July 12, 2024 [LINK / comment]
Birding in Virginia [& North Carolina], August 2023
August 5: After a visit to Staunton's new recycling center in the morning, I headed over to the hilltop at Montgomery Hall Park, where I immediately heard the persistent songs of an Eastern Wood Pewee and an Indigo Bunting. I walked along the trail into the woods, and was delighted to see a Worm-eating Warbler, as well as a couple Red-bellied Woodpeckers. Along "Yulee's Trail" down the hill, I saw several Brown Thrashers, presumably a family, and heard a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Perhaps of more significance, we finally have hummingbirds at our back porch feeder! They usually arrive right around August 1, and last year it was at the end of July.
August 10: I stopped at Leonard's Pond on the way back from Harrisonburg today, and saw a few Solitary Sandpipers, Killdeers, and a Semipalmated Sandpiper or two. At the Hardee's pond in Verona a Great Blue Heron was perched on the "islet." Finally, along the Mill Place trail I saw a family of Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and an Indigo Bunting.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Indigo Bunting, Solitary Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Great Blue Heron, and Killdeer. (August 10, Leonard's Pond & Mill Place trail)
August 14: Jacqueline and I went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for the first time. On our first full day there (Monday) we spotted an Osprey on a nest on a platform in an ocean inlet near the Sugar Creek restaurant in Nags Head, and soon three others showed up. Perhaps a recently-fledged family? Then we drove south and explored the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge, where we bought souvenirs and a T-shirt. There we immediately saw a Greater Yellowlegs, and then some Little Blue Herons -- both young (top right) and adult (top center). Other notable birds included Laughing Gulls, Semipalmated Plovers, Double-crested Cormorants, and various terns. (Identifying seabirds and shorebirds is not my specialty.)
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Semipalmated Sandpiper, Little Blue Heron, Great Egret, Osprey, Greater Yellowlegs, Semipalmated Plover, and in center, Forster's Tern (prob.). (August 14, Pea Island NWR & Nags Head, NC)
August 15: On Tuesday morning we saw several Killdeers and an Eastern Kingbird or two at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk (technically, Kill Devil Hills), NC. Later we returned to the Pea Island National Wildlife Reserve, and I had excellent closeup views of a Willet and a Sanderling along the beach, as well as a couple Brown Pelicans. On the trail that borders the north end of the main pond I encountered (at a distance) a veritable cornucopia of birds, including White Ibises, Canada Geese, Double-crested Cormorants, and a wide variety of sandpipers and terns.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Sanderling, White Ibises, Tern, Killdeer, Brown Pelican, Willet, and Tern. (August 15, Pea Island NWR & Kitty Hawk, NC)
August 16: The final stop during our visit to the Outer Banks was at the Fort Raleigh National Historical Site, where the first (and ultimately doomed) English colony in North America was located, two decades before Jamestown. The first colonial baby: Virginia Dare! I happened to hear the squeaky call of a Brown-headed Nuthatch up in the pine trees, and managed to get some photos of it.
Brown-headed Nuthatch. (August 16, Fort Raleigh National Historical Site, NC)
August 27: Jacqueline alerted me to a Brown Thrasher out back, a clear sign that fall migration for passerines is underway! (For most of the summer they never come here.) So, I headed out to Braley Pond for a vigorous hike and was greeted by -- almost complete silence! VERY un-birdy. For over an hour, virtually all that I saw along the trail were some Red-breasted Nuthatches. As I reached the most distant point of the loop trail I saw a Barred Owl about 50 yards away, but it eluded my camera. As I neared the camping area toward the end of my hike, things started to pick up: I saw an Ovenbird, an American Redstart, some Blue-gray Gnatcatchers, and a White-breasted Nuthatch. Before leaving, I checked out the pond one last time and noticed a white object far away. It was an Osprey! One of two Ospreys, in fact. In the pasture by the corner of Braley Pond Rd. and Rt. 250 was a flock of 8-10 American Goldfinches.
August 30: Bell's Lane was fairly quiet in the morning, and a distant Eastern Phoebe was all I saw for the first half hour or so. As I was leaving, however, a Brown Thrasher started causing commotion in the bushes, while a Least Flycatcher was zipping all around, taunting me until I finally got a decent photo. Back home, the young male Ruby-throated Hummingbird has established his feeding territory, while Blue Jays make frequent loud visits.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Least Flycatcher, Brown Thrasher, Blue Jay, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and Eastern Phoebe. (August 30, Bell's Lane & north Staunton)
NOTE: The text in these "catch-up" birding blog posts is mostly taken from Facebook posts I made at the time last year. Additional photos and montages, including individual photos of some of the birds in the above montages, will soon become available on the Wild Birds chronological (2023) page.