In the last 36 hours I made 3 trips to Bluegrass Lane to not see the vaunted Blue Grosbeak, arriving once just after it was spotted and waiting an hour for it not to reappear, and twice leaving just before it was re-reported. But enough about the thrill of the vain chase...during my visit to the locale early this morning (ca. 0730 h) I flushed a Wilson's Snipe along the northern edge of the southwest cornfield near the cattails. Then I walked the southern edge of that field down the road that runs west from where the John Deere is currently parked. There I witnessed an astonishing migration manifestation: throngs of White-throated Sparrows were emerging from the corn and rising into the trees to the south. Besides a few Song Sparrows, a Field Sparrow, a Ruby-crowned Kinglet, a House Finch, a Yellow-rumped Warbler, a Gray Catbird and a Robin or two, everything I got my binoculars on during an intense twenty minutes was a WTSP. As I walked along, snatches of song praising Canada and hailing Sam Peabody floated down from the trees and I could hear wings whirring in the corn as the sparrows flushed in front of me. I continued to where the road turns to the north and then started back. As I retraced my steps the sparrows were just exploding from the corn in wave after wave of 10-15 birds. Along one 50 yard stretch I counted ~165 birds pass in front of me in 30 seconds. I estimated the total at 200 and think this may have been conservative. Wow! It occurred to me that there must be some kind of highly constrained post-season superlative that I could apply to the experience...how about largest flock of non-introduced non-icterine migrating passerines ever observed below eye-level by a Cayuga-birder during a government shutdown?
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