ארכיון יומן של מרץ 2018

מרץ 19, 2018

Safari on Muddy Creek mid-May

Fat clouds spewed a few big wet ones then quit, dropped as if made of pewter, and underwent a reformation that filled the air with lacy mist. Swallows seemed to be enjoying the moist as they adjusted altitude to just above the waist-high forb forest. Which was loaded with odonates waiting patiently for the great orb to tear loose and stoke their inner fire. But I disturbed them as I broke trail through the wetland lush and inadvertently became the swallows' beater. Striped meadowhawks (mostly) flew up out the veg and as they leveled off SNAP they were gone. Tree swallows, plus cliff, with a few barn thrown in, swooped directly in front of me and did not miss as they circled and dropped like dive bombers out of their cloud of doom.

I was stalking big game (at least in the birding world) as there was a dowitcher hanging at the edge of open water that I had been playing with for the last week and today put it down as a long-billed. Which is somewhat comical because the visit before last I had heard it talk and it was definitely a short-billed. The old switcheroo.

I moved into the forest of twisted-branch fresh-leaved oaks that line the creek; the sound of the wind dropped and was replaced with white-breasted nuthatch and pacific-slope flycatcher laying down a lonesome soundtrack. Not quite a gallery forest - more of a dark, lichen festooned haunted forest. Western wood peewee called across openings in the canopy and swifts joined the swallows at the top of the canopy where an emerging hatch of protein was available. I detected an anomaly and took a pic to confirm that there was a hatchling olive-sided flycatcher out on a bare limb doing plumage maintenance – early youngun.

Tanagers and thrush thriped and whitted while brilliant chunks of lemon goldfinch worked the edge. On moving back out under the sky and through the jungle of delicate eleocharis I stumbled on 2 families of Canada Goose with 5 and 6, respectively, downy young – sticking together and the adults doing the goose rendition of flattened fowl - they moved slow and quiet into sparse cover and willed me not to see them.

On the Serengeti portion (the prairie upland) I heard something that brought me to a full stop. It took some stalking and listening and more stalking and then the wind borne edge of perception brought me a strong snatch of the legendary and highly valued (at least by me) insect song of the grasshopper sparrow.

הועלה ב-מרץ 19, 2018 08:05 אחה"צ על ידי howard7 howard7 | 2 תצפיות | 0 תגובות | הוספת תגובה

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