Yesterday (Sunday) morning, after the morning bird walk at the lab, I drove up Tehan Road and walked down Signal Hollow Road on the edge of Yellow Barn State Forest to just past the pond and back. The power cut had a singing indigo bunting (up high, not seen) and a chestnut-sided warbler heard then seen. The walk started rather unremarkably, with ovenbirds and veeries and revireos and sapsuckers and other common breeders. At one point I "flushed" a silent ovenbird foraging on the ground near the road -- which ran away rather than flew while holding a nice juicy grub in its bill. Then a quiet chick-burring revealed a male scarlet tanager foraging low enough for pretty good photos (modulo the canopy darkness), with a female hanging around nearby accompanied - it seemed - by an entourage of red-eyed vireos. I passed zones serenaded by black-throated blue (haven't heard that for a while), black-throated green, hermit thrush, and blackburnian "second song" (like a black-and-white warbler, but with a chattery suffix). At the pond an adult cooper's hawk flew to a snag, but wouldn't hold for a photo before taking flight again. Many small frogs leapt into the puddles as I passed. A raven (or ravens) cronked from not too far away.
At one point I heard what I thought was a double-veery, but when I reviewed the iPhone recording I made it sounded too high: http://suan-yong.com/sound/yellow-barn-mystery.wav Anyone know what this is? After repeating the double-call often it switched to a single call a few times (possibly coincident with my approaching a little closer). Seemed a little richer than a titmouse. Returning to the road, when I thought I would try to visually find one of those loud teachering ovenbirds, a flash above turned into a yellow-billed cuckoo, silent and poised a little nervously but quite close, allowing me only one over-exposed shot before it jumped a few branches into invisibility, cuckled a few syllables, then flew away as I shuffled about seeking a vantage. Yet another fun exploration of one of our many local natural areas during a time of day and year when things supposedly go quiet. Suan -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
