I took a half-hour mid day to explore Sands Road Park - a place close to home that I had not yet visited.   It's very interesting habitat - a AA county mountain top (um, a hilltop) of grass, dropping into scrub then forest.  I noticed a lot of young locust trees there, which is not all that common right in this area.  

It was mid-day, cool and slightly rainy.  There was not any great abundance of birds, but a nice and colorful mix.  I saw grasshopper sparrows, baltimore and orchard orioles, a gorgeous common yellowthroat and several families of bluebirds.  There were a few chimney swifts and barn swallows along with several bank swallows.  I did see what could only be a female bobolink, but she appeared to totally alone, which doesn't make a lot of sense.  There was nothing flying in and out of the grasses and no bobolink burbling.  I know a bobolink was sighted a week or so ago - was it a male, juvenile or female?  Sort of a puzzle, but I do think this was a bobolink.  Also saw Eastern Towhee, indigo bunting, blue grosbeak as well as a sprinkling of more common species.  Seems like a good place for sparrows - a lot of little brown jobs were flitting around, too fast and too far away for me to speciate with any confidence.  These birds are a bit people-wary, it seems and vanished when I tried to get close.   

The best bird of the day had to be a pileated woodpecker which flew directly above me.  It was a nice long look, too as it flew over the grassy hilltop to the woods. 

I wish I could bird by ear - those of you with good ears could have IDed many more species.  

The oddest thing - I heard a call that sounded EXACTLY like the first note of a bobwhite.  It called several times.  Drove me kind of crazy! At first I felt an immediate, pleased recognition of the "bob..", and then, when there was only silence, an on-edge anticipation.  I kept waiting for the "white".  Soon it bothered me so much that I would whistle the "white" myself after each "bob".   I'm not sure I've ever heard that call before.  Can anyone give me the remotest clue what bird might have the audacity to say just "bob", exactly like a bobwhite?  Oh - it was't repeated frequently, so I think that rules out the mimics, like the mocking bird or thrasher.  



Joanne


Joanne Howl, DVM
small animal medicine, writer, Mom
West River, MD