After getting great close views of the Snowy Owl
at Dulles in the AM (Thanks, Sue!) I drove down
to King William and King and Queen counties for
the day. There were lots of waterfowl hunters
out with very noisy guns, so The Pocket on the
Pamunkey River had very few birds in it except 55
buffleheads, the males doing some entertaining
head-bobbing and splashing displays. However I
found several thousand ducks and geese tucked
away in a nearby marsh and wet meadow of a
private landowner who does not allow hunting.
810 Pintails, 10 shovellers, 8 american wigeon, a
couple dozen gadwalls and black ducks, somewhere
around 150 green-winged teals, and hundreds of
mallards, but less than ten ring-necked ducks,
where in previous visits I have seen a few
hundred. Also around 75 tundra swans. Great to
hear and see them fly out of the Pocket
silhouetted against the pink sky just after
sunset. At dusk, while two great-horned owls were
hooting, over 1300 mallard-type ducks flew out
from the parts of the marsh I had not been able
to see, to who-knows-where. (I wonder if they are
roosting for the night in Cumberland Marsh, a
Nature Conservancy reserve down river that I have
never visited.)
At least 201 black vultures were in the riverside
roost near The Pocket at dusk. Ten wild turkeys
perched in the trees at sunset and then coasted
down into the marsh, flushing up a flock of teals
as they arrived.
At my property along the Mattaponi River in
Beaulahville I was excited to find 12 wild
turkeys flush from the ground up into the pines,
2 immature red-headed woodpeckers, their heads
starting to turn red, and in the oxbow pond, 6
male and 2 female wood ducks, a pair of mallards,
and 2 male, 5 female hooded mergansers. A nearby
pond had a couple dozen lesser scaup and a few
ring-necked ducks.
At the King and Queen Landfill in Little PLymouth
I could find no unusual gulls, not even any Great
Black-backeds. However there were over 40 bald
eagles there.
All the best
fred
Frederick D. Atwood fredatwood@xxxxxxxxx
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
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