Last week while vacationing on Wolfe Island in the Thousand Islands(Wolfe is a
large island but very quiet and mainly rural/agricultural) I was driving after
sunset on one of the dirt/gravel roads that compose most of the island when I
saw a woodcock sitting toward the side of the road. It did not move for a
couple of minutes and I was able to get a photograph of it in the headlights
before it flew off into the night sky. Wolfe Island offers perfect woodcock
habitat, with many unused fields and scrub. I continued driving and about a
quarter mile away from where I saw the woodcock, suddenly in the headlights on
the dirt/gravel road ahead several small birds flushed up and flew away from
the road. This happened at least three times as I drove slowly down the road,
but I could never get a good sighting of these birds, other than they were
small (robin-sized or smaller) and flew up suddenly ahead. There were probaly a
dozen altogether. There were no other
vehicles on this road. I was wondering if anyone could tell me what birds
these might be. I'm not sure if they were young woodcocks (as I know they are
active at dawn and dusk), or something else. My husband surmised that they were
swallows (of which we saw hundreds on the telephone wires on the island,
gathering for migration), but I didn't think they would be on the roadway at
night. Any help regarding identification of these birds would be appreciated.
--
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/
--
