Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 23:03:05 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: David Mozurkewich Subject: A good Warbler day in PG In-Reply-To: <009d01c25aa4$10efc2c0$8ba1c7cf@Earth2> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII How do you find a migrant warbler? I don't understand birds and I understand what drives migration even less so you should probably stop reading right now, but not knowing what I'm talking about has never stopped me in the past. After all, speculation is almost as much fun as finding those pretty little gems. One approach is to walk through the local woods and park lands stopping to examine every chickadee and titmouse flock. In a course of a morning, quite a few migrants can be tallied. A few years ago, I walked the bike path along Indian Creek, near Lake Artemesia (Berwyn Heights, PG) almost daily. That was a good year since Gail gave daily reports from Rock Creek. On mornings following a night with little migration, my Indian Creek totals were nearly as good as those Gail reported. Considering the advantage of multiple eyes the Rock Creek Gang had, one can argue that my approach was as good, or perhaps better than hanging around at a hot-spot. But there appears to be a serious flaw to searching for migrants this way. On mornings following nights I thought should have good migration, I would often see almost nothing; less than on a typical "poor-migration" day. And on these days, Gail would report a bonanza seen by the Rock Creek Gang. Now, I'm an impatient fellow; I want to have better looks at more migrants in less time. Seeing birds on poor days but missing the big flights is simply not acceptable. And since I don't have an Assateague in my back yard, I need to find local hot spots along the lines of Rock Creek. Over the years, I've asked many a birder what makes a particular spot good. Unfortunately, I never bought any of the stories I was told for the non-coastal spots. Now that I know a couple of those spots, and I have paid my dues in a lot of places that aren't so good, I have a theory that fits at least some of the facts. Start with a clearing on top a hill. The clearing must have a west to north-west edge. Other details of the clearing don't seem to matter but you must be able to pretend that the woods beyond the edge are extensive and good enough to provide decent bird habitat. And they must slope downhill. The extensive woods convinces the hungry migrant that it's a good place to land. The northwest edge heats up rapidly as the sun comes over the horizon. I don't know if the warmth is important for comfort, but it is most certainly important for providing a necessary ingredient for that early-morning feeding frenzy: active insects. The slope prevents the rest of the woods from warming up from sunlight hitting the tree tops. This concentrates the birds at the edge where they can be most easily observed. Make sure the woods beyond the edge are thick enough to provide shelter from the northwest wind, and what else could you ask for? The answer is simple: a night full of migrants (like last night) and a cloudless sunrise (like this morning). The field just north of the parking lot at the Oxen Hill Farm (ADC PG p23 D5) has all these characteristics. I was there this morning and it was certainly not a disappointment. I am, however, surprised that despite its relative ease of access, I have only once seen another birder in this field. Now I'm one who has trouble counting hawks flying by in the open. I cannot image how anyone does an accurate count of warblers as they flit in and out of the trees. And I don't know how to tell the difference between sighting multiple birds and multiple sightings of the same bird. But at the peak of activity this morning, there had to be over 100 birds present. This morning at Oxen Hill was as good as the best days I saw at the ridge at Rock Creek (and I spent a lot of time at Rock Creek back in my younger days). A feeding frenzy like this -- even if I cannot identify the birds -- is one of the true joys of migration. My count included 13 species of warblers along an edge perhaps a tenth of a mile long. Since so many birds were present at the same time, many must have gone unidentified or unseen. We can only imagine what additional eyes would have added. In roughly decreasing order of abundance were Magnolia, Chestnut-sided, Redstart, Blackburnian, Tennessee, Yellowthroat, Black-throated Blue, Wilson's, Canada, Nashville, Black and White, Black-throated Green, Cape May. Other migrants included multiple Red-eyed Vireos, Warbling Vireo, Great-crested Flycatcher, Swainson's Thrush, Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. Activity started about 10 minutes after sunrise. The last new species was tallied at 8:15. By 8:30, the place was dead. Between then and 11 I saw one migrant, a Redstart. Dave David Mozurkewich Seabrook, PG MD USA mozurk @ bellAtlantic.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================