This afternoon I went looking for a couple of specialty warblers. Pine Warbler
has been found by many people many places but not yet by me. I have checked
Parkway Place without luck, a considerable hike in an attempt to add it to my
Luddite List. Today I drove to Comstock Knoll, but again without luck. I
continued to the bowl of Newman Arboretum and hiked to various groves of pines,
where I kept finding CHIPPING SPARROWS and (SLATE-COLORED) DARK-EYED JUNCOS.
Finally I heard a triller a bit different, more like a short series of whistles
than chips, in the old short-needled pines along the top of the bowl parallel
to Dryden Road and got a great view of a PINE WARBLER. Another bird which I
always like sang from the trees and brush below, a BROWN THRASHER, but it quit
and hid when I looked for it.
My next goal was to get a look at the NORTHERN WATERTHRUSH which has been
singing east of the Woodleton Boardwalk on the Dryden side of Sapsucker Woods.
Like yesterday morning, I heard it but couldn't see it. Deb Lynn came by and
told me she'd seen waterthrushes in a pool near the Sherwood Platform and along
the pond outlet stream, so I headed north and west. Before I left the forest I
found several small birds in the deciduous canopy a PINE WARBLER (presumably a
migrant since it wasn't in pines) along with a couple of (MYRTLE) YELLOW-RUMPED
WARBLERS and a RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET. At the Owens Platform I saw more MYRTLES,
but no other warblers. The outlet stream wasn't flowing because beavers have
succeeded in blocking the outflow, and I saw no birds on the mud. By the
Sherwood Platform I heard and saw a couple of RUSTY BLACKBIRDS, but no
warblers. But in the southwest corner of the pond by the Charley Harper benches
I found another RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET and a couple more MYRTLES, and on a small
lichen-covered tree a boldly zebra-striped male BLACK-AND-WHITE WARBLER
explored the bark, the first of this species for me this year, and I believe
the first report for the basin.
--Dave Nutter
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