Sunday, May 16, 2010

A Brief Description of the First Night

We had a great night run up north. Here's a quick review of how it played out.

We started in Great Swamp. They no longer allow the teams to drive in, so we had to park outside the gate and walk in. When we initially heard this, we thought it was going to make life difficult. After a bit of checking with Google maps, we realized it required to walks, each of a half mile in and a half mile out. Fortunately, one of the 1/2 mile legs would be done before midnight.

So how bad was the automobile restriction for us? In a word, it was AWESOME! For the first time in about two decades of using this location for WSB, the swamp was truly quiet. No engine noise, no crunching gravel, and significantly fewer teams, We could hear at amazing distances. And on top of all that, the birds cooperated with most of the targets putting in an appearance plus a nice migrant flight. We hit two locations in the refuge and headed on out towards Sussex County.

Next stop was Lewisburg Marsh, which also cooperated. This tucked away location was a must use stop for a number of teams this year. The Sora there, unlike the one at Great Swamp (and by that I mean the only one we heard) was calling its head off. The necessary ticks were heard, and we ran off for some owls.

The standard Saw-whet cooperated after just a little tooting. The Long-eared stop paid off both with the main target bird and Common Nighthawk. After that, it was off to the grasslands. Grasshopper Sparrow sang very early for us, and we were off to start our diurnal birding.

The winds at Great Swamp were calm, and the temperatures reasonable. The winds had picked up in Sussex Country, but remained manageable. All in all, we had a very pleasant night, one of the nicest we've had for a number of years.

No comments:

Post a Comment