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WW Crossbills, Parulas and Bald Eagles



Dear All:
Had a marvellous day's birding and bolstering my S Carolina life list. I
have been waiting YEARS, no decades, for this little blighter--the White
Winged Crosbill; waiting with visions of swriling snowstorms up in Maine
or some other boreal hell. But here it turns out to be as easy as you
please--just drive down to the township of Tega Cay in the suburbs of
Charlotte and take your seat in a sunny parlour, munch on a doughnut
kindly provided by LIz Ciardi, the Crossbill host, and wait for the  bird
to show up and in the meantime be regaled by chirping  bluebirds, hummers
and rough winged swallows. I highly recommend you all make a bee-line down
to Liz Ciardi's place and see this rainbow-hued wonder of an adolescent
White Winged Crossbill before the boreal woods lure him back. 
Not only were there doughnuts and coffee thoughtfully laid out by Liz
Ciardi, but there was also a lively little crowd, breathlessly waiting by
the feeders and chatting about local birding. Judy Walker directed me to a
lovely local state park--Landsford's Canal--where, as though a Crossbill
were not enough for the day, I was further amazed by a river full of
Spider Lillies at the very height of ther bloom, while Ospreys and Great
Blue Herons soared overhead, Prothonotaries and Louisiana Waterthrushes
warbled from deep within the woods, Acadian flycatchers exploded into
little chirps overhead and Great Egrets cavorted int he river bed, where
they blended in almost to the point of invisibility in the gleaming masses
of Spider Lillies. But the two highlights of Landsford's Canal State Park
have to be the Parulas I saw at their nest high up in the crown of a Sugar
Gum. There was an immense amount of excitement in the air as they
shimmered in and out of the branches, never sitting still for a minute and
singing ever so tantalizingly close to me that I really wondered if I was
going blind that I could not see them. All I saw were two electric flicks
zooming in and out of a moss covered upper branch, but that somehow made
the sighting all the more special. In stark contrast was the pair of Bald
Eagles, also at their nest high up on a Loblolly Pine. THese, unlike the
Parulas, were all matter, solid and dependable, as they sat unbudging on
the branches above the untidy nest. Much peering finally revealed the
almost fully grown baby which emerged for a minute to flap its wings as
raptor babies often do just before taking the first flight. A Prothonotary
sang behind me, and ordinarily I would try to zoom in on it, but it paled
by comparison to the Ealgles on the nest. All in all a spectacular day and
one which yielded at least three or four S Carolina life birds for me. 

Shantanu Phukan

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SHANTANU PHUKAN
Lecturer in Urdu-Hindi & Indian Literature
University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Curriculum in Asian Studies
Alumni Hall 413C
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599

phukan@email.unc.edu
919-962-6825
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