[Va-bird] Middle Peninsula 7 tern species, white ibis
- From: Frederick Atwood <fredatwood@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: VA-Bird List <va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 04:18:26 +0000 (UTC)
Hello VA-Birders
I had a really enjoyable day today birding in King William and Mathews
counties, finding 96 species, 2 state Lifers, and 14 VA year birds for me.
I started at my property Riverwood, near Beulahville in upper King William,
where I found nothing unusual. Other than the Black Racer sliding away with a
frog in its mouth, my favorite sighting here was a spectacular male Hooded
Warbler still hanging around silently, my only hooded of the day. There was no
sign of some of the other resident warblers: missing yellow-throated,
prothonotary, chat, and LA waterthrush. The only warblers seen all day other
than the Hooded were scattered Parula, black-and-white, redstart, yellow, pine,
prairies, ovenbird, and common yellowthroat, all of which breed in the area.
There were still plenty of white-eyed vireos and 2 yellow-throated vireos
singing, but only 2 red-eyed vireos were seen all day.
From there I went to the turf farm along Woodbury Rd off of Walkerton Rd
hoping for golden plover, buff-breasted, or other shorebirds, but found only
34 killdeer, as well as 27 horned larks and my only bank swallow of the day.
I stopped briefly at the Walkerton bridge over the Mattaponi, but the tide was
very high. Figuring that would mean it would be going out down in Mathews, I
zipped down to Bethel Beach, where I hit the jackpot. Since I never get out to
Chincoteague and the Eastern Shore it was exciting to see my first Virginia
Piping Plover and Gull-billed Terns, as well as Least Terns (including
fledglings), and Common, Forsters, Sandwich, Royal and Caspian Terns, and 4
juvenile Black Skimmers. A Clapper Rail and Boat-tailed Grackle here were also
Virginia year birds for me. These appear to be first Gull-billed Tern reports
in ebird for the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck (I would love to hear from
anyone who has seen them in that region but did not report them to ebird). I
got my best-ever views of this species, with a good long time to study them
with the scope in great light. Best of all was watching their behavior of
flying over the sand bar and dipping down to snag insects or crustaceans off
the sand as they flew. One of the birds was in excellent breeding
plumage---what a dapper bird! The other had several white feathers speckling
the cap. There was no sign of the whimbrels that had been seen here a month
ago, though fiddler crabs were abundant. The tide was low so if they were
around, they could easily have been feeding in the marsh creeks out of sight.
Whimbrels are usually pretty noisy, but I didn't hear any either. The two most
common shorebirds were sanderling and semipalmated plover, but also present
were black-bellied plover, greater yellowlegs, semipalmated sandpipers, least
sandpipers, 2 western sandpipers, ruddy turnstones, and spotted sandpipers,
which were chasing insects on the flats like wilson's phalaropes do. Here is my
Bethel Beach list in ebird
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S24813465
Then I made a short visit to New Point Comfort where I added brown-headed
nuthatch, Snowy Egret, Seaside Sparrow, Brown Pelican and about 160
double-crested cormorants.
I thought it would be cool if I could add Black Tern to my tern list for the
day, so from there I went to The Pocket of the Pamunkey River back up in King
William County where I have often seen this species this time of year. I stayed
there until dusk but there were no terns present. However, I heard my first
Sora of the season in the marsh next to the railroad tracks, and best of all, I
found my first Middle Peninsula White Ibis. I was scanning the distant side of
the Pocket with the scope and saw this immature bird flying over the lily pads
for a hundred yards or so and then dropping into them and disappearing.
Fortunately during the spectacular sunset, it landed on the big duck blind to
roost for the night, allowing for good scope views of the bird, dwarfed by 24
Great Egrets, which surprisingly seemed to leave it alone, though they
themselves bickered over the best roosting spots.In flocks of 5-50, about 450
Canada Geese straggled into the Pocket at dusk. One of these geese may have
been a leucistic Canada, though with the poor light and the distance it was
tough to tell if it was a Canada/domestic hybrid, or a leucistic bird. Here is
my ebird list for The Pocket.
http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S24813414
Surprisingly I found no bald eagles all day, though ospreys were all over the
place.
All the bestFred Atwood
Frederick D. Atwood Flint Hill School, 10409 Academic Dr, Oakton, VA 22124
703-242-1675
http://www.agpix.com/fredatwood http://www.flinthill.org ;
http://tea.armadaproject.org/tea_atwoodfrontpage.html ;
https://www.flickr.com/photos/75425046@N06/sets/
Other related posts:
- » [Va-bird] Middle Peninsula 7 tern species, white ibis - Frederick Atwood
