one of the more interesting reasons to go out birdwatching is rarely knowing
what you will find... so, david chatham (who torqued his knee too much to
go kayaking) called me last night , saying ROAD TRIP, and i suggested
stillwater (quickly becoming a favourite of mine)...

by 9am, we're on the trail, hoping to find the yellow-breasted chat (nope),
the american redstart (zippo), or the eastern kingbird (nada)... just as
well, as instead of doing a big sit on the harris creek bridge (where we
were found by kathy andrich and (later) maryfrances mathis), we were
"forced" to find other lovelies further afield, and find them we did...

while kathy and maryfrances were finding red-eyed vireos, swainson's
thrushes, and wilson's and macgillivray's warblers, our intrepid group was
also locating three turkey vultures, an american bittern in-flight, 30-40
flocking band-tailed pigeons, one brown creeper, 30+ black swifts, almost as
many vaux swifts, six swallow species (tree, barn, violet-green, northern
rough-wing, bank, and a beautiful cliff), at least one spotted sandpiper
(breeding plumage, and possibly more that streaked by at breakneck speed),
two unidentified plovers, and purple finches...

the whole trail had good numbers of red-breasted sapsuckers, black-headed
grosbeaks, and nesting swallows (probably VG, top of the same snag as a
nesting RBSA)...

all told, for such a sorry weather day as a few hard squalls blew through,
we still had 50+ nice species...

00 caren
http://www.parkgallery.org
george davis creek, north fork