Category: In the Field

On our way back from Martinsburg, a quick loop stroll to Hog Rock in Catoctin Mountain Park. Leta is collecting bits of bark for some indeterminate future project.

For Sunday, a short and sweet stroll along the Madison Run Fire Road at the foot of the Blue Ridge. Saturday’s rains freshened the green stuff everywhere.

The fire road follows the run up into the park; at this time of year, and after periods of drought, the run was more like a crawl. As you walk almost directly east into the park, the stream is on your right and some rather impressive cliffs, broken up by talus slopes, are on your left.

The group ID’d Wavy-leafed Aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum); see the wavy, clasping leaves on the right. I could not keep up with the group’s mania for keying out desmodiums and yet more asters, although I began to recognize Desmodium paniculatum. We found an interesting assassin bug, perhaps Apiomerus sp., that refused to stay in focus for my point-and-shoot; it was hanging out on a Gerardia pedicularia.

Resurrection Fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides), working its way into the crevices of this outcrop, is quite beautiful.

Lynn Cameron led a (slightly damp) walk on two Augusta County trails in the George Washington National Forest for my first day of field trips with Virginia Native Plant Society. Tom Wieboldt, Curator of Vascular Plants at Virginia Tech’s Massey Herbarium (and descendant of William A. Wieboldt), assisted with many of the IDs, including this goldenrod, Solidago curtisii. Eastern Hemlocks in this area seem to be doing OK; Lynn says the Forest Service is applying a treatment against insect pests.

Our destination on the first walk was this striking view of Hone Quarry Ridge, with Shenanadoah Mountain in the distance. A bouncy drive on Forest Service roads then took us to a driving top atop Reddish Knob, which was (as expected) fogged in.

We then pushed on to a second short walk in the headwaters of North River, a tributary of the Shenandoah. The group turned up this brightly-colored guy, an adult Red-Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) in its terrestrial red eft form.

Bonus bird for the trip: Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus), sauntering along the fire road as we drove for home.

Mark Garland led two days of field trips to various off-the-map locations in southern New Jersey.

Monday we spent at three spots in the Pine Barrens (dressed up by the marketing people as the Pinelands, these days).

From one of the area’s numerous sketchy sand roads, we walked in to a generously-sized bog, where White Fringed Orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis) was in bloom. We also found two species of sundews (which I have decided are impossible to photograph; I’m not satisfied with my image of the orchid, either).

Along the way, huckleberries (Gaylussacia sp.) were in fruit all over the place. The ground cover here is one of my new favorite shrubs, Common Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens): crush the leaves for a hit of natural teaberry aroma.

At the end of the day, we strolled through one of the pygmy forests, the pines and oaks dwarfed by lack of nutrients and water — a natural bonsai arboretum.

Tuesday we caravaned around the saltmarshes lining the Maurice River, which drains the Millville/Vineland area into Delaware Bay. Hot and sunny, it was a much better day for birds and butterflies, nudging my paltry butterfly life list above the 50 mark. The demure lighthouse at East Point is quite nice.

I hadn’t really expected anything too exciting in terms of birds for this trip. So it was a nice surprise to total up the species count for the two days: 44, plus two or three that I didn’t bother to count. I definitely counted Glossy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) (I’ve never seen them this far north), Seaside Sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus) (a bird that I rarely see at all), and #415 for my life list, Clapper Rail (Rallus longirostris). We found the rails, about five or six of them, at this tidal gut at spot called Turkey Point, on the other side of the Maurice (locally pronounced “Morris”). A- looks at the birds, from some distance and somewhat backlit, not visibly distinguished from King Rails, but you go with the local expert’s knowledge of distribution.

Last Sunday at the Park was a work day to install wire fencing as a low-tech, low-impact means of exclosing beavers from some of the larger trees just above the new berm and water control structure. The idea is not to protect the life of the trees, as they are in the new flood plain and will be inundated and eventually die; but rather to preserve them as standing dead trees (snags), so that they can support woodpeckers, Wood Ducks, other cavity-nesting birds, and all the wildlife that depend on such a vertical, natural structure.

The beavers, if we would let them, would take these trees down, and while there’s nothing wrong with downed trees (just ask your favorite stand of moss), we’ve got plenty of them right now.

I did a little birding and naturalizing in this municipal park, a square of suburban woods and swamp. A few takeways:

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) does very well in this sandy soil that was once a lake bed. Great drifts of these flowers line both sides of the trail.

Another species that’s quite common, but one that’s unseen in the mid-Atlantic, is Eastern Fox Squirrel (Sciurus niger). One day I’ll get a tack-sharp image of this critter.

That big tree with the blocky bark? It’s not a Chestnut Oak, but good old Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides), dominant in habitats like the lake shore. And often growing straight up, just to confuse visitors from the east and west.

I also spotted a Question Mark butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) and a couple species of mystery mushrooms.

My final van trip was led by Greg Miller and Drew Weber: we visited two sites in Erie County, with a side trip to a field across the road from the J. H. Routh Packing Co. to check out two Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) doing what they should be: hanging out with cows.

Conditions at Pipe Creek were very drippy, swinging from light drizzle to a steady rain, but we nevertheless had A+ looks at a Lincoln’s Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii) (named neither for Abraham nor Frederick Charles, but for Audubon’s travel companion Thomas).

The weather cleared by the time we arrived at Sheldon Marsh, and the birding was quite fine here. I picked up my eighth lifer for the trip, Philadelphia Vireo (Vireo philadelphicus).

