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Broad River 3/5/2000 - Luck!




It was certainly a nice day to be birding!  I have said before that
birdwatching  (or more accurately, bird*chasing*) is an unequal mixture of
knowledge and luck.  You can monitor the right habitat for years and never
find the bird.  Then sometimes you are in the wrong place and the bird finds
you anyway.  Today was a lucky day for Kathleen O'Grady, Molly Bonnell and I
at Broad River.

We did indeed find the LeConte's.  It took all of one step off of the mowed
road over into the weeds of the sparrow field and a buffy sparrow flushed.
As I stood thinking it had to be a Savannah, that Ammodramus just wasn't
that easy, the first sparrow of the day simply couldn't be...the bird
landed.  The bird landed up high on a stem of dog fennel - in plain view!
There in all his buffy glory was...a LeConte's!  After some time, the bird
went back to his grass and I walked toward where he had went down simply
because that was the path I had chosen.  We had found the LeConte's and
anything else would be bonus birds.  The buffy bird flushed again, this time
landing about four or five feet up in a briar - again in plain view.  This
time not only could I study him again, I could have counted feathers.  On
out in the field, away from the first bird, at least one other buffy sparrow
flushed with the Savannahs.

Other birds of interest found today:

Great Blue Heron - a fine example of a GB Heron in breeding plumage - lovely
black plumes on the head, breeding plumage feathers (the long thin delicate
"aigrettes") on the back and breast, deep maroon "thighs" and a noticeably
yellow tinge to the bill 

American Coot - lots, chortling in amongst the dead cornstalks in the
still-flooded fields

Wood Duck - heard

Ring-necked Duck - somewhere between thirty and fifty birds still present in
one large flock

Mallards - heard

Red-shouldered Hawk - courting, yelling back and forth and flying back and forth

Red-tailed Hawk - Broad River's resident RT who is quite comely this year

Turkey Vulture - about 20 birds noted spiralling up a thermal and lining out
in a generally northerly direction to the next thermal, where they spiralled
up the thermal and lined out in generally northerly direction - migrating?

Common Snipe - not always easy to find

Belted Kingfisher

Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglets - far fewer heard than is usual for
this time of year at Broad River

Blue-headed Vireo - heard singing on Strother Road on the way in to Broad River 
Red-winged Blackbirds - tons, including a few females

White-throated, Song and Swamp Sparrows - only found a few Swamp Sparrows
today but plenty of WT and Song
 
We did not relocate the mystery Ammodramus sp. despite a thorough search.

     
Donna Bailey
Winnsboro, SC
e-mail: dsbailey@conterra.com
URL: http://www.conterra.com/dsbailey
     "Where are the Birds?  Migration across South Carolina"
URL: http://www.conterra.com/dsbailey/audubon	
    "Columbia Audubon Society"