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This is a great place for a summer afternoon of birding.

Or spring afternoon of birding.

Or fall afternoon of birding.

Or all day birding.

From the visitor's center, at the end of the entrance road, about where the marker is staked in the map above, a trail winds about 3/8ths of a mile through the forest to the edge of a large tract of wetlands. And not "wetlands" as under the Bush revised definition, but "wetlands" as in "land wet from being under water".

But I wax editorial.

At the point where the trail nears the edge of the swamp a boardwalk begins. It wanders out through the swamp, splitting and reconnecting, going around a beaver's dam, reaching a lookout tower, and splitting again into two boardwalks.

These two boardwalks shortly reach the edge of the swamp and again turn into trails that circle east and north back around the swamp, rejoining the original trail about 50 yards before the boardwalk began. Along this circling back part of the trail I was fortunate enough to look up one spring and see a Scarlet Tananger. Now THAT'S red!

Another time I was out on the trail of some rails that had been reported on the Voice of the Naturalist, the DC area's birding hotline & weekly bird report sponsored by the Audubon Naturalist Society, the "other" Audubon Society. I was on the spur southwest of the lookout tower clicking in the side of my cheek to call the stupid thing in. (If it was intelligent it would have given us all a 2 minute look, satisfied our curiosities, and been on its way, but NOOOOO, it had to play hard-to-get, showing us a flirtacious eye here, a bit of leg there, some neck from behind that bush, and, well, you get the picture.) The boardwalk was crowded - and by that I mean someone every 10 or 15 yards or so - with people looking for the rail or out for an afternoon stroll.

There was one intense young (college age) guy bound and determined to add that rail to his list. He came bustling over asking where the rail was. I pointed to an clump of bushes and reeds about 20 yards away. He said no, the rail was right here by the boardwalk. I said no, it was over there and wouldn't come any closer in the 20 minutes I had been there calling it in. He said he had heard it and began furiously looking behind every bush bordering that stretch of boardwalk. (Well, it was water so he couldn't actually get behind the bushes, just trying different angles to see behind them.) Since he was busy, and knew better than I, I went back to watching the rail, or glimpses of the rail, 30 yards away. It started coming closer so I began clicking again, whereupon Mr. Intensity gave me a startled look, stopped looking behind bushes and hurried away. RISLAD! (There was no floor, so that means "Roll In the Swamp Laughing And Drown!)

It was worth the trip just for his expression and reaction.

And I did get a good look at the stupid thing.

Birdlist: American Bittern (3' from the boardwalk!), American Coot, American Crow, American Goldfinch, Barn Swallow, Belted Kingfisher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Brown Creeper, Canada Goose, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Chimney Swift, Common Moorhen, Common Yellowthroat, Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Kingbird, Fish Crow, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Grey Catbird, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, Green Heron, Hairy Woodpecker, Hooded Warbler, King Rail Mallard, Northern Cardinal, Northern Flicker, Pied-billed Grebe, Purple Martin, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Red-eyed Vireo, Red-headed Woodpecker, Red-shouldered Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-winged Blackbird, Ring-necked Duck, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Scarlet Tanager, Song Sparrow, Sora, Spotted Sandpiper, Striated heron, Swamp Sparrow, Tree Swallow, Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, White-throated Sparrow, Winter Wren, Wood Duck, Wood Thrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler

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Birding around DC

Tags:

forest , birding , va , huntley meadows park , wetlands , local birding