A few good county birds and 300,000 Broadwings
Steve Sanford (tanager@bcpl.net)
Sat, 03 Oct 1998 19:43:51 -0400
Pete Webb and I went to Milford Mill Park (near Liberty Rd outside the
NW part of the Balto Beltway) today 10/3/98. We had two good Baltimore
county firsts for me: Phila Vireo and Lincoln's Sparrow. We had a nice
little wave of warblers: Magnolia, BTB, BTG, B&W, Chestnut-sided, and 2
Nashvilles. Also excellent looks at 2 Winter Wrens, and 5-10
Golden-crowned Kinglets, and 2+ Ruby-crowns. There were several
White-throated Sparrows. Pete had several Juncos this morning in his
yard nearby.
Later we went to check out Font Hill Park, Howard Co. We didn't see much
special, but it WAS midday. Our best bird was a very high-flying Bald
Eagle, flying from west to east. Also a Swainson's Thrush. It's a nice
little park with a marsh, a brushy field, a stream, two ponds, and woods
all in the midst of a neighborhood of fairly large suburban houses.
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No. The 300,000 Broadwings were not at Font Hill or Milford Mill, but
while I'm here I'll report that I went down to Corpus Christi last
weekend for the Broadwing spectacle, and was not disappointed. I missed
the super day, 9/26 with 300,000 in one day, but the next day, 9/27, I
was there for 100,000, and then 200,000 on 9/28. (Well, I ducked out of
the heat for most of that afternoon, but saw the major kettles around
noon.) It's a very narrow window to catch. They were down to zero
Broadwings yesterday!
Of course, the spectacle was amazing. One kettle alone was numbered at
48,000 by the counters. Most of the birds were mere specks, but a few
kettles were pretty close. Perhaps the most memorable thing was seeing
hundreds, or thousands, of Broadwings spiraling up and disappearing into
the bottoms of low cumulus clouds on several occasions, sometimes
emerging higher up in the cloud. (Well, let's hope they ALL emerged
sometime!) Another treat for me was finally getting some Groove-billed
Anis for my "North American" list, right there at the hawk watch area.
Thank you, Joel Simon, for alerting me to that. And thanks to all the
counters, and local folks down there for your hospitality.
[Some practical notes. The heat was severe - 90 to 95 with high
humidity, and mostly sunny, and apparently that's about normal for the
season. There IS a little shade at the hawk watch, fortunately. The
mosquitos were numerous and hungry, but bug-spray was pretty effective.
The Corpus Christi area is easy to drive around, and motels are cheap.
The hawk watch is about 15+ miles west of the city, near Calallen (north
of Robstown).]
--
Steve Sanford
Randallstown MD
tanager@bcpl.net