The plight of the beginning birder is remembering all what is seen in the
field until one gets home to start looking up what one thinks is a bird,
in this case a Virginia Rail. Just east of the IMA here at the UW campus
is a drainage ditch that usually has ducks in it. I was noticing that
there was very little water in it now ( possibly because of the new drain
pipe put in last summer over by one of the playing fields). Anyway there
is now a large swath of mud/silt on both sides of a trickle of a
"stream", there also are a few fallen branches between the mud and the
dead grasses. It was here that I spooked and was spooked by what I think
was a Virginia Rail. It had orange legs and feet, a longish bill, and
sorta brown/buff striped on the back. But, it had to sprint beside the
branches to get to the grasses, and to help it along it gave 2 flaps of
its wings with the axillars a buffy color. No where in any guide books
is there a mention of the color of the axillars. What a way to learn a
new bird to make it one's own. So-o-o, was it a Virginia Rail?? thanks