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PA Big Day Details |
| Date | Nov 05, 2006 | ||||||
| Number | 81 | ||||||
| # Seen by All | 80 | ||||||
| Area | State | ||||||
| Time | 0345 to 1730 | ||||||
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| 190 Miles by car, 2 miles by foot. Visiting: Memorial Lake SP, Swatara SP, Middle Creek WMA, Struble Lake, Chambers Lake, Coatesville Res, Nottingham Park, Octoraro Res. Species of note: Cackling Goose (R,S), Osprey (L), Lesser Yellowlegs (L,S), Eastern Phoebe (L), Blue-headed Vireo (L), Palm Warbler (L), Common Yellowthroat (L), Yellow-headed Blackbird (V). On Sunday, November 5, attracted yet again to sleep deprivation, emotional anguish, and other prospects generally unattractive to the mentally sound, Mike Tanis and I embarked upon an epic arc through our tangled Piedmont. It was a self-guided tour through the halls of the ultimate natural history museum; a scraggly scavenger hunt comprising a veritable cavalcade of lakes, thickets, and Wawas. Quarter-to-four found us on the perimeter of an unevenly-wooded tract near Mike’s place in Audubon. Mike explained “Part of the old Audubon estate” shortly before emitting an endearing whistle that brought forth not only a screech-owl but also a number of rats and small children. From the outskirts of Philadelphia to the ridges and valleys of Schuylkill County we sped, failing to locate the larger owls for our trouble. At Memorial Lake SP, under unexpected and disheartening cloud cover, we spent a cold sunrise scanning field edge and water. There was no dawn chorus, just an “O Canada” here and the skitter of juncos there.A Pied-billed Grebe bobbed off the dam; the first of the day’s many dozen Ruddy Ducks untucked themselves; coots scooted; and the commoner gulls angled overhead. I finally heard the kingfisher that had somehow managed to elude my bionic hearing, and then we scored a Red-bellied, two flickers, a nuthatch, and some bluebirds... and more bluebirds, some flyover waxwings, and a king-LEH-het in a pear tree; a spruce, actually. But where was the sun? During the ensuing twenty-minute drive north over the Kittatinny, our spirits were first ignited by an adult Red-shouldered Hawk that rose like a flame from the roadside, then extinguished by our realization that a cheering increase in ultraviolet radiation was not imminent. At underbirded Swatara SP, our principal passerine checkpoint, the dank weather was going to hurt us. In lieu of light, with no warmth to make the dickey birds bounce like popcorn, we were condemned to frost and silence. But the avifauna of that marshy vale was too rich to stymie us completely. Pishing and pointing paid off as we worked the old railroad bed through the trees, sopping up early winterers like two frenetic sponges.“‘Peek’! Hairy Woodpecker!”“Phoebe! That’s a write-in!” “Black duck, middle bird in the flock!” “Face stripes on that kinglet!” Fox Sparrow proved numerous, Swamp and Field put in cameos, and several “given” but potentially frustrating species (Yellow-rumped Warbler, Common Grackle, and House Finch) opted to play nice. A welcome sight was the gleaming hockey stick on the wing of a fat Blackcapped Chickadee. Unwelcome (or welcome but not mutually appreciative) was the probable Rusty Blackbird that cast itself into the undergrowth. A second Swatara access point was rife with bluebirds but was essentially Memorial Lake redux, so we 501ed our way south toward Middle Creek WMA, pulling over in obnoxious places to bag kestrel, Killdeer, and that incomparable gem, the House Sparrow. We felt pressured: Mike had run this route with Ted Drozdowski before, and had left the “north” with 45 species; had our morning been nearly as successful? I bit the bullet and conducted a preliminary tally. “Ready for a shocker?” I asked, a minute later. “We’re at 46.” If we felt fine then, we felt finer after the waterfowl fest that was Middle Creek. Things began to heat up (the sun had literally resumed existence) at a pond east of Hopeland Road, where we scopedAmerican Wigeon, Northern Shoveler, Northern Pintail, and Green-winged Teal. Our initial perusal of the lake itself netted Gadwall, Hooded Merganser, and a peanut gallery of cormorants. At our second overlook, I pinned down the far ducks (Bufflehead, a drake Lesser Scaup, three flyby Blue-winged Teal), while Mike’s Hubble Telescope eyes zeroed