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.