Hawk watch, boardwalk, and ducks - 29-Mar-2003 - The weather on Saturday morning consisted of light rain early, then just cloudy. Winds were from the west-northwest at seven miles per hour. Visibility was low. Temperatures were about 40 degrees. Needless to say, it was a slow raptor morning. I recorded one migrating Red-tailed Hawk from 9-12. I left when the afternoon shift came and went to the boardwalk. There were a few other birds seen from the tower: Brown Thrasher in a tree nearby, DC Cormorant, four Black-crowned Night Herons landed behind one of the small islands in the water near the nature center, a couple local Bald Eagles, Eastern Towhee singing, one Sandhill Crane flying overhead, Great Egrets.

On the boardwalk, birding was decent: Golden-crowned Kinglets (several), Winter Wrens, Fox Sparrows (about 1/2 as many as previous Saturday), Brown Creepers, Hermit Thrushes, and Eastern Phoebes.

In a flooded field near the Magee Marsh entrance, a Eurasion Wigeon was spotted on Friday, hanging out with American Wigeon. I made a quick visit to the field. I needed a scope and more time, but I had neither. In this field, there were over 100 Ring-necked Ducks, and over 100 American Wigeon. Unless someone else there already had it scoped out, it would take some time to weed through all the ducks. It was a busy place, but they were not close to the road. There were other species in the field, including Northern Pintail, Red Headed, and Mallard ducks. Apparently, the Eurasion Wigeon was seen through Monday of this week, but I never tried again to locate it. Even though I've never seen such a bird, it's obviously not a priority with me. I'm not going to track down every rare bird that's reported. I'm more interested in watching the Kinglets and Fox Sparrows.

One Golden-crowned Kinglet on the boardwalk was below head high and was only a few feet away from me. He was really flaring the colors on his head. I didn't see another GCKI around, so I'm not sure why he was flashing the unit. The top of his head was almost completely bright yellow, and the orange was also visible. No need for binos. I just stood and watched for several minutes. That's one of my favorite birds. The Fox Sparrows are also fun to watch and listen too. The Phoebes were actively fly-catching.