Hola, 

Today Lisa, Paul P, Ottavio and I went to Northeast
DC.  Starting out at 6:30 am or so at Kenilworth Park,
Paul found about 3 Least Sandpipers and 6 Semipalmated
Plovers at the back parking lot.  A Yellow-breasted
Chat and a Field Sparrow were singing in the distance,
and at least a dozen cormorants headed west in the far
distance.  

We went to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and spied a
female Greater Scaup, two male and a female Wood
Ducks, Red-shouldered Hawk, and heard Warbling Vireo,
and Prothonotary Warbler, among many other birds.  

Next we headed to the National Arboretum.  Mount
Hamilton was lacking the Hooded and Kentucky Warblers
reported earlier this month.  On the way up we saw a
young Yellow-billed Cuckoo with a very short tail
being fed by a parent.  The young bird was roughly 75
feet above the road and looked like the adult except
that the tail was extremely short, the bill was small,
and there was a slightly darker wash on the throat. 
It looked like the young Yellow-billed Cuckoo in the
photograph in the Bent's life histories volume on
cuckoos.  

At the top of Mount Hamilton we saw two Veeries, a
Swainson's Thrush, and a singing Worm-eating Warbler
(there may have been two Worm-eaters).  

At the top of Hickey Hill, the other high point in the
arboretum, we saw and heard two Gray-cheeked, two
Wood, and one Swainson's Thrushes.  Also we heard a
Pine Warbler, and a Northern Parula.   

During the course of the mourning we encountered at an
Undisclosed Location two young Great Horned Owls. 
They were at some distance from us, perched in
sparsely-leaved, vine-covered trees.  They appeared
preturbed by the crows and Red-shouldered Hawks
harassing them and not preturbed by humans.  They flew
well, disappearing into fully leafed-out trees to
escape from the madding crowd, and had tawny down
feathers on the head.  

Rob Hilton
aimophila10
Silver Spring
yahoo
Maryland


 
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