On Wednesday evening, in a combined Black Dog Park/Cliff Fen outing, we found 31 species. At Black Dog Park, there was concentrated action on the hillside by the parking lot, with lots of scratching and leaf-turning by a flock of fox sparrows and a couple of hermit thrushes. Ruby-crowned kinglets were working the trees, both there and along the causeway to the power-plant, where they gave us good looks at their scarlet signature. As usual, there were plentiful chickadees, juncoes, and woodpeckers (downy, hairy, and red-bellied).
A peregrine was visible in the nest box, and one of the osprey, "singing" periodically, perched on the power stanchion to the west of the plant, where a few sticks still give evidence of last year's nest. In the water on the east side of the causeway were, among other things, many gulls, ring-billed, herring, and a few Bonapartes; some n.shovelers; and one pelican. There were far fewer of the usual species, now that they've started to disperse, but we did see buffleheads and hooded mergansers to the west. We did a short foray onto the main trail to the west, where we found a great blue heron and several Lincoln's sparrows. We had planned to walk a lesser-known trail on the bluff south of the playing fields but ran out of time, so we headed to the fen for the woodcock show. While conditions were less than ideal, we did get to see and hear the birds in their rite of spring, before the chilly winds intensified and dampened their fervor. It was definitely a memorable experience, listening for that "peent" and somewhat ghostly feather-whirring sound, and watching the silhouettes rise up out of the grasses. To cap it off, we became someone else's object of observation: a coyote skirted us very closely, eying us nervously, as we laid on the grasses, impeding his woodcock/rabbit-hunt! However, he hadn't long to wait before comfort won out and sent us home. Linda Whyte -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://moumn.org/pipermail/mou-net_moumn.org/attachments/20080410/4ee7651c/attachment.html