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Snowhill Road vicinity, Durham; Re: mute swans



Hi C-birders,

My folk-singing naturalist buddy Tracy Feldman organized a wildflower-
watching trip Saturday, visiting Penny's Bend and the Cabin Branch area
just north of there along Snowhill Road. Only bird of note at Cabin Branch
was a Red-headed Woodpecker; it also looked like primo Prothonotary
habitat, but no warblers there yet, just a few Blue-gray Gnatcatchers.
Great place to see a Beaver dam up close without getting your feet wet,
they've dammed CB right before it crosses under Snowhill Road. Better
luck with the plants, including a Jack-in-the-pulpit (always one of my
favorites), but none of the hoped-for Trilliums; maybe we're still too
early...

Penny's Bend had an unusual abundance of Palm Warblers, they might have
been the most common species there! Yellow-rumps were showing signs of
their breeding plumage coming on, and everybody else was singing lustily.
Great flowers of course: Stonecrop, Dogbane, Dutchmen's Breeches, Early
Saxifrage, Yellow Corydalis, tons of Spring Beauty, more than I can
remember... And despite the cold, plenty of pollinating insects, including
my first Pearl Crescent of the year and a few other butterflies.

Back here on Ninth Street, watched a Cardinal carrying nesting material
into one neighbor's bush last week, and Sunday saw a robin settling into a
nest under the opposite neighbor's eaves. And while treating a friend's
daughter to a post-Quaker-meeting trip to Ben and Jerry's, we were treated
to an Accipiter helping several American Crows mob one of the resident
Duke Central Campus Red-tailed Hawks! I think the Accipiter was a female
Sharpie, nearly as big as the crows but head didn't project too far...

Oh, and heard my first Ovenbird of the spring in the Duke Forest's
Korstian Division while preparing for a lab on Friday evening.

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, barbara brooks wrote:
>
> "my gravel pit pond" has 6 mute swans on it.  I will be interested to
> observe the interaction between them and the canadas.

You know, that's about the only positive spin I could ever think of
applying to Mute Swans, that maybe they'll run off non-migratory Mallards
and Canada Geese, the waterfowl equivalents of city park pigeons...

On Mon, 8 Apr 2002, Stephen Perry wrote:
>
> Hermit thrush 2: thought 1 was gray-cheeked for a while but finally
> saw a touch of rufous in the tail: is this variability related to sex
> and/or age?

I think the vast majority of variation in Hermit Thrush coloration is
geographic; there are a few subspecies and variation within subspecies
too. Might be sex and age variation on top of that, though... Given that
the winter birds are starting to leave and breeders starting to arrive,
the Hermits we see now are probably part of a different population from
those that were here all winter.

Good birding,

Josh


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

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