Today (March 31) Nolan Brit (bioteacher at
O'Connell) and I led 4 outstanding students (Cody
Vaughan, Tim Hodge, Martha Johnson, and Megan
Bishop) to Huntley Meadows. All the students
had great, patient interest and sharp eyes, and
Mr Brit's hawk-eyes were astounding, as usual,
alerting us to numerous raptors and a palm
warbler that we would have missed. Since I was
also there yesterday I have included some notes
from that day also. We also had lots of herps
including 5 species of turtles, a northern water
snake (in the the exact same spot as yesterday),
and singing leopard and pickerel frogs.
Here is the bird list; I might have missed a
couple:
--1 pied-billed grebe (friday)
--1 AMERICAN BITTERN (Martha won the granola-bar
award for spotting this bird which was
particularly secretive today)
--great-blue heron 3
--numerous Canada Geese: yesterday none were on
nest; today we saw 4 occupied nests
--14 wood duck yesterday (not as many today)
--110 green-winged teal (yesterday, seemed like
fewer today)
--10-ish mallard
--2 drake blue-winged teal today, 4 yesterday
-- 8 shoveler
--1 drake ring-necked duck
--1 drake hooded merganser today, another pair
and 3 females yesterday
--black and turkey vultures
--1 osprey yesterday
--1 adult and 1 imm bald eagle
--1 sharp-shinned hawk folding its wings into an
amazing dive when it zig-zagged and missed the
cardinal it was trying for
--1 distant cooper's hawk in a display flight
--3 red-shouldered hawk (yesterday they were
pestering the green-winged teals, flushing the
flocks often; today one screaming adult gave us
an outstanding view in flight)
-- 1 red-tailed hawk
--about a dozen coot
--1 killdeer
--1 lesser and 1 greater YELLOWLEGS together in
the same scope-view for comparison
--2 SNIPE today and 5 yesterday
--1 belted kingfisher
--7 red-bellied woodpecker
--2 hairy woodpecker
--5 downy
--8 flicker
--1 pileated
--1 sapsucker yesterday
--no red-headed woodpeckers even though we walked
way down along the lower ponds.
--6 eastern phoebe
--15 or so tree swallows
--fish crows, american crows, blue-jays,
--carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, carolina
wren
--2 white-breasted nuthatch
--2 brown creeper
--5 winter wren yesterday
--2 ruby-crowned kinglet
--4 golden-crowned kinglet
--1 BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER at beginning of
boardwalk yesterday
--robins
--6 eastern bluebird
--1 PALM WARBLER
--1 pine warbler
--5 yellow-rumped warblers
--cardinals
--2 field sparrows
--swamp sparrows, the most common, maybe 25, some
singing nicely
--song sparrows and white-throated sparrows
--5 juncos
--red-winged blackbirds
-RUSTY BLACKBIRDS: heard today, but 120 yesterday
feeding on the mud near the boardwalk
--grackles, starlings
--3 cowbirds
--15 goldfinches, very vocal
We heard through the grapevine about a Virginia
Rail but we could not find it.
Our next teen bird club field trip will be April
21. Time and destination to be determined.
Good birding!
Fred
Frederick D. Atwood fredatwood@xxxxxxxxx
Flint Hill School, 10409 Academic Dr, Oakton, VA 22124
703-242-1675
http://www.agpix.com/fredatwood
http://www.flinthill.org
http://tea.armadaproject.org/tea_atwoodfrontpage.html
You are subscribed to VA-BIRD. To post to this mailing list, simply send email
to va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe, send email to
va-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
