I spent about three hours in the middle of the day at Dead Creek, usually not
the best birding times, and had some amazing experiences. Most satisfying, a
fellow birder alerted me to the nesting pied-billed grebes, and we watched
both adults and seven tiny chicks living their busy, self-absorbed lives. At
first, one adult was on the nest with the chicks and the other adult was
fishing, returning at least three times with minnows. (He'd dive, surface, look
around as if locating the nest, dive again, resurface closer, dive again, and
eventually come up close to the others.) Then the bird on the nest led the chicks
out into an open patch of water, where she preened and fluffed her feathers and
the little ones hung around. Eventually, the other adult returned with what
looked like an eel and spent quite a while apparently breaking it up for the
youngsters.

I must have missed the reported Caspian tern by a half hour or   so, but I
actually got to see two birds usually heard. A sora flew across the road near
the Brilyea bridge (I'd heard one whinnying earlier), and a marsh wren flew onto
a little post and obligingly sang for me. There were also immature bald
eagles, osprey, redtailed hawks, and a red-shouldered hawk calling repeatedly
overhead. (It returned several times to a tree on the far side of the far pond, by
the parking lot; I couldn't see anything that looked like a nest, though.) A
common moorhen went by close to the road, a black-billed cuckoo kept
poo-poo-poo-ing, a catbird took an energetic puddle   bath - and, of course, there were
the regulars (song sparrows, waxwings, killdeer, the kingfisher,
yellowthroats,   redwings, kingbirds and swallows). Then, to top it all off, I watched a
vesper sparrow taking a dust bath on West Road - the first time I've seen this
species since 1969!!

Maeve Kim
Jericho Center