Hey all, Stuart Sweetman and Pete Peterman helped me cover the Grandview Sector
for Newport News Spring Count today, 4/29/2017. Highlights along the Grandview
Preserve beach itself were 1 Piping Plover, 4 Gull-billed Terns, 13+ Sandwich
Terns, and 1 fast-moving Peregrine Falcon. We heard several Virginia Rails and
many Seaside Sparrows in the marsh at the Preserve.
A small group of shorebirds on a private beach along the Chesapeake Bay
adjacent to Grandview Preserve included 1 White-rumped Sandpiper.
After running an errand in the afternoon in Newport News Elisa & I stopped by a
marshy pond near the entrance to Camp Morrison Industrial Park off US-60 to
check on some yellowlegs and Solitary Sandpipers she had found earlier while
covering a different sector and saw a stunningly bright adult Little Blue Heron
that must have been in the height of breeding plumage.
Nick Flanders
Portsmouth, VA
