. There was a killdeer among the snipe. This
road
is also pretty good for Red-headed Woodpeckers, and we saw a couple.
Go Patriots.
Cheers,
Todd
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Todd Michael Day
Jeffersonton, VA
BlkVulture@xxxxxxx
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