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Fall 2000 NAMC, Fairfield county




If there were a day made for counting birds, September 16, 2000, was it.
The passage of a cool front over the state Friday night had several
counters, including myself, hopeful of a good movement of landbird migrants.
We were not disappointed.

The day started inauspiciously as pre-dawn listening found the thrushes
flying high and fast.  I began to wonder if the birds would simply overfly
us with the continuing good tail winds.  About 5:30 am, the wind stopped up
here in Fairfield county and I was able to collect decent but unremarkable
numbers of brown-backed thrushes, including three Gray-cheeked Thrushes.  

We encountered several mixed feeding flocks in the early morning that had us
hopeful of at least equaling the spring count final species tally.  We had
an excellent warbler tally, even if the diversity of warblers finally fell
below what I hoped for after encountering the first flock.  We ended the day
with Blackburnian, Cape May, Black-throated Green, and Yellow Warbler, as
well as Nashville, which represents only a second record of Nashville
Warbler in Fairfield county, to my knowledge.  We had an excellent number of
Northern Parulas, some of which were singing; Black-and-white Warblers; and
American Redstarts.  

What kept our species total down was a lack of common birds.  We ended the
day with no Eastern Towhees, Common Grackles, Chestnut-sided Warblers or
House Sparrows.  We had to scratch to find one American Robin (never easy to
find in Fairfield county on count days) and it was just after three o'clock
before we found our first Eastern Bluebird of the day.  But we kept finding
uncommon birds - Merlin, Loggerhead Shrike, Bobolinks and - the most
pleasing to me - Bald Eagle.  This year, the year I decided to quit worrying
about finding Bald Eagle on count day, we ended the day with three Bald Eagles.
Two were found at Broad River (and were even in the same field of view at
the same time!) and one was found at the top end of Lake Wateree, around the
Great Falls dam.  Even some of the Red-tailed Hawks we found were
"uncommon".  We found a dark-morph juvenile, a wire bird located by Bob
Ellis that flew straight over us as we jumped out of the car to get a better
look, allowing us to see the dark underparts including underwing coverts
flecked only by a few small streaks of white.

The bird of the day honors, however, go to Sharon Brown and her party in
Colleton county. The best bird from this party in Colleton county has to
be the singing Bicknell's Thrush.  The song was described as a "complicated
little song, very nasal, like a Bluebird with a kazoo." Careful comparison
of the heard song with recorded songs of both Gray-cheeked and Bicknell's
led to the identification.  

I'd be interested in hearing any other preliminary results from South
Carolina North American Migration Count parties, either on-list or off-list.

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"