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Subject:

Hughes Hollow/Sycamore Landing

From:

Jason Waanders

Reply-To:

Jason Waanders

Date:

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 20:00:20 -0500

I birded Hughes Hollow and Sycamore Landing this afternoon/evening with Molly and Peter Ross and Peter Frechtel.  We can add to the chorus of "No Townsend's Warbler."  We were the people who saw the possible goshawk with Bob Augustine, but on further review I no longer think it was a goshawk--Bob may disagree, but I now think it was more likely an immature Red-shouldered Hawk having an unusually accipiter-like moment.  Though the bird was often obscured by trees as it flew nearly in a circle around us, I did get a look at the speckling on the underside at one point--the bird appeared dark-throated, with speckles tapering off lower down.  Goshawk should show a more uniform dense speckling underneath.  Add to that the fact that we had earlier heard a Red-shouldered and they're fairly common there, and it means I'll have to wait till another day for my life goshawk.  

Moving to birds we DID encounter--we saw a HORNED GREBE in the Potomac (and around 10 BUFFLEHEAD), around 50 (maybe more) RING-NECKED DUCKS and a few NORTHERN SHOVELERS in the impoundments, and heard a WINTER WREN on the south/back side of the impoundments.  We had six woodpeckers (would have gotten all 7 if the Red-headeds were still around).  And the AMERICAN WOODCOCK show on Sycamore Landing Road was great, though the numbers were down from what was reported last night (I'm not sure we had more than 4-6, but the birds gave us a lot of close passes).

Jason Waanders
NW DC
jwaandersATstarpower.net