Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 20:39:15 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Trisha Nyland Subject: Re: A good Warbler day in PG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I enjoyed reading your piece. I have learned a few things about searching for my own early morning hotspot. Thanks, Trish Nyland David Mozurkewich wrote: > 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 > ======================================================================= ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================