May 2, 2008 [LINK / comment]
Every once in a while, you come across a bird or birds that are totally unexpected, and that was the case at Sweet Briar College early on Wednesday afternoon. I was walking to the other side of the campus, where the sloping meadows are, and spotted a large number of blackish birds chattering oddly, about 100 yards away. At frist I thought they were Red-winged Blackbirds, but as I got closer, I could see with my binoculars that many of them had yellow heads and large white marks on their wings and tails. Bobolinks! I also saw a couple more warblers.
Location: Sweet Briar College boat pond
Observation date: 4/30/08
Number of species: 6
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org/VA)
Bobolinks are more common out on the Great Plains, where I grew up, but are not seen very often in the East. In fact, the last time I saw that species was in May 2006. I had also seen a Bobolink in the middle of the outfield at RFK Stadium a year before that, at the very first Washington Nationals game I saw there. Weird!