Date: 10/5/26 11:41 am From: Carole Winslow <cjwinslow94...> Subject: Clarion Co- American bittern !!- continuing rufous hummingbird, more flight calls, woodcocks and winter wren
Fall greetings, it's been such a great stretch of weather and great birds as well. To update on the hummingbird first, I was able to get a half decent tail shot yesterday finally and so (thanks to Bob Mulvihill for consulting with me again !) it looks like it is indeed a rufous, but a young male. It's here throughout the day still quite regularly and does seem to be molting, at least it looks more disheveled, but quite active and apparently healthy. It's been using the feeders more often, and the flowers in the afternoon when the sun is on them. I enjoy watching him so much !
Second big bird event for the past two days... I was walking up to the upper field to pick some of the last pole beans at a little garden there when to my total amazement, an American bittern flushed out of the tall weeds just to my left. I was so shocked I was barely able to get it in the bins as it flew down along the field edge and then cut up over the woods edge and off over the fields. This was at a bottom wet area of the field below a seep, but still pretty dry around there right now. I imagine it just put down for the day and was hunkering down until it could get out that night. While I didn't get a photo or recording, it was so close that the ID seemed certain to me, nothing else that big with the long neck and head, dangling legs as it flew off, all brown streaking over the body. It did give a couple of croaks, that sounded like its flight call. Curiously, that morning listening to flight calls, I heard several of something I thought was heron-like, but not quite like a great blue. I now wonder if it was the bittern calling as it came in. It was certainly a bird I never expected to see here and don't expect to ever see again. Sometimes, you see the good stuff just because you keep getting out there..
Nocturnal flight calls- I've still been listening, thrushes are still moving, I had 490 calls Saturday still, mostly Swainson's but still 20-25 gray-cheeked. Wood thrush were still present with several calls and two calling on the ground after the flight, and another woodcock coming in which I hear pretty regularly, four different ones this morning ! On Saturday also after the flight calls, there were not one, but two different winter wrens calling in the yard. While I was listening, I heard wings behind me, turned around and there was a winter wren, landed right on the deck railing and was doing its two part call as it hopped around. Today there were fewer calls, but the first big push of hermit thrush came through with around 10 calls, the first I have heard this fall. White-throated sparrows have been arriving and this morning the numbers jumped way up, they were just calling and flying everywhere. I had two beautiful views of Lincoln's sparrows this morning as well, one of my favorites. Lastly, I have had three different owls calling in the past week in the morning, a screech owl a couple days, great horned owl, and one day a couple of barreds across the valley.
All in all, a great fall so far and wishing good fall birding for everyone,
