Wish Yahoo had a "LIKE" button. What a great day Maeve :-))
--- On Wed, 7/27/11, Maeve Kim <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Maeve Kim <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [VTBIRD] grebes, otters, both bitterns PLUS
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, July 27, 2011, 8:40 PM
Liz Lackey and I kayaked for many hours today in Fairfield Swamp. What a great place! A few highlights first:
Once we got past the put-in, which reeked of dead fish and bits of frog, the air was full of a citrus-with-a-touch-of-vanilla smell from many yellow bull lilies and many thousand white pond lilies. There were frogs on lily pads everywhere. We also watched several Red-Winged Blackbirds walking and hopping on lily pads, apparently feeding on the flowers. The birds’ heads were smeared with what appeared to be yellow pollen. One female had an entirely yellow forehead.
Two otters swam right in front of us, one lifting its large head way out of the water to stare (glare) at us while making noises that were between huffs and growls. (There was a strong wind and we were downwind of the otters, so we got much closer than the animals would have liked before they noticed us.)
There were too many Great Blue Herons and Swamp Sparrows to count or even accurately guess. I’d loosely estimate a singing Swamp Sparrow every twenty yards and two dozen Great Blue Herons.
Two Pied-Billed Grebes did an amazingly loud duet.
There are at least two Osprey nests in the area, one a large structure on a big dead tree. There were two good-sized youngsters in that nest. At one time, we saw six adults in the air in addition to the two young.
Here's the whole bird list:
Wood Duck
Mallard
Hooded Merganser 1
Pied-billed Grebe 2
American Bittern - possibly 4 individuals
Least Bittern 1
Great Blue Herons everywhere!
Turkey Vulture 1
Osprey 8
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1 The hawk had a small bird in its talons. (We didn't identify the prey.)
Mourning Dove
Yellow-billed Cuckoo 1
Belted Kingfisher 3
Pileated Woodpecker 1
Eastern Wood-Pewee
Alder Flycatcher
Willow Flycatcher
Great Crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Barn Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
White-breasted Nuthatch
Marsh Wren 1
Veery 1
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
Gray Catbird 1
Cedar Waxwing
Chestnut-sided Warbler 1
Black-throated Green Warbler 1
Northern Waterthrush - 1 or possibly 2
Common Yellowthroat 1
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Red-winged Blackbird
American Goldfinch
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2 (http://ebird.org)
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