Around noon today I checked out Kingsbury Woods conservation area on Jersey Hill Road. While listening to the radio in the car a Nashville Warbler came down to forage in the bushes right in front of the car, ID-able with the naked eye. A good omen, I thought, along with the yodeling pileateds once I got out of the car. The early part of the trail passes a swath of woods opened up by a tornado in 2011, an area which was quite birdy with towhees, revireo, phoebe, flicker, hairy and downy. I'm curious to check this area out in spring. A blue-headed vireo was singing a long continuous song almost catbird-like, and for much of the time the woods echoed with a chorus of chipmunk clucks and chips, with blue jay calls adding to the general sense of nervousness among the forest denizens, though I never found any aerial predators (unless you count the flyby cronking raven). At one point a chickadee landed 10 feet from me and started complaining. I'm not sure what exactly about but it was enough to draw out an assortment of curious passers-by to check me out - creepers, tanager, sapsucker, nuthatches... No need to pish when a chickadee offers to do it for you :-) I ended up with a sweep of expected woodpeckers, an empid (didn't seem like a pewee though I couldn't rule it out) high in a tree, a ruby-crowned kinglet, but not too many warblers: just a couple of black-throated greens and a blackpoll-like thing.
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