The Board Birders -- Dixie Sommers, Libby Lyons and Tom Blackburn -- began our Birdathon at 6:00 AM at Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve.
The Board Birders pose for a selfie at the start of their Birdathon.
It’s always great to start a Birdathon --- spotting the birds is exciting, and every species you see adds to your total. We got off to a good start – 45 species in 90 minutes. The highlight was a Lesser Scaup that evidently hadn’t gotten the Migration Memo, which we spotted thanks to Ed Eder, who apparently knows every bird at Dyke Marsh personally. We also found 7 warbler species, Orchard Orioles, Baltimore Orioles and 8 Bald Eagles.
Our next stop was Jones Point Park, under the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. We went there to find a bird that eluded us last year, the Rock Dove (pigeon). We bird in natural areas, where pigeons are in short supply, and last year we realized as it got dark that we hadn’t seen even one. We made sure that didn’t happen this year.
The highlights at Four Mile Run were 4 Wood Ducks and the hard-to-find Willow Flycatcher. At the parking lot for Theodore Roosevelt Island, we found Cliff Swallows under the bridge, and by using a scope we spotted Purple Martins at a martin house across the river in Georgetown. Our Birdathon rules require us to stay in Northern Virginia, but we can count any bird we see, regardless of where it is. We were also pleased to see a Black-crowned Night Heron. Monticello Park lived up to its reputation as a warbler haven: we got 10 warblers there as well as other birds. We made a brief stop at Jackson Abbott Wetlands Refuge, and were rewarded by finding Pine Warblers, which are reliably found in the pines along the water, and Yellow-throated Warblers, which we’ve logged there in other years.
As the day wore on, it became increasingly difficult to find new species. We arrived at Meadowood Special Recreation Area at 7:00 PM, hoping to find one or two new birds as it got dark. We were delighted to find Chipping Sparrows, Savannah Sparrows, a Yellow-throated Vireo, a Summer Tanager and Blue Grosbeaks, all new birds for the day. At our final stop at the Elizabeth Hartwell Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge, we logged our last bird of the day, the beautiful song of a Wood Thrush, but we couldn’t see it -- at 7:45 PM it was too dark to see anything.
In our 14 hours of birding (including a 20 minute lunch stop) and nearly 10 miles of walking, we birded 14 locations and found 93 species of birds, including 16 warbler species. We beat last year’s total of 84 birds and went home tired but satisfied.
Thank you very much to everyone who donated to NVBA to support our Birdathon Team!