Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy

Joe Coleman sent over a great report from when he was out doing his Bird Atlas survey on Friday. Here’s his story of Wood Ducks, and more:

I found a pair of WOOD DUCKS standing and walking on limbs in a stand of large white oaks this morning while driving to one of my atlas block areas. I was heading down Ebenezer Church Rd, about a mile from my house, when I saw two odd shapes on a large & old White Oak limb about 25-30 feet above the ground.  After stopping, pulling over, & putting my binoculars on the birds I realized the shapes were a male and female Wood Duck.  

They were walking, if that’s really the right word, back & forth, on this very large horizontal limb, occasionally hopping to neighboring limbs.  The female then flew to a very large cavity about 30 feet above the ground in a neighboring White Oak and spent some time looking in it.  The male joined her and both looked into the cavity from several different angles. 

Reaching for my camera I realized it was at home on the kitchen counter where I’d left it in hopes of catching a couple good photos of the RED-HEADED WOODPECKERS that have been visiting my feeders this week.  After about 10 minutes the two Wood Ducks flew back further into the woods when a pick-up truck drove by me.

However, right after they left a Fox Squirrel ran up one of the neighboring White Oaks. From that location I drove to Foggy Bottom Rd and walked northwest on it near from where it intersects with Austin Grove Rd.  About 8:30 am I heard an EASTERN SCREECH OWL whinnying that just wouldn’t stop; while it sounded like it was at least 100 yards off the road I’ve found that they’re often much closer than it seems.  This was about a mile from where Laura Weidner and I found both a Screech Owl and a Barred Owl about a week ago. 

While standing there listening to the screech owl I started hearing RED-HEADED WOODPECKERS behind me.  At that point a COOPER’S HAWK flew into the area where the Red-headed Woodpeckers were and everything shut right up while the Cooper’s Hawk rapidly vocalized, kih, kih, kih, before flying away.  One RUBY-CROWNED KINGLET was also singing its entire repertoire, something I rarely hear.

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy is sometimes asked to do a special nature program or environmental education field trip for a community or group of kids and as long as our volunteers are available, we head on out to explore and share the wild nature of Loudoun.

Phil Daley and Joe Coleman met up with the Girl Scout troop at the Dulles Wetlands in Leesburg yesterday afternoon. With the spring weather already being so wonderful, it was a great day to be out but in addition to that, the girls (as well as Joe and Phil) were in for a special treat with not only great views of the Bald Eagles but also a Sandhill Crane! A real rarity for Loudoun! Here’s the report from Joe Coleman:

Phil Daley and I, with permission from the Dulles Greenway management, took a Girl Scout troop on to the Dulles Greenway Wetlands Mitigation Project late this afternoon.  We were able to show them a BALD EAGLE and at least one very young and small nestling almost immediately.  After that, at about 5:30 pm we were explaining to them the many reasons why wetlands are so important to the environment and what wonderfully diverse wildlife nurseries they are.

At one point we were standing in the mud on the edge of a thick stand of cattails and explaining to the girls and their parents how easy it would be for a bird or mammal to find shelter in the them and showed them drawings of rails as well as actual tracks of several different mammals that use the wetlands.  Not expecting any kind of response at that time of day I briefly played about 20 seconds of a Virginia Rail tape.  As soon as I turned the tape off two different VIRGINIA RAILS responded!

A little later while walking to the far side of the wetlands Phil spotted a bird which both of us, at first, took for granted as a Great Blue Heron flying into the wetlands, though it flew and landed differently than Great Blues do.  After it landed on the far side of the wetlands across from us and thinking we might be able to show the girls a Great Blue in breeding plumage we put it in the spotting scope and immediately realized it was a solitary SANDHILL CRANE!  While it was pretty active and kept disappearing in the high vegetation on the edge of the wetlands, we were able to show it to most of the girls and their parents though it did rapidly disappear from sight. We were unable to find it again before we left.

All in all a great couple of hours of birding … Joe Coleman