Last week I went for a bike ride over at North Tract where I was unfortunately restricted to the paved road due to hunting. However I saw so much great stuff I thought maybe it was worth reporting.
I was there from around 11:30-1:30 with my disposable pair of binocs ($50 Olympus. Tiny, very crisp, no field of view to speak of, if they were to get smashed while mountain biking, hey, $50, right?).
Right outside on the sidewalk at the Contact Station, there was a 3-4" Praying Mantis sloooooowly but steadily heading for a still green plant. As I rode down Wildlife Loop (which is one heck of a poorly named road, what with not being a loop and all) in the direction of Lake Allen (closed of course) there were plenty of flowering shrubs full of butterflies, chief among them the Great Spangled Fritillary (I like to imagine Teddy Roosevelt using that name as a curse-word -- "Oil barons! Great Spangled Fritillary! If we don't bust that trust, my name's not Teddy Roosevelt!") and a Black Swallowtail. I also saw a very tattered Zebra Swallowtail and the usual innumerable numbers of Red-Spotted Purples. Down by Merganser Pond was a very nice Eastern Comma, and several Red Admirals. As everyone has been noting, there are large flocks of Blue Jays about and they seemed quite fond of the scrubby pines and open meadow down towards the Lake Allen end of the road. Surprisingly, I didn't see any dragon or damsel flies tho' on Saturday when I was at Cedarville there were still tons of them there.
The highlight of the day however had to be when amidst a decent sized group (5-8) of Catbirds I heard an unmistakeable warbler song. Unmistakeable in that it was a warbler. <G> I am absolutely terrible at remembering bird songs. It took me about 15 minutes of searching with the disposable binocs and an insane amount of pishing on my part, but eventually he popped into view at eye level for a good ten seconds -- an American Redstart -- only about the third I've ever seen!
Laura Appelbaum,
Cloverly, MD
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