Only a chosen few actually get to see Virginia Rails in flight.
Most must be satisfied with a glimpse of rail parts. A bill one day,
tail another, sometimes a foot. Over the years the experienced birder
actually gather enough parts to count the complete bird.
You saw a Virginia Rail and you saw the axillaries, the rail part so
many of us are still missing.
The dead one in my freezer has light brown axillaries, congratulations.



>
>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
>
>
>

--
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* Mike Patterson, Astoria, OR * Everybody has something to hide,
* mpatters at ednet1.osl.or.gov * except for me and my monkey
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