Block Island

     Earlier this month, Sharon, friend Joe and I all had the pleasure of visiting Block Island, RI with Connecticut Audubon.  The island has a great reputation for birding during the fall migration and like the other islands we have birded, a lot depends upon the prevailing winds.  We left with our guides and fellow travelers from Port Judith on the last day of September and almost immediately had our first Common eider of the year.  The rest of the ferry ride over to the island was fairly tame with mostly cormorants and Herring gulls in view.  The forecast for the weekend was mostly cloudy with periods of showers and chilly temps.  The weathermen could not have called it further from the truth.  We had great sunny skies and warm temps in the 70's throughout most of the weekend.  Unfortunately, the winds were not what we had hoped for with fairly steady breezes coming up from the south.  Nonetheless, the birds were still plentiful even if we did miss the hoped-for "fallouts" of migrating warblers.  To describe the term "plentiful" as used here, I can only mention that at one point I had Cape May, Parula, and Blackburnian warblers all in the same bins view at the same time.

Yellow warbler    

       No complaints from this birder or any of the others in this regard.  One of our highlights of the trip was a reported Nighthawk called in from one of the other Audubon groups on the island.  Block Island is only 12 miles or so long, so when a report comes in, it's only a matter of minutes before we can be on site and in hot pursuit of the bird.  That being said, Nighthawks are masters of evasion and tend to "hide in plain sight".  The bird was doing what Nighthawks do during the mid-day hours......sleeping on the limb of a tree and blending in almost perfectly.

Common nighthawk

       Unless the bird moves, it will most often go undetected.  The bird is generally not be in any hurry to vacate his sleeping quarters during the daylight hours, and therefore we expected he should be pretty much in the location reported for an extended time.   Well, our directions to the bird were quite specific and we did eventually find the bird after more than a hour's search.

Nelson's sparrow

     Another target bird was either (or both) of the "sharp tail" sparrows.  Guide Andy knew of an area where the birds have been seen in the past and so we made a concerted effort to try and locate one of the birds.  Sure enough, after some serious searching, a Nelson's sparrow was located and we all had excellent albeit a bit distant looks.  Later in the trip the Saltmarsh was also found....two more year birds!

Yellow-billed cuckoo

     The final tally for our trip was a little over a hundred species with a nice Yellow-billed cuckoo, a number of raptors, and the warblers being the finest sightings beyond the Nighthawk.  Our leaders, Andy, Joe, and Priscila, provided us with expert sightings in a beautiful setting and we will surely return with the hopes of even better wind conditions.  Can't imagine it getting much better than what we had on this weekend!