Though I've been going almost daily, I have not been posting this fall about Fort Bayard Park (a refresher: it's at River Road and Western Ave., NW, in DC on the MD line), due to both lack of time and lack of birds.  Now that it's November and the first sapsucker finally showed up (on Tuesday), I'm cutting back to weekends.

Whether it's the drought, the viewing conditions (nearly every front was followed by a morning with continued screaming gale force winds), or something else, this fall has seen unusually few passerine migrants in the park. 

There has been a nice assortment of occasional raptors in the locust tree at the top of the park, with the bird of the fall undoubtedly being MERLIN, seen on Oct. 17 and then again really well on Oct. 23 (I'm guessing the same bird, though it's hard to be sure).  That was park bird #104.

And though it's not nearly as exciting, this past weekend a family playground trip to the park at a more-vulture friendly hour yielded #105--Black Vulture.

Hoping for a few nice winter birds, and a much better spring!

Jason Waanders
NW DC
jwaandersATstarpower.net