Yesterday (Sunday) my wife and I made a swing off I-66 to check out
the Harrison Road loop. At the big pond visible from Rt. 17 there
were over a hundred birds that appeared to be Tundra Swans, but with
binoculars only we couldn't completely rule out Snow Geese. They did
appear to have very dark, perhaps black, bills rather than the
orangish bills of Snow Geese, and they had very long necks. There
were also hundreds of Canadas and a few dozen diving ducks, probably
scaup.
We were returning from our weekend place in Shenadoah County where we
had our first Purple Finch of 2014 (a male), one or maybe 2 calling
phoebes, 3 FOS meadowlarks (on Zepp Road), and 6-8 Fox Sparrows.
Still pretty wintry there, though; our spring peepers haven't started
calling yet, but wood frogs have.
Dave Davis
Arlington
