Rail-less in D.C.
Andy Rabin (andyrab@wam.umd.edu)
Wed, 5 Aug 1998 16:34:02 -0400 (EDT)
Roger "Fancy Boy" Stone and I went into D.C. early this morning (around
8 am- hey, that's early for us!) in search of the supposedly
not-so-elusive Virginia Rail. Well, after about 45 minutes of searching
we came up empty handed. We spent extra time looking in the places that
were mentioned in "The Voice" -the fountains and the NW corner of the
gardens. After 45 minutes I realized that we could go _anywhere_ and have
this much trouble finding a Virginia Rail, so we left.
Fortunately, the day was not a complete bust. We went to Mason Neck &
Pohick Bay in search of Eagles and other goodies. We got the opportunity
to practice our tern ID skills while simultaneously being humbled by them.
Our conclusion was that all, or at least most of the dozen or so terns we
saw were Forster's. We attributed the difficulty we had on the "fact"
that the birds were molting. The rest of them that we had trouble with we
realized were actually Common/Forster's hybrids. We also saw 4 or 5 Bald
Eagles, including one adult. Songbirds and their young were on the
Bayview trail en masse. We even saw a few skinks, including the
ever-popular 5 lined skink, a couple of fawns and several Swallowtails
(mostly Tiger).
Best of luck to anyone looking for the D.C. rail. Please post to
MDOsprey if you find it so that Roger and I can both blurt out "D'oh!" the
next time we check our email.
Andy "not quite as fancy as Roger" Rabin
Gaithersburg, MD
andyrab@wam.umd.edu