gmr044@leah.Albany.Edu (Gregg Recer) (08/22/90)
This past weekend my wife and I spent two days in northern NH --
about 20 miles north of Franconia Notch for those familiar with the
area. Among other activities, one of our goals was to visit a NH
Audubon property called the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge. It's about a
3 mi. hike into a very secluded pair of extremely pretty ponds
(Cherry and Little Cherry). We saw some good birds along the walk.
The passerines that stood out included canada, B&W, mourning and
common yellowthroat warblers, yellow-throated vireo, both nuthatches,
and ruby-crowned kinglets. Finding a number of little mixed bands of
warblers/vireos hanging out with the chickadees clearly suggested that
fall migration is under way. Also around were tons of cedar waxwings,
an un-knowable Empid. and several ruby-throated hummers (that brings
the New England hummer list to 1!! :*] ). Since much of the refuge
area around the ponds is heath bog and spruce-tamarack forest we hoped
to come across a few boreal species but no luck, unfortunately -- the
search for spruce grouse goes on.
We also found about a dozen hawks cruising by overhead. Most
were broad-wings and harriers. They too clearly appeared to be in
migration mode. One of the hawks appeared, as a best guess, to be a
rough-leg. Seeing it first without her binocs, my wife first thought
it was a bald eagle -- not an uncommon mistake with some light-morph
rough-legs since they can have fairly light head plumage in winter.
Upon closer inspection the rough-leg ID seemed most correct, although
because of extreme back-lighting it was hard to make out the carpal
patches clearly. The tail pattern was right -- wide, dark terminal
band and white coverts -- and the bird was large. Would this be
exceptionally early for a rough-leg to appear in wintering range?
We've seen them in NE Maine in mid-Sept. before but this is nearly a
month earlier than that.
We're going to Cape Cod over Labor Day weekend. We have a
day-trip scheduled to go to Monomoy Is. Since our planned Jamaica Bay
trip was washed out this will be our first real shorebirding trip of
the season. I'm looking forward to it. Anybody have any other hot
spots to suggest while we're out there? Thanks.
Gregg
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"In future you should delete the words crunchy frog and
replace them with the legend crunchy raw unboned real
dead frog!!"
-- Inspector Bradshaw, The Hygiene Division
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