Following up an aside in Stan Arnold's post on the Barrow's G-e, I went
this pm to the GC alluded to. Here also had come Fred Shafer. Together
we watched for ~ 1/2 hr w/o luck - tho' a Sharpie working the trees may
have had a chilling effect. From thence I checked out the Wrighton Rd
site, again finding nothing.
On the way home, a mysterious voice urged me to stop at the GC again.
"But I was just there, and nothing." "Stop at the GC", it replied in
sterner tones. So I did, feeling oddly confident of success. After ~ 10
min, a small bird appeared at the top of one of the hemlocks. Yes, it
was a WWCR. I wondered that there should be only one, when a group of 6
hitherto invisible flew out into adjacent trees, from which I could
never recover them. Surprisingly, one of the x-bills was a heavily
streaked juvenal (not merely an imm).
Some reflections - 1) the x-bills can be present w/o being obvious; 2)
the best place to look is at the tree top, even if x-bills don't
preferentially forage there, because the edge/depth ratio is least; 3)
some birds must have nested recently if there are still juv's among
them; 4) heed inner voices.
Searching at this site is easy - you need not leave the parking lot, nor
even your car, since the hemlocks in question rim the lot.
Also - at the Huntingtown WMA, mostly very un-birdy for some reason, but
where a lagoon lies within some good habitat at the far end, we found
y'day a Red-headed Wpkr, a 2nd yr bird w/head not brown nor fully red -
perhaps as suggested by Chris Murray a vagrant from the population at
Merkle 10 mi up-river. Also here a Br Thrasher, Fox Sparrow, and Wood
Ducks and GW Teal on the lagoon.
Fred Fallon
Huntingtown |