in on an astronomically distant harrier.A Sharpie fluttered overhead; a Red-tail spiraled spaceward; a slinking fox was to the unwary Mallards as we were to the record.We only hoped. It hit us, somewhere on 322 near Ephrata, which Mike and Ted’s record of 74 was going to take something phenomenal to beat. At the intersection of Todd and White School roads, just outside Honey Brook in Chester County, Mike slowed for a perched group of starlings. I raised my battered Swarovskis. In the center of the tree was a cripplingly bright Yellow-headed Blackbird. Now I’ve been searching for a Mid-Atlantic Yellow-headed for, oh, about twelve years, but since I didn’t wish to startle Mike, I screamed “YEEELLOOOW-HEAAADED BLAAACKBIIIRD!” as discreetly as possible. “How’d you find it so quickly?” Mike demanded, after the ember-chested rarity had flown. “I hadn’t even stopped the vehicle!” He might as well have asked how I’d managed to spot Snow White among the seven dwarves. I had remarked just an hour earlier how exasperatingly homogeneous starling flocks tended to be; how, in my experience, the only interesting constituent of such a flock had been that Bohemian Waxwing at Island Beach, New Jersey, but I was amazed if there weren’t a feathered firebrand here to make me foolish. Elated, we picked out a cowbird to boot, and then Mike further exhilarated us by turning two clumps on the shore of an adjacent farm pond into snipe. Noon had arrived, as had we, at Struble Lake, two Black Vultures and a lone lark having made the Homestead Road fields worth the price of admission. Mike pegged a Horned Grebe, putting us in exceptional shape and thus taking the lid off a slow-cooked pot roast of a Chester County afternoon: both yellowlegs and a dramatic Osprey at Kurtz’s Fish Farm; Mute Swan and Carolina Chickadee around Chambers Lake (Hibernia Park); a Brown Creeper, a plenitude of Ring-necked Ducks, and three silvery Cackling Geese at Coatesville Res. Turning our gaze toward the Maryland border,with an arrow through the record already and with sufficient daylight and another passerine opportunity still in our quiver, we grew giddy. The projected hour’s drive to Nottingham Park took half that. We had a solid six-to-eight half-hardy winter residents left to scrounge for in the Serpentine Barrens, Red-breasted Nuthatch being the most obvious option. However, our most heartfelt pishing failed to attract anything but chickadees, kinglets, juncos, and concerned parents/guardians (it did coat several acres of thorn bushes with a visible layer of sputum). Exceeding the day’s goal would require meticulous scrutiny of the hundreds of robins and White-throated Sparrows squirming through the greenbriars.As it happened, a few late Neotropical migrants were what nudged us into uncharted numerical territory. A Common Yellowthroat on the edge of a small lake...a Palm Warbler in a clear-cut...a Blue-headed Vireo disguised as a kinglet of unusual size...and, wonder be, we finally kicked up a Hermit Thrush. Our pipedream of 80 no longer had a hallucinogen prerequisite. We abandoned Nottingham at 1615, choosing Octoraro Lake over theWakefield grasslands. One causeway produced #79: two Bonaparte’s Gulls circling buoyantly like giant Cabbage Whites. Another vantage point was positioned fortuitously beneath a whirring icterid congregation featuring our (believe it or not) first Red-winged Blackbirds of the undertaking: #80 (had that been a Rusty at Swatara,we’d have had a five-blackbird day). We achieved closure via a dusk walk that brought us into earshot of a pair of Great Horned Owls, with a little help from my charismatic Barred Owl imitation, which has been described as “the rutting call of a large, ill, possibly deranged mammal.” It had been the kind of experience one is proud to sacrifice sleep for. But I decided Mike could sacrifice the rest of the sleep himself, and for the hour back to Audubon my head lolled contentedly, filled with visions of the transparent gold sunset, and perhaps of our misses: Wood Duck, Common Merganser, Wild Turkey, Bald Eagle, Cooper’s Hawk, Barred Owl, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Pileated Woodpecker, Fish Crow, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Winter Wren, Gray Catbird, Brown Thrasher, Eastern Towhee, American Tree Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, and Rusty Blackbird. | |||||||