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Va. Xbills, HBSP 1/2



Reports of a pair of male White Winged Crossbills induced me to travel to
Portsmouth, VA this weekend.  I drove up to Virginia Beach Thursday afternoon
and was in place at the house on Thornwood Street at dawn on Friday.  After
about 45 minutes the birds arrived and were well seen on a thistle feeder, a
birdbath, and in the adjacent trees.  These are stunning birds!  Updates and
directions to the birds are available on "Virginia Birds" 
(http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~siler/birdmail.html).

After the crossbills I headed up to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  The
weather was incredible.  Sunny, warm, and no wind!  Wait you say, no wind on the
CBBT?!  Yes, it's true, there are times when the wind is not blowing with gale
force.  Unfortunately beautiful weather is not always the recipe for good
birding on the bridge.  None of the rare gulls reported from the previous
weekend (Black-tailed, Iceland, Yellow-legged, kittiwake) were seen by any of
the birders I met.  The rafts of male Oldsquaw (I'm still in denial about the
name change) around each island helped make up for the lack of gulls.  Scoters
were represented by White-winged and Surf, and a few Greater Scaup paddled
around island #1.  All in all a great way to close out 1999 (plus 2 lifers,
crossbill and Greater Scaup!).

We stayed around the house on Saturday and checked out the local ponds.  Here
are the results:

1010 pond- 12 Ring-necks and a Pied-billed Grebe

NCSU Pond- 18 Lesser Scaup, 10 shovelers, 12 Mallard, 11 Bufflehead, 2
Ring-necks, 50 Canada Geese and 2 Common Snipe

Greenview Pond- 2 Tundra Swans (a couple of people were piddling around in the
marsh and no other waterfowl were noted)

West Lake Pond- 9 Canvasback, 11 American Wigeon, 7 Bufflehead, 8 Ring-necks.
The numbers are way down from the 400 plus birds in late November.  I'm
hypothesizing that the birds have eaten through the majority of the food
available at the pond are moving out into other areas to feed.  When we watch
for woodcock in the evenings behind the house we are seeing scores of ducks
flying in the direction of West Lake pond at dusk.  I'm guessing they might be
returning to roost.

We drove down to Myrtle Beach Saturday evening and were on the beach at
Huntington Beach SP at dawn on Sunday.  The jetty area produced some nice birds.
The Peregrine Falcon was sitting on channel marker #6 keeping an eye on the
flocks of shorebirds moving on the flats.  The Reddish Egret was dancing in the
new year on the flats at the back of the inlet.  At one point the egret and the
falcon moved across the channel and were visible in the scope at the same time!
Quite a treat.  The inlet was full of loons and dolphin.  One innocent Common
Loon almost caused me to fall off the jetty... because I was laughing so hard.
The loon was minding its own business when a dolphin surfaced directly
underneath it.  The loon jumped up, flopped a few feet, spun around and dropped
back to the water.  The dolphin swam off oblivious to the whole thing while the
loon looked around to see if anyone noticed its spastic reaction.  The first
dolphin-loon collision I've witnessed.

Strangely we did not see any Purple Sandpipers on the jetty.  Later we found 60
(!) sitting on the first groin north of the jetty in Garden City.  If you need a
Purple SP and don't find them at HBSP this might be a good place to try.  We
also saw a couple of Eurasian Collared Doves in Surfside Beach (2 blocks north
of the Days Inn).

Other nice birds at HBSP were:

Red Throated Loon
Great Cormorant
Green Heron (I don't see too many this time of year)
Tundra Swan
Surf Scoter
Osprey
American Oystercatcher (20)
Piping Plover
Red Knot
Common Ground Dove
Seaside Sparrow

We ended up with 79 species in the park.  My goal was to get 100 species for my
year list this weekend.  I ended up with 99.  If I had taken the time to look
for the cowbirds at the NCSU pond I would have made it.  How often can you say a
Brown-headed Cowbird is a significant miss!

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

Steve Shultz
Cary, NC