I dropped into the Hawthorn Orchard a little before noon to find an abundance of bare sticks, but a paucity of foliage and birds. A westerly pass along the northern edge yielded a small flock of White-throated sparrows and a Baltimore Oriole. The perennial Great-crested Flycatcher was doing its wheepy thing in the open area west of the NE corner. I went down the paved trail a few hundred yards and checked Chris T-H's Cape-may Warbler magnets, the two scraggly spruces on the north edge of a private yard just off the trail to the west, but there was no magnetism happening there at noon. Then I cut back into the grassy field south of the Hawthorn plot and found a Yellow Warbler working the big willow on the south edge of the strip, where, I assume, the Nashville and Cape May were found this morning. It's the only respectably flushed out tree around. After some judicious spisshing (say that ten times fast and birds just pour out of the bush) I had Yellow-rumped, Blackburnian, Nashville, and Willson's Warbler as well as a Ruby-crowned Kinglet and a vireo I couldn't id with certainty although I'm pretty sure it was a Red-eyed. It's humbling to struggle with a bird that I've read is the most common breeding passerine in northeastern deciduous forests (here i am, where are you?). So...until the Hawthorns green up that willow tree may be a micro-hotspot on east hill. Yeah...spring fever.
Stuart -- 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/ --
