Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!dev!vrdxhq!edm
From: edm@vrdxhq.verdix.com (Ed Matthews)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Outdoor Musings
Keywords: ramble on, ramble on
Message-ID: <46369@vrdxhq.verdix.com>
Date: 11 Feb 91 13:30:11 GMT
Organization: Verdix Corporation, Chantilly,  VA
Lines: 84

I thought I would engage in a little stream of birding here...

I was out this weekend at one of my local parks, Manassas Battlefield
National Park, and noticed that the Park Service had cut down every
snag that could potentially ever fall in the direction of one of the
trails, including some that Pileated Woodpeckers were actively feeding
from and some nest sites that I'd staked out last year to watch this
spring.  As the song goes, "When will they ever learn?"

Ever been walking around and say to yourself "I've never seen X around here"
when voila X appears?  Happened again this weekend beside Bull Run (of the
Battle of Bull Run fame) with a Great Blue Heron.  I uttered the incantation
and presto! a GBH took wing from a limb about twenty feet up in a sycamore
tree.  Didn't even have the manners to grok at me.  Don't they sound just
awful?

Ever notice how hard it is to ID birds when they're flying head on at you
at eye level?  My wife and I were crossing a bridge when we saw a really
long winged creature come flying straight on at us.  As it veered to the
side, the long Great Blue Heron neck came into view. 

The Tufted Titmice have been singing in the tree tops for two weeks now:
Peter-Peter-Peter.  The Eastern Blue Birds have joined them for about the
last ten days.  Is it my imagination or are the male blue birds more
spectacularly blue this winter than ever?

One of the most rewarding sights for me has to be sitting up on cliffs or
bluffs above a river and have Canada Geese come winging by at eye-level.
In the summer, I go out to Mather Gorge on the Potomac just north of
Washington DC. At 6-6:30 a.m., it is generally foggy enough so that you
can hear the geese coming for a few hundred meters before you can glimpse
them for twenty meters.  Splendid sight.  

Got to see one of my favorite birds this weekend, Certhia familiaris, the
Brown Creeper.  They are hard to spot and uncommon as well.  Checking my
logs, I saw only one last year, in Whitchurch, Hampshire, England.  Makes
me wonder why the familiaris.

Taking up the recent Pileated Woodpecker thread, I'll keep watching them
while the rest of the world argues about *the one correct way* to pronounce
the name.  We are blessed here to have a large population.  I have seen
hundreds and saw five more yesterday without looking for them.  Before
you get jealous, know that I have never birded west of the Atlantic Coast
of the US, so there are tens of birds, probably in your back yard, that
I have not had the chance to see.  Can't wait for that three week trip to
the San Francisco Bay area this fall.  Back to the original thread, if
you want to see Pileateds, they love sycamores, are likely to be found
near water/swampy ground, and are most active between sunrise and nine
in the morning.  After that, they seem to get reclusive, except in 
breeding season.

Back to nemesis birds.  Red-Headed Woodpecker.  I have *never* seen one,
despite hours and hours of looking at known sites.  What gives?

Hey, I just noticed that "our" (notice how we get possesive of birds?)
baby American Bitterns made page 1121 of American Birds, winter 1990.
It sure was fun watching those guys grow up -- they really have neat
plumage changes as they grow.

I'm an unabashed Turkey Vulture fan.  People look at me funny when I
admit that.  Oh well, there's not much to beat them for grace and
majesty on the wing (at least here on the east coast).  We have a roost
about 300 meters from my house where twenty or more birds spend the
night.  They leave before dark and come in to roost at 4 p.m. give or
take ten minutes every day.  You can set your watch by them.  One morning
as I was walking my dog at about 5:30, it was really dark, but just 
barely light enough with the moon to see seven TVs come drifting over
my house at twenty feet off the ground, looking for thermals.  Yesterday
I watched them come in, spilling wind from their wings to lose altitude.
Looked like they were playing.

Speaking of just barely off the ground, I used to play soccer after work,
directly on the flight path of the local Canada Geese.  Besides being
treated to some wonderfully lush and green grass (they sure are messy!)
we got to see Vs of honkers come in at ten feet off the ground directly
over head at good speed.  The whistle of their wings and the breeze they
made was fantastic.

Enough musings...
-- 

Ed Matthews                                                edm@verdix.com
Verdix Corporation Headquarters                            (703) 378-7600
Chantilly, Virginia