May 18, 2008 [LINK / comment]
Wet day at Augusta Springs
I figured that after the chilly conditions yesterday, the weather just had to improve today, but such was not the case. Jacqueline and I did a short "hike" around the Augusta Springs Wetland Area this morning, but it started to rain off and on about half way through. It wasn't much, but it made it hard to take pictures, videos, or record the bird songs. I did get a decent video clip of a Common Yellowthroat (see below) and recordings of the songs of at least two birds, however: an Ovenbird and a Worm-eating Warbler ; the latter's "song" is more of a buzz, actually. I never did see either one of those birds, however. Highlights of what I saw:
Location: Augusta Springs
Observation date: 5/18/08
Number of species: 22
- Red-eyed Vireo
- Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
- Eastern Bluebird
- Wood Thrush *
- Common Yellowthroat
- Eastern Towhee
- Indigo Bunting
- American Goldfinch
This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org/VA) -- * I forgot to include the Wood Thrush.
Other notable birds that we heard but did not see include: Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Black-billed Cuckoo, Pileated Woodpecker, Pine Warbler, and Scarlet Tanager. All in all, a rather frustrating day. Finally, just as we were leaving from the parking lot, this female Bluebird landed on a sign post only about 20 feet away:
I also took a video of a couple of Common Yellowthroats who were singing vigorously, and uploaded it to youtube.com -- my fourth such video. I couldn't get very close to either one, however, so the quality is only fair. I'll probably replace it with a better one eventually.