I got in a nice day of birding on Saturday. I started at Hughes Hollow a
bit before 7:30 and had the place to myself except for the hunters and their
dogs always within earshot. I flushed an accipiter as soon as I got out of
the car. Amongst the song sparrows, savannah sparrows, and the
white-throated sparrows, I got good looks at a swamp sparrow and a fox
sparrow. I number of Canadian geese were flying by, but only two were ever
on the impoundments while I was there. Two hooded mergansers also flew by.
There was a harrier patrolling the impoundments and the usual assortment of
crows, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, red-winged blackbirds, flickers, and
starlings. There was a pair of bluebirds actively feeding along the long
gravel impoundment levee. I also saw one yellow-rumped warbler and a downy
woodpecker in the impoundment area. Behind the impoundments I saw a few
more yellow-rumped warblers, along with a number of golden-crowned kinglets
and cardinals. I saw several red-bellied woodpeckers, but no red-headed
woodpeckers.
After Hughes Hollow, I took a quick stop at Riley's Lock. There was a
handful more golden-crowned sparrows and a number of Carolina Wrens singing.
Most interesting at that stop was the horned grebe in the canal
perpendicular to the Potomac and two pied-billed grebes at the mouth of the
canal and Potomac.
In the afternoon, I headed up to try to find the northern shrike at Cromwell
Valley park. I worked the big field adjacent (to the east) to the first
entrance road where the bird had been previously seen earlier. I didn't
have any luck, although I did speak to one woman who had seen it earlier
that morning. There were a few mockingbirds in the area, which always got
my heart racing before I determined they weren't shrikes. There were at
least six pairs of bluebirds and almost as many blue jays. I also got to
enjoy watching a red-tailed hawk harassing a kestrel. It was my first trip
up there and I was glad to have been turned on to that spot.
Max Wilson
Kensington, MD
mercretas AT hotmail.com |