My inability to remember how long it takes to reach Curles Neck from my house
put me in Eastern Henrico nearly an hour ahead of the scheduled start for this
walk, so I parked over on Carter's Mill Road, just east of Malvern Hill
Battlefield Park, and whiled my time away listening to the "peenting" and
display flights of several (at least three) American Woodcocks. Anywhere along
this road ought to be pretty good for Woodcock, as there is swampy ground on
most of the southern side of the road and agricultural fields on the northern
side.
When the Woodcocks quieted down, at about 7:10, I moved east to check the King
Rail spot, but all was quiet there.
I did a cell-phone recording, which you can listen to here:
https://soundcloud.com/lbarnett3/american-woodcocks-at-carters - headphones and ;
crank it up.
If anyone can recommend a compact plug-in mic that works with Android devices,
I'd be interested.
Lewis Barnett
Dept. of Math and CS, University of Richmond
On Mar 10, 2014, at 10:44 AM, Ellison Orcutt
<mr.ellyo@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:mr.ellyo@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hello Birders,
Richmond Audubon led a group to Curles Neck Farm in eastern Henrico Sunday
morning. The weather was beautiful and the birds were, too.
Highlights, included a sunrise stream on Ring-billed Gulls coming upriver
across the farm from some roosting spot, presumably in the Hopewell area.
Certainly, the most gulls I have ever seen. There was no way to confidently
count them, but based on the portions of the flock dropping down to feed on the
farm I would "estimate" the flock to be near 30-40,000.
We found 16 lingering Snow Geese (14 blue morph), and farmers there tell me
that the flock left a bit earlier than it usually does. They stopped noticing
them about two weeks ago.
We had great looks at a Great Horned Owl on her nest and very brief looks at a
Barn Owl sneaking out the back door of a barn. Pipits were everywhere and
Horned Larks were singing somewhere up there. Plenty of snipe to look at it
and even more we almost saw. Diverse waterfowl in low numbers. There was one
Red-necked Grebe, imagine that.
Curles Neck Farm is private.
Ebird list: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S17370749
Good birding,
Ellison
--
Ellison Orcutt
Birder/Naturalist
Richmond, Va
Cell: (804) 339-6976
Mr.EllyO@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:Mr.EllyO@xxxxxxxxx>
