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Posted by Toe on 16:48:47 09/05/09
I started at Lucky Hammock before dawn in hopes of finding a year bird or two. One of my hoped-for targets was Lark Sparrow. I was later joined by Larry Manfredi and we did a pretty extensive search of both Lucky Hammock and the Annex. No Lark Sparrow to be found. We did get 8 warbler species, a bunch of Alder Flycatchers, Eastern Kingbirds, GC Flycatcher, flocks of Bobolinks overhead, and a Black-bellied Whistling Duck. The most interesting warblers were Yellow-breasted Chat, Yellow, and N. Waterthrush.
I stopped at the C-111 before the rains hit and walked down the berm to the first clump of shrubs and grass past the gate. What do I find: a young Lark Sparrow! OK, one down.
The ag fields had almost no shorebirds, but there were Bald Eagles everywhere. Boy do I miss DDT. A stop at the first hammock on the left side of 217th Ave. north of 9336 produced a calling "whit" Flycatcher. I had just heard just about every Alder call at Lucky Hammock and the Annex, and Larry was there to point out the different variations. This empid gave a completely different call, more like a Willow. Visually it was completely Traill's with not much of an eye ring.
I stopped at the C-111E but the rains didn't let up and it looked like they would continued for a while. I then went to Castellow Hammock to watch the rain continue, and then drove to Dump Marsh. I arrived at the gate just as the rain was letting up and saw a bird in a shrub across 248 st. on the landfill side: another Lark Sparrow, an adult this time. Nice, but I already had this for the year. Funny how you go from great bird to trash bird in a matter of hours. It flew towards me and went into the shrubby area to the right of the bridge. Only other decent birds at Dump were 8 Gray Kingbirds and one Eastern. Cutler Wetlands is of course, too wet, but has about 1/2 the entire population of Mottled Ducks in the U.S. My final stop was Sadowski where my most interesting sighting was a bounce house between the picnic shelter and the hammock. Needless to say I didn't get out of the car.
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