On Friday morning a little after 6 AM, Anne Horst and Andy Turner and I watched the GREAT HORNED OWL family at a distance through the dissipating fog at the Newman Municipal Golf Course. One owlet was in the nest and one about a three feet above. The mother started off near the nest, but then made a couple of short flights to nearby trees.
In the trees scattered around the course, we heard an EASTERN BLUEBIRD, PURPLE FINCH, and many CHIPPING SPARROWS as expected, plus a WHITE-CROWNED SPARROW singing under some cedars. Then as we walked back to Pier Road, we noticed the trees on both sides of the creek seething with little songbirds. It was very hard to identify them in the high canopy against the gray sky, but we did see and hear a NORTHERN PARULA (both song types), maybe six YELLOW WARBLERS, very many YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLERS, and a few BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHERS. Later in the morning in Sapsucker Woods, I had a similar experience of initial seeming fallout-like abundance of Yellow-rumped Warblers (30+ between the Owens Platform and the first split in the Wilson Trail North) but relatively little detected diversity – a few western PALM WARBLERS, a CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER, BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLERS, a NORTHERN PARULA, a couple of BLUE-HEADED VIREOS, and more COMMON YELLOWTHROATS and WOOD THRUSHES than on previous mornings. Most intriguing was a split-second sighting of what I feel nearly certain was a very small fuzzy tan precocial chick walking quickly across the Wilson Trail, just south of the Sherwood Platform, toward the pond side. I looked and looked but couldn’t refind it, nor any parent or siblings. Still, it might be worthwhile to pay extra attention here for the possibility of a woodcock family. Mark Chao -- 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/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/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/ --
