Thursday morning Birding

Birding this morning took us to the old fire tower northwest of Mansfield. The tower is gone and it’s been replaced with a microwave tower. The area itself is part of the state game lands—number 37, I believe. The parking area and the small lop we made is at the very top of the hill and there are open grass fields and food plots, some spruce, lots of honey-suckle hedgerow and second growth oak forest—some of which has been thinned considerable. The Mid-State Trail runs through here and we walked a portion of it. There are also many grass firebreaks and access trails that you can wonder. The road up twists and turns and by the time you’re at the parking lot you can easily lose your sense of direction.

We had our largest group in quite some time with a total of nine people. There was almost as much socializing as there was bird watching. Even so, we came away with a list of two dozen species. There were many American Redstarts singing high in the oaks and an equally large number of Chestnut-sided warblers. The oaks are in full leaf and have their tassels of flowers drooping from each leaf cluster. That brings out the inch worms and the warblers to feed on them. The difficulty for me is trying to distinguish the songs of the two species. The Redstart song can vary from location to location and the ones we heard today sounded almost exactly like the Chestnut-sided Warbler. Bob R., who has an excellent ear, had no difficulty telling them apart and IDed the Redstart immediately after he got out of his car in the parking lot. (I had thought it was a Chestnut.) As the walk moved on, Bob tried to point out the differences in the song. The Redstart song was shorter and ended on a down note. The Chestnut’s song was a little longer and ended on the up slide. I’ll have to take his word for it.

There were also many Red-eyed Vireos. These rather plain looking birds can be difficult to spot high up in the trees but sing a rather recognizable song that just entices you to keep on looking. After craning our necks and twisting our backs into pretzels, we had one Red-eye come right down to eye level in the shrubs not 10 feet in front of us. It’s most unusual to have a vireo come down that close to the ground.

By the same token, we spotted a male Eastern Towhee 40 or 50 feet up near the top of an oak tree singing his heart out. The towhee seldom gets more than a few feet off the ground. We had heard several in the shrubs and underbrush with nary a glance, yet this guy was way up there and right out in the sunlight where we couldn’t miss him.

Anyway, here is my official list for today:


Location: Fire Tower
Observation date: 5/29/08
Notes: Cool (45-55 degree), clear morning with little breeze.
Number of species: 24

Red-bellied Woodpecker X
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker X
Northern Flicker X
Eastern Wood-Pewee X
Red-eyed Vireo X
Tree Swallow X
Black-capped Chickadee X
White-breasted Nuthatch X
American Robin X
Gray Catbird X
Brown Thrasher X
Yellow Warbler X
Chestnut-sided Warbler X
Black-throated Blue Warbler X
Black-throated Green Warbler X
Black-and-white Warbler X
American Redstart X
Ovenbird X
Common Yellowthroat X
Eastern Towhee X
Chipping Sparrow X
Song Sparrow X
Dark-eyed Junco (Slate-colored) X
Red-winged Blackbird X

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)