Jane Kostenko and I went to Broomes Island this morning to try and relocate the reported Common Redpolls from yesterdays Patuxent CBC. We went to the location (just south of the intersection of the southern intersection of Church Road and Broomes Island Road) and had nothing for quite a while. We gradually detected American Goldfinches calling and pinned them down to a set of sweet gums on the edge of the driveway at 8620 Broomes Island Road. As I was scanning for COREs, I found a different red bird, a male White-winged Crossbill. Nearby was a female. The white wing patches were quite visible. Both birds were happily chowing down on sweet gum balls which were in abundance.
We were never able to relocate the redpolls but the WWCRs were a nice consolation prize! We talked to the guy across the street with the fenced in dogs and he was quite friendly and didn't seem to mind us standing on the road clearly irritating his dogs.
We drove around the back side of Church Road and found a redbud tree, near the building under construction, with lots of seed pods that had a dozen or so House Finches but no COREs. In a tree right behind our car a flock of 12 Chipping Sparrows landed then flew down into the grass to feed with some White-throated Sparrows and DE Juncos. Nice!
Tyler Bell
<jtylerbell...>
California, Maryland
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