Greetings,

Considering it wasn’t raining, upon waking up I decided to take a walk down the local private Rail Trail to see what birds I could muster up in the cool morning sun.

Passing the Grainery, a building that now belongs to STAIR Galleries, I spotted the first birds of the morning; of course, these were also to be the most common ones in the neighborhood too. European Starlings wolf-whistled as Gray Catbirds mewed from the thickets…a nice start, but nothing out of the ordinary by any stretch of the imagination.

As my footsteps carried me forward I was able to hear a nearby Indigo Bunting singing on the edge of the nearby cornfield. While I was perhaps only 10 meters from the bunting, it was not to be spotted due to the position of it in the tree combined with a low sun in the sky backlighting its location. Other birds first detected around the area of the bunting included: Red-bellied Woodpecker, Cedar Waxwing, Song, and Field Sparrows. It was right around this time that I noticed a lot of hatch year birds. These included Gray Catbird, Northern Cardinal, and Field Sparrow. It was fairly amusing to watch a fleshy-gaped catbirds gulping down wild grapes that were almost too big for its mouth….but as always, it managed just fine!

Continuing down the gravel trail I had a young Broad-winged Hawk glide low overhead, make a few circles over the corn field and then disappeared out of sight. I was pleasantly surprised to see this species here as I often don’t at this location. Certainly the woods around the area hold numerous Broad-wings, but they aren’t detected that often cruising in the open where this one was. In fact, the normal raptors that I see at this location at this time of year are a pair of American Kestrels that I was disappointed did not make a showing. Ever since a dead tree which housed their nesting cavity for years was cut down, they have been observed less and less. My best guess is they have been finding better nesting trees down the trail and have occupied a new territory.

While looking at the Broad-wing, I did a little spishing to call out some birds that had disappeared upon the sighting of the raptor, and of course a million and one catbirds came out of hiding. However, it was at this point that I had a nice, semi-cooperative female American Redstart pop into view. She showed her muted colors for 30 seconds or so before falling out of a tree like a leaf and ducking into some wild rose. It was at this moment that another warbler popped into view, an adult Blue-winged. This Vermivora warbler was once way more common at this location, but for some reason they haven’t been in past years. This is probably attributed to the thinning of the hedge row to allow vehicles to drive down the road to access their cattle pens. If only I was more knowledgeable 22 years ago when I was 5 and going for walks down the trail, which then was super thick with cover. I’m sure Golden-winged Warblers had nested in the same corridor of this rail trail. In fact, I’m sure they still do at some locations because my dear friend Bill Cook had a Lawrence’s Warbler just a few miles from my house on this trail a few years ago. For those of you who aren’t familiar, a Lawrence’s Warbler is the recessive combination of a hybrid crossing of Blue-winged X Golden-winged Warblers.

After the brief 1-2 of warblers, I made my way up to the cattle field where the resident pond held zero migrating shorebirds, but did contain 1 Canada Goose and 1 Great Blue Heron (look closely in the above photo). The heron was a nice find to help round out the taxa. On the way back to the house, I was able to find a juvenile Willow Flycatcher showing buffy wingbars, and my first Blue-gray Gnatcatcher in several weeks! I love those little guys.

All in all, it was a nice walk with a lot of common species (American Goldfinch, House Wren, Blue Jay, Eastern Phoebe), but also a few nice additions as mentioned above. I of course hope that as the fall progresses my time to get out increases, even if on weekends. Migration has already started, and there is a lot more good things to find!

Bird on,
~Chad