August Big Days ARE hard, yet my brother Mike and I attempted one 
yesterday...and limited ourselves to a single county on the piedmont. 
It's a simple and obvious fact that most birds don't sing in the fall. 
This means those birds that are essentially gimmies in the spring like 
Yellow-throated Vireos and Scarlet Tanagers will in the fall, most of 
the time, just stare at you from the canopy while you phish at the 
chickadees and titmouse in the foreground. Only a little curious at what 
the phishing is about, these birds are mainly just embarrassed for you.

This was my first attempt at a Big Day outside of May and the extra 
challenges are what made it really enjoyable. In May, my feeling is that 
it's more about frantically trying to see the highest amount of 
migrants, often colorful and vocal, that are pouring through the state, 
where as August is more about, ok what rock is the single hen Common 
Merganser in the county sitting on today.

With all the challenges of birding the piedmont in August, I'm very 
happy with how well we did. At the end of the day, we had found 106 
birds in Montgomery. The slight weather change a few days ago that 
brought in more warblers helped, but what really pumped up our number 
was getting all the expected/year-around resident type birds, and also 
the complimentary groups, like swallows and waders.

Some of the birds:

Waders:
Great Blue Heron
Little Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Green Heron
Black-crowned Night Heron
Yellow-crowned Night Heron - seen after dark at a staked out spot. We 
did not spotlight the bird.

Part of our strategy was to be at Hughes Hollow at dawn to make sure we 
got the maximum number of waders and it worked. With the possible 
exceptions of American Bittern and White Ibis, which Paul Woodward saw 
earlier in the week, we didn't miss any half-expected waders. Glossy 
Ibis, Cattle Egret, and Tricolored Heron are all megas in Montgomery 
County and can't be expected whatsoever. Snowy Egret is a very good bird 
in the county which people might be losing sight of since this bird has 
been hanging around spoiling us this fall. I wondered if this was the 
most waders anyone has ever seen in a single day on the piedmont. It's 
impossible to say, but we were very happy with our list.

Warblers (14):
Blue-winged Warbler
Northern Parula
Yellow Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Prothonotary Warbler
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat
WILSON'S WARBLER
Canada Warbler

We had already planned on doing the Big Day on Saturday and we were 
going to take whatever warblers the bird gods threw at us, but it was 
really encouraging to see that the warblers made a strong push late last 
week. The majority of our warblers came at Hughes Hollow in the morning 
and Little Bennett in the evening, but we had others sprinkled around 
the county all day. Wilson's Warbler was highlight of this group. I've 
been mired in a Wilson's Warbler drought the last two years and it was 
GREAT to finally be relieved. I suspect I will see them on every outing 
now. Despite seeing 14 warblers in August in Montgomery County, I still 
feel like it was only an average day for warblers and other reports from 
the Western Shore seem to confirm this suspicion. We had to put in a ton 
of work for those 14 and some of the commoner species didn't come until 
so late that we were nervous about missing Black-and-white and Northern 
Parula.

Shorebirds (8):
Killdeer
Lesser Yellowlegs
Solitary Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpiper
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
American Woodcock

Shorebirds were an adventure. We had scouted Summit Hall Turf Farm the 
night before to see if the long walk down the towpath was worth the 
time-waste on a Big Day. The sections of dirt only held Killdeer but 
there was a big puddle in the grass that was made by the sprinklers, 
which held Lesser Yellowlegs, peeps, and some birds of in-between sizes. 
The group was scared off by either me or a raptor so I didn't get the 
chance to make all the IDs, but it was clearly good enough to warrant a 
trip the next day. So on Saturday, we make our long walk down the tow 
path, scope the turf farm and there is nothing. Not even Killdeer. All 
the sprinklers are on and workers are everywhere. I think my eBird list 
for the stop is Barn Swallow (1) and Red-shouldered Hawk (1). This stop 
gave us 0 new birds on the day and took an hour.

Luckily we had also scouted the North End of Lake Needwood and 
discovered excellent shorebird habitat. The numbers were high: ~20 Least 
Sandpipers, 11 Solitary Sandpipers, 1 Spotted Sandpiper, and 2 Lesser 
Yellowlegs. That was good enough to keep our list from being shamefully 
low. We would patch things up when we reached Blue Mash but not without 
some more heart palpitations. A large flock of shorebirds on the 
landfill pond was present and immediately scared up by a Cooper's Hawk. 
We watched with horror as the mass of shorebirds flew over the landfill 
seemingly to never return. We resolved to walk the trails and come back 
before we left. As we were doing that, we saw 10 or so peeps flying back 
towards the pond, which raised our spirits again, and when we returned, 
we found 5 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 5 Least Sandpipers, 1 Pectoral 
Sandpiper, and many Killdeer. This number was still lower than the mass 
that flew off when we arrived (which probably included Semipalmanted 
Plovers that John Pangborn found earlier in the day), but we were happy 
with what we got.

The American Woodcocks we found at dawn flying over the impoundments at 
Hughes Hollow, heading from the direction of Sycamore Landing, where 
we've often had them. Patton Turf Farm was largely devoid of life, 
excepting the American Kestrels which were a day bird. We actually ran 
into Dave Czaplak who was on his way to view the turf farm from the 
Virginia side. We agreed to share with each other anything good we saw, 
but I knew I couldn't act on his info because of the Big Day rule 
restrictions. I wanted him to find Baird's and Buff-breasted, but only 
if we found it first. :-) I assume he had results similar to ours 
because I didn't get any word yesterday.

Waterfowl and friends:
Double-crested Cormorant
Pied-billed Grebe
Mute Swan
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
Green-winged Teal
Mallard
Blue-winged Teal

Waterfowl is a fun group in August because for the vast majority only 
the vanguard are arriving in Maryland. We were very satisfied with 
picking up both teal (especially GWTE) at Blue Mash, as well as 
Pied-billed Grebe (nice spot by Mike at Violette's), and the 2-3 mile 
distant swan, also scoped from Violette's. There are several other 
waterfowl that you can find in late August, but they have to be 
considered a bonus, like the Northern Shovelers Dave Czaplak had on the 
river last week.

A few other notables:
Bobolink - a small flight around 4AM. Big numbers later on the landfill 
at Blue Mash.
Veery - one migrant on the Kingsley Trail at Little Bennett
Merlin - our first of the season, gliding just 15 feet overhead at 
Little Bennett.

Notable misses:
-Grasshopper Sparrow - after scouring the county the last two days, I'm 
really confident that those which are still in the county have become 
entirely silent and secretive.
-Eastern Meadowlark
-Common Raven
-Orchard Oriole
-etc

At the end of the day we were trying to put our success into 
perspective. Here's one way to look at it: the all-time Maryland (state 
wide) Big Day record is 214 set in May, while the all-time record in 
August is 159. So getting 106 in Montgomery in August was something we 
are happy about. If you wanted to crudely convert to see what we would 
have gotten in spring, you could take 106/159=66% and multiply that by 
the May Big Day record of 214 and get 142.6. Again, it's crude, but it's 
one way of understanding the numbers.


Robert Ostrowski
Crofton, MD