Hi Everyone,
Tom Feild and I kicked off the birding day on Sunday (8/17) at the Bayside parking lot on Assateague. Migrant activity was pretty steady, including six warbler species, both orioles, and impressive numbers of catbirds and thrashers (very conservative estimates of these two below). We were soon joined by Mark Hoffman, who probably had additional species and numbers. As always, I'll post the full list for Bayside, then highlights from elsewhere.
Brown Pelican--1
Double-crested Cormorant--4
Great Egret--1
Tricolored Heron--2
Green Heron--1
Osprey--1
Killdeer--3
Least Sandpiper--2
Laughing Gull--25
Ring-billed Gull--1
Herring Gull--8
Royal Tern--6
Yellow-billed Cuckoo--2
Ruby-throated Hummingbird--1
Downy Woodpecker--2
Eastern Wood-Pewee--2
Great Crested Flycatcher--1
Eastern Kingbird--4
Red-eyed Vireo--1
Fish Crow--6
Barn Swallow--2
Carolina Chickadee--3
Carolina Wren--3
American Robin--7
Gray Catbird--22
Northern Mockingbird--1
Brown Thrasher--18
Cedar Waxwing--2
Yellow Warbler--3
Prairie Warbler--4
Black-and-white Warbler--2
American Redstart--7
Common Yellowthroat--2
Probable Northern Waterthrush--1 flyby
Song Sparrow--2
Northern Cardinal--1
Bobolink--4
Red-winged Blackbird--5
Boat-tailed Grackle--1
Orchard Oriole--3
Baltimore Oriole--4
We left when we received calls from Jim Stasz and Ed Boyd about the White-winged Dove. We quickly arrived at Truitt's to find a grinning Stasz, but, as we knew, the bird had already flown off to the northwest. We joked that of course we all had photos of White-winged Doves from Arizona last week. Jim responded by turning on his video camera and showing us a close up of the bird that slowly zoomed out to show the scene before us, including his scope in its current position. I guess that will do... We really should know better by now than to leave him unattended on the Eastern Shore.
Tom and I drove around searching for the rest of the day, finding a few good birds, but no rare doves.
At Truitt's there was a constant turnover of 1,000+ peeps, many of them juveniles. There were also 20+ GREATER YELLOWLEGS, 10 SEMIPALMATED PLOVERs, and a Short-billed Dowitcher (griseus).
Just off Route 12 north of the intersection of Ayres Road was a hunting gray ghost NORTHERN HARRIER. A CATTLE EGRET was foraging on Ayres Road, while one BANK SWALLOW joined the Barn Swallows on a power line nearby.
Our top birds of the day were found at the Berlin STP:
Wood Duck--14
Mallard--46
Great Egret--1
Snowy Egret--1
Green Heron--4
Spotted Sandpiper--1
Solitary Sandpiper--2
Greater Yellowlegs--2
Lesser Yellowlegs--1
Semipalmated Sandpiper--8; some juveniles, at least one adult
Least Sandpiper--45; most, if not all, were juveniles
BAIRD's SANDPIPER--1 juvenile
STILT SANDPIPER--1 juvenile
Laughing Gull--5 juveniles
Good birding!
Bill
p.s. For anyone interested, there are three pages of recent photo updates from SE Arizona on my site: http://www.billhubick.com/new_set.html. I'll be posting two or three more pages over the next week or so as I get caught up.
Bill Hubick
Pasadena, Maryland
http://www.billhubick.com |