Last Sunday's morning walk around SSW had a couple of interesting birds in retrospect.
First, from the Sherwood platform we heard a few repeated "fweep"s of a Great Crested Flycatcher. eBird wanted a confirmation, which reminded me of the CBC trip earlier this spring to Bear Swamp where we also heard repeated fweeps and thought GCFly but the caller turned out to be a blue-headed vireo. Sunday's fweeps came from the direction of the feeder blind where we'd earlier seen a BHVireo high in a tree, so I wonder if that was the caller. There were no preeting or other vireo phrases or anything else to reaffirm one bird or the other. Next, after the group had thinned down and we walked back past the Owens platform a brilliant Carolina wren perched near the two nestboxes, very close and prominent at eye level showing off its reddish back and distinct eyebrow. But when it opened its bill it started to voice the beginnings of a house wren's bubbly song - a song very familiar to that corner of the trail. I scratched my head a bit and asked the other participants, all beginners, to confirm that it looked like the Carolina wren picture I showed them. It wasn't until this morning that I realized what I saw was a marsh wren! - a bird I'd mentally relegated to the status of "probably never gonna see it, just be happy learning its song", and so haven't actually studied its appearance in the field guides. (I had seen wrens pop briefly out of cattails in Texas that I assumed were Marsh wrens, but the looks were fleeting and they looked rather drab and ratty, not clean and brilliant like this bird.) Other interesting sightings that day were a very cooperative Philadelphia vireo by the parking lot (the only migrant tree-flitter that I could get everyone to see), and a solitary sandpiper hunting the now-mudflats at the Sherwood platform. And for the hummer-trackers a buzz-by at the VC entrance. Suan -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
