All,
Today after birding Reddish Knob area and Hone Quarry Vic Laubach and I dropped
by Nazarene Wetlands on Nazarene Church Road west of Dayton in Rockingham
county. While scoping the wetlands and counting Wilson's Snipes I noticed some
large birds flying over out of the periphery of my vision. For one second I
thought hmmm.. more Canada's coming in for a landing, but something seemed a
bit off and I took another look and was dumbfounded to see 6 Sandhill Cranes
flying almost directly overhead. Unfortunately our cameras were parked in our
cars. Fortunately, as luck would have it the Cranes turned at the last moment
and appeared to be making to land in the wetlands and we had time to grab our
cameras and get a few shots off. We then sat down hoping to be less conspicuous
but the Cranes didn't land. Instead after circling the wetlands they continued
SW and appeared to have landed in some fields on Wes Showalter's farm which is
the next farm SW of the Wetlands. We managed to relocate the Cranes about 20to
30 minutes later but once again they were in flight. This time they were
heading directly West towards the mountains. They were last seen merging behind
a wooded hill at the foot of the mountains.
Photos can be found on shenvalbirds under my folder with the Painted Bunting
or at the following Flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34227153@N06/8176652329/in/photostream/
William Leigh leightern@xxxxxxx
Bridgewater, Virginia