All told, I had great numbers for the Biggest Week in American Birding festival. My cumulative species count came to 113, give or take the odd Rock Pigeon, and my warbler count was 21. I’ll need to come back for Connecticut and Mourning.

Spring is a few weeks behind us in D.C.: Spring Beauty is still in full bloom here in northwest Ohio. Ethan Kistler led the walk-drive through this park (which apparently came about because property values crashed when the nearby airport expanded). No matter how the park came to be, it was good for two lifers (Blue-winged Warbler [Vermivora cyanoptera] and Henslow’s Sparrow [Ammodramus henslowii)]) and a second-look bird (Grasshopper Sparrow [A. savannarum]). As well, the park was filled with Baltimore Orioles (Icterus galbula) and Red-headed Woodpeckers (Melanerpes erythrocephalus).

In this board-flat province, the Girdham sand dunes are some of the most rugged topography I’ve seen all week.

We returned to the same wetland complex in Sandusky County that we visited Monday, this time circumambulating the Decoy Marsh restoration project with Ray Stewart and Drew Weber. Drew coached me through my lifer Willow Flycatcher (Empidonax traillii). We got a look at a pair of Blue-winged Teal (Anas discors)—it’s easy to focus on the crescent on the face as a field mark, but as I was showing a California birder the Peterson guide for this bird, we both realized (and observed) that the bird does indeed show a sky-blue wing. What a nice walk: full sun on the forest edge rimming the wetland, and enough twists and turns to the path that we could adjust our views of shorebirds and ducks to compensate for the sun.

We heard Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator) calling in the distance, and on the drive back to the meeting point, we found a nesting pair on a unnamed pond for an A+ look for the trip.

Man oh man, some of the robins in this part of the country have a brick-red breast; very confusing. And the Song Sparrows sing a different dialect.

On my own in the afternoon, I walked the Adam Grimm Prairie at Ottawa NWR. I did not detect the target bird for this stop (Henslow’s Sparrow [Ammodramus henslowii], which has been reported recently here), but the stop was worth it. After the crush of the Magee Marsh boardwalk, for almost two hours, I had. The. Grassland. To. Myself. At the end of my quiet walk, after working through a different sparrow ID, I was treated to the sight and sound of at least two Eastern Meadowlarks (Sturnella magna).

I spent about an hour on the Magee Marsh boardwalk (I took a long time working out a Palm Warbler [Setophaga palmarum] that for once was not bobbing its tail because it was busy preening, not foraging), and then I joined one of the informal walks that are part of the Biggest Week conference registration. Sarah Winnicki co-led a group down the Crane Creek Estuary Trail. I got another, better look and listen of the Warbling Vireos (Vireo gilvus) that are fairly regular here—an A- look, but good enough for a twitch. Even better was the look at a Gray-cheeked Thrush (Catharus minimus) skulking about along one of the dikes.

The winds picked up over the course of the morning—much more blustery than yesterday, but no crazy rainstorms in the afternoon.

No bird, plant, or habitat pictures, but this myxomycete at the entrance to the trail is quite nice.

The bridge that carries I-280 over the Maumee in Toledo is rather grand.

Tom Kashmer and Katie Andersen led a canoe trip down the sleepy Green Creek to its mouth at Muddy Creek Bay. This body in turn flows with the Sandusky River into Sandusky Bay. At the start, we found it tricky to manage the boats (I haven’t been in a canoe since I was a kid at summer camp) and see any birds. But soon we were picking up warblers and tanagers and other songbirds that we hadn’t seen yesterday.

The target bird for this trip was Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), and it was a slam dunk. We found a good dozen-plus birds, both adults and immatures, in the lowest reaches of Green Creek and over Muddy Creek Bay. But the big pleasant surprise was a quick flyover of three Trumpeter Swans (Cygnus buccinator). I’ve probably seen this bird before, but I’ve never been confident of an ID. For that matter, I’d like to have had another look at the three we saw today.

I love these old marker posts. This one along U.S. 20 is dated 1842 on its top, so it’s from the time before Lower Sandusky was renamed Fremont. I interpret it as signing 26 miles to Lower Sandusky (to the southeast) and [2]5 miles to Perrysburg (to the northwest). Most of the paint has weathered away. The only problem with my reading is that Lower Sandusky/Fremont is much closer than 26 miles at this point.

Very birdy.

That’s perhaps the only way to describe Magee Marsh in spring migration. I picked up two lifers, Bay-breasted Warbler (Dendroica castanea) and Tennesssee Warbler (Oreothlypis peregrina)—perhaps the only two that I will find this trip.

Many eyes and ears make for easy spotting, but the bouncy boardwalk and throngs of birders make birding here a little like trying to get a seat on a Red Line train at 8:30 in the morning.

The lakefront, on the other side of the huge parking lot from the boardwalk, is much more my style.

I watched Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) picking insects off the ground to carry back to the nest. I saw multiple Yellow Warblers (D. petechia): if the sight of a bright Yellow Warbler doesn’t give you a little jolt of joy, you don’t really like birds. An iridescent Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) foraged in the wet leaf litter (dishwasher downpours of rain yesterday), tossing leaves aside and cocking its gimlet-eyed head like a cop looking for your dope stash.

In the afternoon, I went to a slide-show workshop by Kenn Kaufman on flycatcher ID. The talk was held at the visitor center of Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, and who should be there in the lobby to greet me but Puddles the Blue Goose!