Riley's Lock - 9:00 - 11:00AM, Saturday 4/10
David (dstrother@pop.dn.net)
Sun, 11 Apr 1999 12:29:28 -0400
Nothing much on the river (1 loon, 1 pied-billed grebe, 1 cormorant),
but in the air a very different story. The trees on either side of the
confluence of Seneca Creek and the Potomac were alive with swallows
(barn, tree, and rough-winged), and three (3) ospreys were working the
river. We were treated to some dramatic hovers, with the ospreys facing
us each time and the low morning sun lighting up their fanned tails and
hovering wings.
We tried the route suggested by Claudia Wilds, taking the roadlet that
leaves the towpath to the right a little upstream from the aqueduct
crossing. This gave us really good views of the long pond (green heron,
kingfisher, wood ducks, mallards, and turtles), where we saw one of the
ospreys stoop and hit the surface hard, only to come up empty-clawed.
In the tangles near the ruins there were a multitude of yellow-rumps,
palm warblers, whitethroats, both golden- and ruby-crowned kinglets,
goldfinches, carolina wrens, 'n other normal stuff. Conspicuous by
their absence were robins and chickadees. There were lots of peepers
peeping and pickerel frogs making their low flatulating call.
All in all, 38 spp.
David Strother
Bethesda, MD
dstrother@pop.dn.net