The Coastal Cuckoo’s all meet for the second time ever on Friday evening and 
by 11:30 they were on the road to the Great Swamp.  We arrived early to meet 
our adult Nikon team D.V.O.C, for pictures and to share a few one-liners.

We started whistling screech owl two minutes before the event.  12:00 
strikes and American Bittern starts thunder pumping, Black-billed cuckoo, 
Swainson’s thrush, Veery fly over and then Screech owl starts to whistle.  
Walking back to the car we pick up Virginia rail, Sora, Least Bittern, Chat, 
Solitary Sandpiper.  A little further down the road we get King Rail and 
Barred Owl.  At 1:35 we leave the Swamp with 19 species missing Great Horned 
owl for the second year in a row.  Heading North we stop for all the 
northern owls and can only pick out Saw-whet.

At 4:10 we decided to hit the grasslands for night migrants and sparrows.  
We get grasshopper sparrow immediately, then hear horned lark, indigo 
bunting, and grey cheeked as a 95% bird over head, got to love those night 
migrants.  By 4:40 the Vesper Sparrow sings and we are running down a very 
steep gravely road. We rush to hear ruffed grouse and Ross says that it will 
drum at 5:08, well he was wrong it drummed at 5:06 and we picked up woodcock 
over the coyotes howling in the background.  Then to Rockport marsh for a 
fly-by hooded merganser, how lucky can we get.  Two more stops for Willow 
flycatcher, Least Flycatcher and White-crowned sparrow.  Our final stop in 
the grasslands was for savannah sparrow, which we eventually got, plus 
kestrel and kingfisher.

We rush to High Point where we pick up Raven and Cedar Waxwing.  Rushing 
through Saw-mill we get everything to be expected, plus a singing wilson’s 
warbler.  Our biggest surprise in the North comes from Steam-mill campground 
where we pick up fly-by rusty blackbird and lincoln’s sparrow, sorry D.V.O.C 
for not pointing them out but this is a big day.

Out to Culver’s we headed for migrants which were plentiful, just not in 
diversity, we do pick up yellow-rumped warbler and another wilson’s warbler. 
  The lake provides us with new species but nothing special.  Entering Van 
Ness rd. we clean up on Chat and Golden-winged warbler.  On Mettler rd. we 
find Magnolia Warbler and hermit thrush.  While I was watching the river for 
a closeout kingfisher or common merganser; I spot a young Bald Eagle flying 
down river and in it’s talons most of the remains of a quite large opossum, 
what a sight!  Over to Dingman’s ferry for Common merganser and then on to 
Stokes.  Here we pick up Nashville warbler, golden-crowned kinglet, 
red-breasted nuthatch, coopers and broad-winged hawk both on nests.  We stop 
at a small migrant trap and pick out white-throated sparrow and 
black-throated blue warbler.  We finally end up at the Winter Wren location 
that sucks up 10 min and produces only a 95% bird.  The Nikon Coastal 
Cuckoos leave the north with 134 species by 9:36.


Zach Baer
Centreville, MD


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