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Goldfinch fallout



On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Bruce W. Krucke wrote:
>
> Here in the Lowcountry we had a lot of goldfinches during January and
> February, but as expected, they had begun to taper off in the last
> couple of weeks.  I saw maybe a dozen this morning.  Then I went out ham
> shopping and when I came back I was treated to what I can only describe
> as a din!  You know the sound when three or four hundred mixed icterids
> land in your trees?  Today's sound was like that only pitched higher and
> not quite as loud, but many, many voices.  It has to have been a new
> fall out of gold finches--all 'potato chip'-ing away in the live oaks,
> whose color they match perfectly at this time of year so I really
> couldn't see them unless they moved.

Hi C-birders,

We had a similar din at Randy Emmitt's house on Saturday morning. Sounded
like there were dozens, maybe hundreds of goldfinches overhead in the
forest canopy, couldn't really see any (we were mostly looking down for
butterflies, herps, flowers, etc). What's up?

Other birds at Randy's included Louisiana Waterthrush, a daytime-hooting
Barred Owl, and probably a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher or two (heard another
this afternoon right outside the Duke Bio Sci building). Then he led us
(the Duke nature crowd) to Occoneechi Mountain, where a Blue-headed Vireo
was singing amongst many Pine Warblers Golden-crowned Kinglets and a few
Ruby-crowns. We also had 16 butterfly and 9 dragonfly species between the
two spots, several interesting plants, a Spring Peeper (actually seen and
caught, not just heard!), a "Lead-backed" Salamander (redless color morph
of Red-backed), and another salamander that was either Two-striped or
Three-striped, we're still debating and waiting for my photos to get
developed...

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/