We met for our twelfth-inning check of nest boxes for the season. The last box hatched out sometime between the 13th and today. Of 15 eggs laid, we found 4 that did not hatch and the residue of about 7 that did.

It's rather odd to see the park almost two months later into the season than I usually do. We heard and saw Yellow-Billed Cuckoos (Coccyzus americanus) and one bedraggled, mud-stained Bufflehead (Bucephala albeola), who looked sort of lost. We found a shrub growing out of the marsh that someone identified as buttonbush, with tubular white flowers in a globular cluster. Cicadas thrumming is not something that I hear at Huntley Meadows in April. There were huge drifts of pale-orange dodder, like alien candy floss.

posted: 1:08:41 PM