Migs at the patch!

After a two-week break I was back at the patch and, boy, I did not regret it. It was slow to begin with but once I hit the trail that follows the river, things picked up with regards to neotropical migrants. In the end I tallied 10 species of warbler and I am pretty sure I missed one or two that I just could not ID in bad light. Altogether I added a whopping 13 new species to the year list: Osprey, Solitary Sandpiper, Great-crested Flycatcher, Blue-headed Vireo, Barn Swallow, Wood Thrush, Ovenbird, Louisiana Waterthrush, Black-and-White, Yellow, Black-throated Blue and Black-throated Green Warbler, Common Yellowthroat and Blue Grosbeak and we are at 80 species for the year, and 92 total patch birds. Not a bad day at all.

The night before I decided to drive over to Fran Uhler Natural Area to listen for Whip-poor Wills. As I got there I ran into Wayne Baumgartner. As we got ready to walk down to the river, with torch, tape, flint, you name it, anything to get us through the night, we realized one bird was calling right behind us at the barrier. We actually saw the bird's silhoutte swooping about in the dark and it kept calling for another 30 minutes. Nice! Now it's time to sack a Chuck-wills widow.

Osprey at Lake Needwood

The plan for the weekend was a road trip to Shenandoah, but that changed once we realized the weather was not that great and we already ran pretty late for it on Sunday. We still made it into Virginia but closer to home: the Occoquan NWR in Woodbridge. It's the closest NWR from the DC area and a prime birding spot with open meadows, marshes great for sparrows and rails, and the bay of the Potomac which is great for ducks, grebes, eagles, gulls etc. Since I promised the missus that I would not stop too often to look for birds and stick to the plan of making this a hike, I did not end up seeing too many birds. Also, the rain came down pretty heavy at the time. Still a few FOY highlights to be mentioned: At least 3 pairs of Ospreys were back on their nests. Also a couple of warblers were seen or heard: Yellow-rumped, Tennessee, Prothonatary Warbler (one each) and many Common Yellowthroats were out and about. When I looped back around the trail and passed the ponds to my left I heard a bird which I am now 80% sure was a King Rail (they have been reported from the site recently) but never got any visual. A good day out despite the miserable weather. I will be back with a report from the local patch next week.

More spring stuff

The weekend brought in a decent number of new patch as well as year birds at MNC (Meadowside Nature Center - why I keep abbreviating as MNR I have no clue). Among them some rather tarty birds I should have seen by now - but there you go.

New additions to the patch list: Common Grackle (are you shitting me?), Northern Mockingbird (yes, they are surprisingly uncommon), Purple Martin (well, if they had cleaned out the gourds once a year, I could have seen one a long time ago, but I guess that's too much to ask), Broad-winged hawk (nice), Ruddy Duck (why must I comment on every bird I don't know), Northern Parula .Total number of species: 79
Number of 2012 species:  66, new addition: all of the above (duh!) and Palm Warbler

Lake Frank delivers

It was a great morning @ MNR with a tally of 45 species. The first good bird of the morning was a White-eyed Vireo up the hill from the parking lot devouring a fat old caterpillar. It was clear from the start that a large number of Ruby-crowns had moved in and their subdued tsi tsi tsi song was heard often. Down by the pond a flock of 8 or so Tree Swallows was zipping around with at least on pair feeding young in one of the nest boxes. Two Blue-gray gnatcatchers were added on the way. At the junction between Muncaster Trail and Piney Run a patch tick in the form of two Brown Thrashers set the pace for the morning. At Lake  Frank which appeared initially dead, two great patch birds namely a hot-looking breeding plumage Common Loon and Horned Grebe were on show. Of course I did not miss the opportunity to take some craptastic pictures which I am sure will make you want to stab your eyes out with a rusty nail or something.

In terms of warblers only Pine and Yellow-rumps around today, but that should really be picking up from here on now.

MNR year: 58
MNR total: 73

It's raining cats and ducks!

Just a quick follow-up to the note below and the REV sighting. I realized at the time REVs are starting to come in typically in mid April in Maryland and I tried indeed to get visual confirmation of the bird. Unfortunately, the general area was not easily accessible and the bird seemed to sit high up. So it's certainly not a rock-solid record and I did not put into ebird. But given that the first REV appear now in Georgia this may have not been totally impossible and I was confident of the ID at the time. Moving up to Upstate New Yorks where signs of spring were visible also. Despite heavy rain all day Sunday, I finally managed to do some waterfowl birding at Montezuma in the afternoon. The diversity of ducks and geese I saw in just under an hour of productive birding was astounding and probably the result of a small fallout: 17 species of ducks and geese with highlights such as 1 Redhead, several Blue-winged teal, 2 Bufflehead, Ruddy Ducks, many Canvasbacks and several Common Mergansers. I am sure if I had had more time I could have turned up more species even. For the statisticians among you: We are at 47 species for the year and 120 patch ticks with Common Merganser, Blue-winged teal and Ruddy Duck being new additions for the site.